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
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.
Chefs are at the end of a long chain of individuals who work hard to feed people. Farmers, beekeepers, bakers, scientists, fishermen, grocers, we are all part of that chain, all food people, all dedicated to feeding the world.
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.
I don't think anybody can claim success at any part of our lives, private or professional, if there are others that don't enjoy the same opportunities.
Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.
Everyone should wake up and have a fresh-squeezed orange every day. By having a fresh glass of orange juice with American oranges, you are supporting the local economy, you have all the vitamin C you need in a day, and you support the environment because you don't use any plastic from bottles or bags.
Today we take New England clam chowder as something traditional that makes our roots as American cooking very solid, with a lot of foundation. But the first person who decided to mix potatoes and clams and bacon and cream, in his own way 100 to 200 years ago, was a modernist.
When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, I was on vacation in the Cayman Islands.
We should all be involved in the avant-garde as long as we look toward the past.
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.
I don't know any group of professionals that mobilize as fast and as often as chefs do when there are people who are in need.
I don't believe in traditional company structures because the best ideas do not always come from the top.
I am from Spain, but my family and I have made America our home. For the last 17 years, I have been cooking Spanish food in Washington, D.C.
Most people only use their griddles for pancakes, but you can sear vegetables like sliced zucchini or mushrooms, thinly sliced meats like chicken or pork, or thinly sliced fish or squid.