. g r o K C W / n e h c t i K l a r t n e C d l r o W © AS: The amazing thing is, not only did you become a great chef, then you became a great restaurateur and you led these restaurants with thousands and thousands of fans. At what point did you get this idea of creating the World Central Kitchen? J.A.: There‘s war zones where they need food. There‘s fires. There‘s earthquakes. There‘s problems. There‘s floods. There‘s this and that. There‘s misery around the world. I‘ve got to go and feed those people. A.S: How did it come about? I mean, what was your drive to give something back? J.A.: When I arrived in Washington, D.C., I began vo- lunteering at an organization called DC Central Kit- chen. They were amazing because they were fight- ing food waste, which we know has a lot to do with global warming. The guy that founded this, Robert Egger, was a bartender. He saw that food waste was not really the only problem. The problem is that we were wasting people‘s lives. So, he brought the food that was untouched and ready to be thrown away, and he led the people to the kitchen. He began training the people to become cooks. Those cooks would make sure that the food would not be food waste, but food opportunity. Making these meals to feed the homeless population of Washington, D.C., I learned so much. Watching how a plate of food could be an agent of change. A.S: Brilliant. And how did you end up founding your own organization? The World Central Kitchen? J.A: I saw what happened when hurricane Katrina hit. Men and women were left, like in the Superdo- me, without food and water for four days. The sys- tem was overwhelmed because sometimes go- vernments cannot do it all. When Haiti happened, the big earthquake in 2010, I said, you know, “this is major. I am a cook, and when you have an emer- gency, you send nurses and doctors to take care of the wounded. You send the firefighters to take care of the fires. But when you have to feed people in an emergency, who do you think is the most prepa- red? The cooks of the world“. So I went to Haiti, and that‘s when World Central Kitchen was created. Since 2010, Chef José Andrés‘ non-profit organi- zation has been providing people in disaster areas with fresh food. A.S: Where did you go after that? J.A: Without realizing over the last years, we‘ve been in so many places. The fires in California, in Ventura, at the volcano in Hawaii, and in Guatema- la. We‘ve been to the war in Ukraine, and to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. We‘ve been to the Bahamas after Dorian. At the end, it‘s a very simple thing, what we‘re doing. We are able to reach one million meals a day in a matter of days in a very organized, sometimes illogical way, but in a way that we don‘t come with a plan. We adapt. Adapta- tion is, I would say, the trademark of World Central Kitchen. If you have a plan, you will fail because every emergency is different, but if you adapt, you can always respond. A.S: I think the world of the things that you‘re do- ing. At what point did you find out that the envi- ronment is something that also benefits from all of this? When did this become important to you? J.A: Everything has to do with the environment. Be- cause I am realizing that one of the biggest factors we have and one of the areas that becomes a prob- lem is food. Food is the reason why we have health issues, obesity, and all the other sicknesses that happen because of overeating. Food is the reason we are emitting a lot of CO2 in the process of fee- ding humanity. The way we produce food is one of the reasons why we are contaminating our water- ways and our oceans. At the end, food is everything. 7