Jose Andres Puerta
Jose Andres Puerta
José Ramón Andrés Puerta, known as José Andrés, is a Spanish American chef often credited for bringing the small plates dining concept to America. He owns restaurants in Washington DC, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas, South Beach, Dorado and Philadelphia. Andrés is chair of the advisory board for LA Kitchen, a social enterprise in Los Angeles, California that works to reduce food waste, provide job training, and increase access to nutritious food...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth13 July 1969
CountrySpain
Meat, to me, it's slightly boring. Hold on, I love meat too, but only once in a while. You get a piece of meat, and you put it in your mouth, you chew, the first five seconds, all the juices flow around your mouth, they're gone, and then you are 20 more seconds chewing something that is tasteless at this point.
My love for artichokes comes from when I was very young. My mother and father would slice the hearts and fry them, and they would be crispy around the leaves and tender at the base.
One thing that makes me very happy is to see the growing activism among chefs in America. Chefs like Tom Colicchio, Bill Telepan, and Rachel Ray and food writers like Michael Pollan have gone to Congress, indeed sometimes even have testified before Congress, have lent this support to Mrs. Obama's effort to combat childhood obesity.
Music is always on. Not at work. But at home, everything always has to have a soundtrack.
My family and I cook at home almost every day together. The kitchen is the central and most important room in the house; it's a great way for us to connect. We love going to the farmer's market on Sundays as a family and choosing the ingredients together.
When you cook a sausage, the skin sometimes breaks and the ground meat comes apart.
When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.
Let me ask you: Who do you prefer, a clown organizing your menu - with all due respect to Mr. McDonald - or a chef? I do believe it's a very simple answer.
I'm always looking to the future and what will next be on the horizon.
I love cooking for the sake of understanding how people before me used to feed themselves, used to feed their families.
I have an amazing wife and three daughters that always keep me motivated.
When you go to watch a baseball game, when you go to watch an NBA game, when you watch an NFL game, when you go to watch movies, the offering that those arenas are doing foodwise is 'all the hot dogs you can eat'; all the French fries you can eat; for $20 you can eat 20 hot dogs.
When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, I was on vacation in the Cayman Islands.
There is nothing better than picking up sun-warmed tomatoes and smelling them, feeling them and scrutinizing their shiny skins for imperfections, dreaming of ways to serve them.