“What we are achieving among all the chefs in Ukraine is magical”

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“At such times you see the best of humanity,” said Chef Jose Andres on his way to Warsaw. Within a month he enters and leaves Ukraine and moves to war-torn countries. In Warsaw, he was expected to meet with US President Joe Biden, who visited one of the World Central Kitchen’s kitchens this weekend, and spoke to Jose Andres about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and neighboring countries. The White House released the video a few hours after the next meeting.

Jose Andres and his team of chefs were the first to respond. They say they will not leave Ukraine until it is no longer needed. The World Central Kitchen became one of the first crossings in the city of Medica, between Ukraine and Poland, a few hours after the invasion. “Now we are at all border crossings, train and bus stations, official and unofficial shelters,” the chef told todaytimeslive.com. “We provide food 24 hours a day because we understand that the arrival of refugees has no schedule. They serve more than 300,000 meals daily. In one month, about four million meals were provided and mobilized in Ukraine and Hungary, Poland and Moldova by the army of professional chefs #ChefsForUkraine, whose only weapon is food.

This “army” fought for the first time in the war, but was strengthened in natural disasters and other humanitarian crises. Jose Andres founded the World Central Kitchen in 2010 to address food shortages in Haiti caused by an earthquake that devastated the island the same year. Jose Andres’s team has since been deployed to Puerto Rico, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Zambia, Peru and Spain during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, among other emergencies. .

His strategy is to land with his team, start cooking and grow in collaboration with local chefs. It has a heavy core of unconditional chefs who can manage large teams and coordinate complex operations and who do not shy away from boarding a plane when they receive a call. Jose Andres’s team, in his words, is like an “accordion”: “We grow up in emergencies and in moments of calm we go back again.” “What we are achieving among all the cooks in Ukraine is magical,” he says excitedly.

“With a collective imagination, we are preparing. And it is true. “We are training a lot,” said Jose Andres. “But we are not just preparing; “We are building large food distribution systems and staying in one place for as long as it takes.” This distribution system allows them to carry a large supply of food and return, for example, to people in need of evacuation. They also have the option of distributing medicines or basic necessities.

Initiative “crescendo”

Jose Andres’s deployment is growing exponentially in Ukraine and neighboring countries. “We have adapted very quickly to this situation, even though it is a mission in many different countries and in very different circumstances.” “We serve hundreds of thousands of meals a day. We prepare food for babies, for people with intolerance, food Kosher [comestible según la ley judía]”, Explain. “Good nutrition gives strength and dignity.” Their menu has a practical component, but they also have the marks of a good chef: pork is marinated, potatoes are precisely fried, sandwiches have mustard, children can drink natural apple juice.

The chef managed to mobilize restaurants in Ukrainian cities, a country that experienced a boom in the restaurant sector before the war. Chefs who for a month managed to book in fashionable establishments are now using the same ovens to prepare food for their fellow countrymen who need it. “They are protecting their families safely and continuing to provide food for the population,” explains the Spanish chef. This is the case of the Alaska restaurant, a fashionable place in the capital that has now joined the ranks of the World Central Kitchen. The operation was joined by restaurants, bakeries and pastry shops from all over the country that receive Ukrainian refugees. In addition to having hundreds of kitchens in several countries in the region, the chef has two of his own industrial macro kitchens: “Two World Central Kitchen kitchens give us plenty of muscle to respond and meet last minute needs.” He says.

Other colleagues by profession, who run restaurants in other parts of the planet, jumped on a plane to help. They left their restaurants or commitments to support this mission, without a return date. This is chef Jose Enrique, a restaurant owner in Puerto Rico, or New York chef Mark Murphy, or pastry chef David Gouache, owner of Bakery Bayou in Arlington, Virginia. Mexican chef Carla Hoyos is in charge of one of the macro cuisines of World Central Cuisine in Poland. Hoyos trained in the cuisine of Jose Andres in the United States, a veteran. He joined the ranks of the NGO when Hurricane Maria struck in Puerto Rico and headed the organization’s macro cuisine in Spain during the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic in our country. He considers himself a “reservist” who is ready to take on challenges of this magnitude if necessary.

Jose Andres says starting adventures in these proportions is an impetus. “I can not think too much about it, some cooks call me friends because they want to come and ask me all sorts of questions, for example, where they wash,” he explains. “Those who ask for a lot are not going to come.” The others decide to join the project in a few hours and “call from the airport to get on.”

His time in Lviv

The chef and his team use social media for real-time information. “We realized we could be correspondents or reporters and tell powerful stories that move,” he explains. “We have created a school, how to manage the report in real time and in the first person from the field, there is nothing direct about it. In fact, during his stay in Lvov, the chef shared many of his experiences. In cities like Lviv, the ratio of official shelters to makeshift shelters is 1-20.

“What I read about Lviv is that many Ukrainians come to this city and stay because they think it is the best place in Ukraine. The next step for them is to stop the internally displaced person and become a refugee. “Many of these IDPs have women with children who have husbands at the front and do not want to leave,” she said.

On his Twitter He shared his experience in Lvov. “We provide food in the kindergarten, which, when it closes in the afternoon, becomes a shelter for 200 people. What is better for IDP children? – he says – we are also in a studio that produces documentaries and videos. “It has become a shelter and we are providing food, while the employees of the manufacturing company continue to work.”



Over the past four weeks, the chef has traveled all border crossings, entered Ukraine, traveled to Warsaw to show his cuisine to the President of the United States, traveled to Madrid to attend the arrival of refugees. In Spain. He also remotely coordinated the World Central Cuisine mission in New Orleans after the tornado, as well as the ongoing mission in Toga in the South Pacific.

As if that were not enough, last week, in parallel with his stay in Lviv, the President of the United States appointed him as Adviser on Sports and Nutrition: But those who know me know that I always participate and take part, whether they name me or not, directly or indirectly. ” The position itself does not impress him: “Only if I can do something, I already have a lot of photos.” This position will enable him to influence the forthcoming conference on food, which will be organized by the White House: “It is necessary. “The last one was in 1969, when I was born,” he said.

Compassion and solidarity, from Ukraine to space

On the same day, news broke that Jose Andres would send Paella, Ratatouille, Lorraine and other Spanish dishes to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the launch, which is currently scheduled for early next month. Some media outlets have published two stories with the same headline: “US President’s new food adviser will serve Paella in space.” He concludes: “Yes, what a day I had.”

Asked if he was tired, he replied: “Tired mothers who spend hundreds of miles on their children in the cold to provide a safe place for them. In my case, when the day is over, I have a comfortable bed to sleep on. You are ashamed to think that you do not have hot water to take a shower when there are people who do not have water to drink.

Jose Andres usually talks to the mayors and governments of the cities where he lives, but his NGO is usually faster than many official response plans: “My team knows I’m looking forward, people need to eat today, not tomorrow. “I try to be creative, to find a way to reach places that are inaccessible, even to besieged cities.” Sometimes this impatience drives him to criticize the official ambulance: “This is not a critique of criticism, I want to be constructive, I think you can and should have a better response ability.”

These four weeks served to reaffirm his faith: “Organized compassion is unstoppable, we must join the army of compassion. We can not turn our backs on these situations, we can not look the other way. We must respond, giving up hope. Feed on good deeds in the present and examples from the past. This is a solidarity relay. ”

A documentary about his call for solidarity will be released on May 27. We feed people. Director Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer and the Imagine Documentaries team had exclusive access to World Central Kitchen initiatives and archives and tracked the work of Jose Andres and his team on their latest missions. “I like to do it, I always have it, it’s something that has grown in me,” he says.

Hint? “American Nurse and Humanitarian Worker Clara Burton, Founder of the American Red Cross.” Barton received the following advice from his father on the death row: Love humanity. Jose Andres feeds him. As he likes to recall in his tweets, “We are all citizens of this world.” To date, World Central Kitchen has served 60 million meals.


Source: El Diario

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