José Andrés

Chef-owner, American Eats Tavern, Minibar, Bazaar, Jaleo,
and E
Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, California, and Las Vegas,
Nevada

You can’t learn passion. You can learn craft, you can learn the

history of your chosen field, you can even learn style, but passion?

You’ve got to have it in your bones.

Chef José Andrés, the legendary Spanish chef, is nothing if not

passionate. When he answers the door for me at his home in

Bethesda, Maryland, he grunts. As he leads me into his kitchen, I

ask about his philosophy when it comes to food and cooking.

“Cooking is not a philosophy,” he says. “It’s a lifestyle.”

In his kitchen, beautifully arrayed with bowls of fruit and an

Ibérico ham on a stand, Andrés says, “Let’s go,” and begins adding

water to a big bowl of coarse salt.

“Take the leaves off the stem,” he tells me, handing me sprigs

of rosemary. Soon, I’m mixing all the salt, water, and herbs

together by hand and packing them around a pork loin that rests in

a baking dish.

As Andrés places it in the oven, he explains that the size of the

meat doesn’t matter as much as the radius: how far the distance is

from the outside to the center. “That is what determines how it