Joshua Roberts

"I get upset when I go back to Europe and Europeans put down American food," says chef José Andrés, who adores America's regional cuisine.  

Inside the Mind of José Andrés

“I haven’t recovered yet,” says D.C.-based super-chef José Andrés of his native Spain's World Cup championship. "It was an emotional shock."

Andrés, whose culinary genius has recently spread to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is a well-informed entrepreneur who’s passionate about public policy, the environment and social movements. But, somehow, no matter the subject, the talk inevitably comes back to food.

“I don’t play soccer—I cook,” he says. “But soccer and food have many similarities. In both, you have a very important goal to produce: And in the end, each shocks the senses with pleasure.”

The master chef’s attitude toward food is almost messianic: “Food is sending us a message, only we need to be prepared to talk with it—and to listen.”

Traditional school never appealed to Andrés. At 15, he left the Asturias region of northern Spain to attend a cooking academy in Barcelona, where his attendance was, at best, irregular. But he had that something, and it was spotted early on by world-class chef Ferran Adrià, who trained the youth at elBulli, his three-Michelin-starred restaurant in northeastern Spain. There, the budding chef paid close attention to what Adrià taught him.

And then he was off to America.

Roberto Alvarez and Andrés’ friend (and later business partner) Rob Wilder brought the 20-something to D.C. as the chef of Jaleo. He quickly transformed the tapas restaurant into a D.C. go-to spot, and then did the same thing at Café Atlántico. Next came Minibar by José Andrés, Zaytinya and Oyamel.

Over the past decade, Andrés won nearly every award and competition available: an “Iron Chef” contest in 2007, beating Bobby Flay; a James Beard Mid-Atlantic Award, 2003; Bon Appetit Chef of the Year, 2004; induction into “Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America,” 2007; GQ Man of the Year in 2009; and a slew of honors in 2010, including an Order of Arts and Letters from the Spanish Cabinet. As for television, in addition to his own show in Spain, Andrés has been featured on “60 Minutes,” “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

In 2006, a year after the New York Times dubbed him “the boy wonder of culinary Washington,” Andrés and Wilder formed the ThinkFoodGroup. Since then, the company has also sheltered The Bazaar by José Andrés in the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, which has already been awarded four stars by the Los Angeles Times, and the two just-opened restaurants at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, Jaleo 2.0 and China Poblano, where Andrés offers his take on “the wonderful street food of China and Mexico.”

Lessons From the Road

Andrés likes to do his own research, even if it takes him to exotic locales—like Queens. “I’m in a restaurant called Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House,” he says when the Flyer reaches him by phone. “Such amazing food. I’m here learning about Chinese dishes. I’m having a great bowl of pasta with beef and some vegetables and noodles. We could feed two people out of this bowl of healthy, good food for only five dollars.”

The Spanish expat, who says he now considers himself more American than European, defends his adopted country’s food, especially its potential.

“I get upset when I go back to Europe and Europeans put down American food,” he says. “I tell them that if you come to New York and eat hot dogs in the street, yeah, you leave with a bad message. But if you decide to start exploring America, it’s fascinating.”

Many of the customers Andrés serves each day are politicos, and some of these people, he says, “forget they should build bridges and fewer walls.” He gets particularly fired up about congressional support for certain subsidies in the Farm Bill. “The Farm Bill is in a stranglehold by the big lobbies that represent the big agribusinesses. If you aren’t subsidizing green peas and baby carrots from small farmers, don’t subsidize the big corn in the heart of America,” he says.

He believes fast-food restaurants “get big price breaks” to produce food that is not nutritional. “But for that we are all at fault, because we have choices,” he says. “Everyone should do his or her part to have a healthier America. We need to make sure that all children have a good school lunch. Congress can open the door to that success.”

Rather than wait for that happy day to arrive, Andrés has been providing keys of his own for years. He was one of the moving forces behind D.C. Central Kitchen (and is now its chairman emeritus), which he calls “a perfect example of a nonprofit that is making a social difference.” In November, the chef took the concept onto the global stage with his creation of the World Central Kitchen, which cooks for and feeds impoverished communities as a result of crises worldwide.

Last year, the peripatetic Andrés took his teach-them-to-fish message to the ravaged nation of Haiti. Traveling on behalf of the nonprofit Solar for Hope (solar-hope.org), he demonstrated—and then left behind—14 solar kitchens.

Despite spreading his gospel abroad, Andrés’ main focus remains on America: “I can guarantee you that, one day soon, the politicians of America will need to have a food agenda.”

However, says Andrés, we may not be able to wait. “We need to start being a voice in Congress. Chefs and the food industry should have something to say about how we are going to feed this country. The food movement is going to have to happen.”       

Lest one think José Andrés is a workaholic, he hastens to add that he does take vacations. But, not too surprisingly, he doesn’t leave home without his social conscience.

“I love to vacation in Spain. My wife wants our daughters to have this bridge between both countries, so they go for three months each year. We go to southern Spain, and we visit Mexico, where we love to go to Oaxaca. But we try not to go to places and resorts that become a wall between you and the people who live in those places. If we get a good taxi driver, we always try, at the end, to have lunch with him—we take him and his family to lunch in a restaurant.”

It’s enough to make one want to be a taxi driver.