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
My mother and I were born in Mieres, Asturias, the most beautiful region you'll ever see in Europe and the home of Cabrales, a great blue cheese made in the Asturian mountains. When I was young, we moved to Barcelona. Whenever my mother was homesick for Asturias, she'd eat a little piece of Cabrales to bring her closer to Mieres.
Without a doubt, one of my favorite American ingredients is blue crabs, a true delicacy! And a great value, I think.
For me, Romesco is one of the greatest sauces in the world.
Simple ingredients, treated with respect... put them together and you will always have a great dish.
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.
I love Ozomatli, this L.A. band that makes great coffee. They are half American, half Mexican, their coffee's great, and they're very good friends.
Behind Chipotle is not a corporation; behind Chipotle is a man that is one of the great cooks, that created a great concept.
The time has come to recognize that food, how we produce it, process it, package it, sell it, cook it and eat it, is as important as any other issue.
I started culinary school at a very young age, and really I wanted to be out working, cooking, more than I wanted to be in a classroom. You could say I wasn't a very good student - I wanted to be a student of life and experience.
The right use of food can end hunger.
As immigrants, we understand better than most that to be an American is a privilege that conveys not just rights but responsibilities.
Puerto Rico is the perfect meeting place between Spain, the country I come from, and America, the country where I now belong. The meeting point of two worlds where magic can happen.
People ask me in Europe, when they do interviews... they ask me, 'Well, how does it feel to be a cook in a country that doesn't know how to eat?' It always touches a nerve, because Europe and the world think that America is no more than bad hot dogs and bad burgers.
Even today with the public's growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.