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.
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.
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.
Your parents would not be happy if you came home and said you wanted to grow up to be a chef or a rock star.
Everyting starts to happen at my home at 7 A. M., 7:20, when you hear the orange juicer. That means my daughters are already making the fresh Clementine juice.
I remember being a young boy in Spain and watching my parents cook. We didn't go to a lot of restaurants because we didn't always have the money, so cooking at home was just what we did.
If you want to keep your side dishes warmer than room temperature, consider buying a small steam table for the home, with the Sterno cans underneath.
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.