72 Time April 6–13, 2020love fire. Maybe I’m a distant relative of Prometheus.” He is fond of telling
one story: when he was a boy, he always wanted to stir the paella pan, but
his fa ther wouldn’t let him cook. He first had to learn to control the fire.
After culinary school in Barcelona and a stint in the Spanish navy cook-
ing for an admiral, Andrés arrived in New York City in 1991 a s a 2 1- year-
old c hef with $50 in his pocket. He moved to D.C. a few years later to help
start a Spanish-themed restaurant, Jaleo, and helped p opularize t apas i n
the U.S. Success gave him the freedom to open more restaurants and exper-
iment with new fare. In 2016, minibar, in D.C., which offers a tasting menu
of a few dozen small courses, earned t he coveted two-star Michelin rat-
ing. “He’s probably the most creative chef in the world today,” says French
chef Eric Ripert, whose own flagship New York restaurant, Le Bernardin,
regularly ranks among the best on the planet. Ripert points to a waffle
stuffed with foie gras mousse, served at barmini—minibar’s c ompanion
cocktail and snack lounge—as an Andrés creation that blew him away.
“Waffles are not supposed to be savory,” he says. “Your chances of suc-
cess with that are almost none. You see it coming and you’re like, ‘What
is that?’ It’s full of surprise.”
In an interview a few years back, Andrés, who became a U.S. citizen in
2013, s aid h e s peaks t o h is i ngredients. But when I ask if he actually talks
to his garlic, he says don’t take him literally. “If you are a cook and you
don’t understand the history and physics b ehind water, of tomatoes, it’s
very difficult for you to do anything. Come on, talking to ingredients is just,
Are you aware of what you have in your hands? Are you deep in thought?”
While Andrés’ restaurants caught on in the 1990s and his profile
continued to rise—a PBS show, Made in Spain, for example, debuted in
2008—he homed in on philanthropy. He lent time and resources to D.C.
Central Kitchen, a local charity that not only feeds the capital’s homeless
and residents in need but also trains them to find cooking jobs. It was in
2010— after he visited Haiti following the earthquake that year—that he
founded World Central Kitchen. “My whole history with him has been
listening to him and saying, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” says D.C. Central Kitchen
founder Robert Egger. “Then he does it. At this point if he comes to me
and has an idea for an inter galactic kitchen, I’m like, ‘F-cking A, that’s
good. I’m on board.’ ”
The organization pitched in on Hurricane Sandy relief in 2012, and
in August 2017, Andrés traveled to Houston to help mobilize c hefs a fter
Hurricane Harvey. The work all led up t o Hurricane Maria, which made
landfall that September. “Puerto Rico was that moment where it’s like,
O.K., it’s t ime to put into practice all that we’ve been soaking up over
the years,” says Mook, World Central Kitchen’s ex-
ecutive director. “We s aw the sheer paralysis of the
government’s response. We realized we were on the
brink of a humanitarian crisis. We said, Let’s start
somewhere. Let’s s tart c ooking.” (Andrés appeared
on TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people i n
the world in both 2012 and 2018.)
World Central Kitchen has figured out that rather
than relying on packaged food airlifted in from the
outside—“meals ready to eat” (MREs) in relief parlance—Andrés and his
team can tap into existing supply chains and local chefs to prepare hot
meals. As its profile has expanded, its revenues have ballooned from around
$650,000 in 2016 to $28.5 million in 2019, and the organization now has
the wherewithal to hire local help—as well as send out its own operations
experts—to kick-start the food economy. Some two-thirds of World Cen-
tral Kitchen’s 2019 revenues, or $19.1 million, came from individual dona-
tions, ranging from large gifts from philanthropists, including from Marcand Lynne Benioff, TIME’s owners and co-chairs, to
kids giving $6 out of their allowance. Former Presi-
dent Bill Clinton, whose Clinton Global Initiative
has supported World Central Kitchen, says Andrés’
empathic action is more crucial than ever in these
divided times. “If you spend
more time on your fears than
your hopes, on your resent-
ments than your compassions,
and you divide people up, in
an interdependent world, bad
things are going to happen,”
Clinton, who first spent sig-
nificant time with Andrés in
Haiti after the earthquake, tells TIME. “If that’s all
you do, you’re not helping the people who have been
victimized or left behind o r overlooked. He’s a walk-
ing model of what the 21st century citizen should be.”About two months before his trip to Oakland,
Andrés stomped into another airport, in San Juan,
the first person off his flight from Washington, D.C.Andrés t akes p ride
that h is t eam d oesn’t
just p arachute i n.
They s tick a round>
André s, left, with
his mother and
younger brother,
gre w up in
northern Spain>
Cooking with his
daughte r in the
Spanish countrysideUWR.Jose.indd 72 3/25/20 6:03 PM