José Andrés got his big start as a chef at Ferran Adrià's elBulli in Spain, the original temple of molecular gastronomy. He immigrated to the U. S. from Spain in 1991. Today the José Andrés Group operates more than thirty restaurants including Jaleo, minibar, and several Bazaars, a kind of Spanish cuisine wonderland—Washington D.C. and New York get theirs this year. World Central Kitchen, the relief organization Andrés founded to help feed people in crisis, is the biggest food-aid organization in Ukraine.
Moving has been very important for me, discovering new places, realizing that the more you know, the more you know that you know nothing—especially cooking.
The rituals that go into the process of cooking and enjoying the meal are a gigantic ritual of feeling. Feeling is the most important thing we do from the moment we’re born to the moment we die. Next to breathing, it’s the thing we have to do all the time.
If you don’t control the fire, you cannot cook.
I taught my daughters how to use a knife since they were four or five, or before. The earlier they learn, the safer they are.
My dream is to become local everywhere, but the world is too big to do that, right? The places I am part of, I try to be like a local. It’s just the most beautiful feeling.
I always share my dreams with people. It’s a way to show my intentions. I think I do it to put pressure on me, like “I’m going to do this.” And it’s having everybody as the support team checking on you that you will do this. And I remember I said, “One day I’ll be in America.” One day I said, “I want to be in the [Spanish] navy and I want to see the world,” and then it happened!
If it was up to me, I would make the world the classroom for children, and it would make the world better and smaller. I know it’s almost impossible, but we can do something in between.
As a teenager, I would go walking every day—thirty minutes walking. And I think this was the best part of my life because I would go through the farmlands between my little town and the school, watching the cherry and the peach trees and the rhythm of life that happens in the farming areas. You miss that when you are in the cities.
In high school what I learned was: Don’t be afraid to ask. I think I’ve never been afraid to ask.
Poorer people are the most giving. I’ve seen it many times, in an emergency, and if they can share the half loaf of bread with somebody because they have nothing, they are going to do it.
I have a feeling when you get more, it’s almost like The Lord of the Rings, right? Precious, right? In the moment you get something, the gold blinds you and it’s something that you want more of.
Luck is luck. It happens sometimes even when you don’t wish it. But everything else in life needs to be more than luck. It needs to be effort. It needs to be hard work. It needs to be repetition and error.
My favorite Spanish saying? “No le pidas peras al olmo.” Don’t ask for pears from the elm tree.
I’m afraid all the time. But then you think about all the women on the front line every day. You stop being afraid, because you are next to people that make you brave. Being in Ukraine gives me a lot of joy to see how an entire nation can come together with support of people from the outside. You can be afraid and fearless at the same time.
I’m like a computer. I can go into sleep mode immediately.
Food is the most important source of energy we have on planet earth. We should not have a secretary of agriculture; we should have a secretary of food.
One day, even in America, we’re going to be waking up to a hard reality that even the most powerful country in the world will have problems feeding its citizens. Sometimes you have to be a little bit gloomy so people can take things seriously.
My father would invite everybody for a Sunday paella once a month or whatever and not keep track of who he invited, so it was very random who would show up. And my mother was always like, “What happens if more people show up?” And my dad would say, “Well, we add more rice to the pan.” It’s always the way. It’s always the way.
