Jose Andres is an immigrant, a celebrity chef, and a mensch. The last makes him a far better human being than Donald Triump.
Most Americans first heard of Andres when he backed out of the contract to have a restaurant in the hotel Trump was then building in the Old Post Office Building on 12th Street in Washington DC because of Trump’s Muslim ban.
Now you can really see how much of a mensch Andres is by reading a piece in today’s Washington Post that is titled José Andrés, a naturalized U.S. citizen, has become the face of American disaster relief.
Andres is the founder of The Chef Network (also known as World Central Kitchen) which led by him reacts to disasters. Thus we read in the 2nd & 3rd paragraph2 of the story that
Andrés was among the first responders in Haiti and Houston, and now he and his crew from World Central Kitchen are on the ground in Puerto Rico, improvising ways to feed countless residents who are stranded without electricity, drinking water and food in the wake of Hurricane Maria. With little ability to speak with the outside world, Andrés has used his Twitter feed to keep followers updated on his progress in the U.S. territory.
If President Trump has become a target of criticism for the administration’s response in Puerto Rico, Andrés has become a hero. The restaurateur’s social networks are overflowing with words of praise for the native Spaniard who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013.
The story has the following tweet from the Chef embedded:
We learn that
Andrés and company landed in Puerto Rico on Monday and wasted little time. He posted a photo of himself ladling out sancocho — a Puerto Rican beef stew — to locals.
while Trump did not even get around to dispatching the hospital ship Comfort until Friday.
The Chef has teamed up with a local chef, using restaurants owned by that local and another local chef as centers to help people:
Volunteers from the island and the U.S. mainland, working under the hashtag #chefsforPuertoRico, have prepared stews, sandwiches, paella and pastelon (a Puerto Rican lasagna with fried sweet plantains for “noodles”) for those in hospitals, senior homes and San Juan neighborhoods. They’ve used food trucks to help distribute meals.
Both the story and Chef Andres’ twitter feed will provide pictures and more info.
Consider this:
According to Andrés’s PR team back in Washington, the crews in Puerto Rico are now feeding 5,000 people a day, and since Monday, they have served more than 15,000 meals. (In late August, Andrés was in Houston with World Central Kitchen, where they served 20,000 meals for victims of Hurricane Harvey.)
Then consider this:
You could make the argument that his relief efforts in Puerto Rico are more personal to Andrés. He has a restaurant on the island: Mi Casa is a modern Caribbean restaurant inside a Ritz-Carlton property in Dorado, just west of San Juan. The restaurant took a hit from Maria and remains closed.
It is more important to the Chef to help people than to focus on opening his own property (which is being restored). Contrast this to the occupant of the Oval Office who could have offered his personal plane to transport people and supplies to the island and to get others out. Other wealthy people have done so, and Delta Airlines has dispatched a flight with 20,000 pounds of supplies. But Trump would rather tweet, attacking a mayor because she criticized the response, and of course continuing to play golf.
As I said, the chef is a mensch. Donald Trump is not.