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All Q&A programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our C-SPAN Now app. | |
| America's Book Club is brought to you by these television companies and is supported by the Ford Foundation. | ||
| From the nation's iconic libraries and institutions, America's Book Club takes you on a powerful journey of ideas, exploring the lives and inspiration of writers who have defined the country in conversation with civic leader and author David Rubinstein. | ||
| As a young boy growing up in Baltimore, I went to my local library and was inspired to read as many books as I could. | ||
| Hopefully people will enjoy hearing from these authors and hopefully they'll want to read more. | ||
|
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Now, from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., famed chef, humanitarian, and global relief entrepreneur whose books include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island. | |
| Jose Andres. | ||
| Relax. | ||
| He's not cooking. | ||
| Stop clapping. | ||
| And Jose, thank you for making this time possible. | ||
| Jose, you are known as a chef and a humanitarian, but you're also a writer and also a collector of books. | ||
| Many people may not realize that, but you've written a number of books that are cookbooks. | ||
| You've just written two new books. | ||
| We'll talk about those in a moment, but you also collect historic cookbooks. | ||
| What interested you in collecting historic cookbooks and where do you keep them? | ||
| Well, thank you for being here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And you are going to be interviewing me without having anything to ask me the questions. | ||
| Your brain is amazing. | ||
| One of the smartest minds in the history of mankind, right here. | ||
| Yeah, you can clap. | ||
| Yeah, but, but. | ||
| So where I keep them, I keep them all over the place. | ||
| Some of them are fairly old. | ||
| My wife always wonders why I keep them sometimes with me in a backpack. | ||
| It's only because I like to travel with them, because sometimes I don't know when I have free time to read them, because I like to be part of the life of those books. | ||
| And they say, yeah, but it's a 200-year-old book. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, so the guy that owned the book 200 years ago, he could read the book, but I own the book now and I cannot read the book. | ||
| So I like to be part of the life of my books. | ||
| So I began collecting them because, I don't know, I am fascinated, thanks to people like you, to understanding where I come from, to understand the things that happened before us, before me. | ||
| And the old books are only the moment you get the book, just by touching the book, by bringing them and smelling the book. | ||
| I mean, all the time it's a great smell, but overall, especially cookbooks, they smell. | ||
| Only those two things are already telling you thanks. | ||
| The letter in the cover. | ||
| But then you open the book in any page. | ||
| And for me, those recipes, when they are recipe books, no, all the cookbooks are only about recipes that are about history and other things. | ||
| You see a recipe, and all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, take a look what they were cooking in the 1800s, you know, late 1700s, only by seeing an ingredient. | ||
| Already my brain begins going crazy of saying, wow, they were already using this in such and such place at that time. | ||
| Cookbooks, people love buying cookbooks. | ||
| They're very popular. | ||
| Usually, they're among the most popular books you always see in a bookstore. | ||
| When you write a cookbook, do you actually try the recipe out for the first time when you're putting the book together, or you've already done the recipe and you already know it will work? | ||
| Well, I don't really follow the recipe. | ||
| I don't think I ever follow the recipe. | ||
| That's why I always say I'm not a good chef. | ||
| I'm a good cook, but I'm not a chef. | ||
| I don't follow the recipe very well. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because it's boring. | ||
| Repetition is great in mathematics and in physics, if physics repeats itself, because when it doesn't, it's going, wow, we discovered something new. | ||
| But in cooking, you have a lot of margin of error, but also a lot of margin for creativity. | ||
| It's what makes cooking fascinating. | ||
| That you can fail, or you can succeed, sometimes by a gram. | ||
| And that's the difference between failure and success. | ||
| And I always say, when you fail in cooking, say, stop complaining, and you change the name of the recipe, which is the name of my new book. | ||
| You celebrate, oh my God, I burned the potatoes, and like, stop complaining, and you say, do you like my barn potatoes I made today? | ||
| And it works usually, because it's very difficult to make something like this an edible. | ||
| Anybody can cook something. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| To make something anedible, you have to try hard. | ||
| Really hard. | ||
| It's few people that do it, and those are heroes in my book. | ||
| That's why I tell them, don't get close to the kitchen. | ||
| Those are the people I put peeling the blueberries at the end. | ||
| Yeah, I hear people, I say, you go peel the blueberries. | ||
| That's the people you don't want near your kitchen. | ||
| Therefore, I don't know what you asked me, but this is my answer. | ||
| But what you asked me, but that's my question. | ||
| Well, let me ask you, sometimes I've seen, you read a recipe, it says a quarter ounce of this or so much of that. | ||
| But then I see the TV show, the person who's the chef on a TV show is just throwing in stuff, not measuring it. | ||
| So it's just kind of a feel for how much you put in. | ||
| Only if you are Martha Stewart, you measure everything. | ||
| Martha Stewart is so precise. | ||
| Believe me, I know. | ||
| I hope you watch my show on NBC, just share with her. | ||
| But before, I remember one time I was cooking with Martha Stewart, and Amia was like. | ||
| But how many teaspoons? | ||
| I'm like, I don't know, two teaspoons, and she, but you put three cups already. | ||
| I'm like, wow, who cares? | ||
| It's alcohol. | ||
| It evaporates. | ||
| So, yeah, I mean, listen, for home cooks, precision is important. | ||
| And I want to say that the team that works and many of them are present here today, and I think some, so I love you guys, but they work very hard to make the recipes really, really precise. | ||
| But that's a matter of how well you write the recipes. | ||
| Every time anybody reads through a recipe, if I give you a recipe, all of you, and I put you in different kitchens, the outcome of the recipe is going to be so different from each one of you. | ||
| And this is the fascinating thing about cooking. | ||
| Fascinating. | ||
| Now, let me ask you this. | ||
| I've been over your house for dinner, and it's an unusual experience because you cook each of the, sometimes I've thought chefs, when they go home, they don't want to cook. | ||
| They have somebody else might cook for them. | ||
| But you like to cook at home. | ||
| So you go cook the course, and then you serve it, and then you go cook another course. | ||
| You never actually, it's hard to have dinner with you because you're cooking the whole time, right? | ||
| Oh my god, you sound like my wife. | ||
| Yeah, it's true to, but I don't think you get to enjoy it. | ||
| Okay, that means the next time you come to my home, I will not cook for you and we'll talk. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Number one, I don't like to sit. | ||
| I think sitting down is boring. | ||
| It's just so boring. | ||
| And especially when you're sitting and you have the same person on the right and on the left for the next four hours of your meal. | ||
| You were not boring. | ||
| You were perfect. | ||
|
unidentified
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And everybody else, everybody else in the room, you were not so great. | |
| I mean, all the people are not here. | ||
|
unidentified
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But I like to listen to me. | |
| When I cook, you know, the only moment I have to show love, respect, and appreciation to people is when I share maybe one of the only gifts I may have, which is to transform the goodness of the earth in something good and magical. | ||
| And the best way I have to show respect to people is I'm cooking for you right now, in this moment, and I'm going to make you the best dish anybody is going to eat on planet Earth right now. | ||
| The sad part is that then it's true. | ||
| I don't spend the time with the people because I'm cooking. | ||
| But this is the best way I have to show you respect of my family. | ||
| And I don't know if anybody appreciates it, but for me, it's the most important thing. | ||
| I'm going to, so yeah, I'll be in the kitchen. | ||
| I know it's weird. | ||
| I bring people home and then they leave and like, hey, bye, another day we'll talk. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, it was good to see you. | ||
| How was the meal? | ||
| Great. | ||
| Okay, bye. | ||
| Leave me alone. | ||
| But yeah, I like to cook. | ||
| That's why kitchens should be a table. | ||
| So the cook is in the kitchen and the people sit around the table and that's it. | ||
| So that's what you have to do next. | ||
| You've written some non-cook books and I'm going to talk about two of them. | ||
| One of them is about your life. | ||
| Recently came out. | ||
| Let's go through that. | ||
| Where were you born? | ||
| Chat GPT, can I use? | ||
| You can remember? | ||
| I'm born in Asturias in the north. | ||
| I would not say it was a book about my life, because maybe one day, but true, stories about your life to some extent. | ||
|
unidentified
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Agree. | |
| And we made it kind of chronological, but hopefully one day, not like anybody's interested, even if it's only for my daughters and maybe my wife, so they don't roll their eyes every time I tell the stories. | ||
| I'll write more, you know, more and more. | ||
| But this was just ideas, right? | ||
| But yes, one of the stories is where I'm born is I'm born in Asturias in the northern part of Spain. | ||
| And what did your parents do? | ||
| Nurses. | ||
| Well, my father was a nurse. | ||
| He was studying medicine to become a doctor, but never made it. | ||
| So he stayed a nurse. | ||
| My mom then studied to be a nurse later on because we became four brothers and the salary of my father was not enough to maintain my other two brothers and I. | ||
| And a fourth brother was coming and then my wife, my mother, became a nurse in the process of being pregnant of my fourth brother. | ||
| When you were growing up, your mother cooked at home. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you liked some of the foods that she cooked, right? | ||
| Well, you read the book. | ||
| I did. | ||
| It's just the one. | ||
| Yeah, my mom was more the Monday through Friday cook. | ||
| My father was more the weekend cook. | ||
| My mom was more the leftover magic, multiplying fish and loaves kind of things, empty fridge, and then she'll make dishes out of an empty fridge, which requires a talent. | ||
| She'll make croquettas, which I cannot believe I charge at Jalejo for croquettas now, because literally, even you can make croquettas from scratch. | ||
| Croquettas usually was leftover food. | ||
| What is your favorite food? | ||
| Oh my god, I don't remember any of the early dishes of the month. | ||
| You know, in Spain to this day, people get the paycheck at the end of the month or at the beginning of the month, and you could see the difference in your fridge at the beginning of the month towards the end of the month. | ||
| It was very obvious by the photo. | ||
| If you got the paycheck, no, I mean, we are going through the same thing right now with the snaps, believe it or not. | ||
| But again, I don't remember the dishes when the fridge of my home was full. | ||
| I don't remember, wow, the steak, wow, the piece of fish. | ||
| We remember the dishes of the end of the month: the croquettas, the migas, not confused with the Mexican migas, but migas that were literally sotep breadcrumbs. | ||
| So I remember those dishes like, my God, I cannot wait to have that plate again. | ||
| That brings great memories. | ||
| When you were growing up, did you say, I want to be a cook, I want to be a chef, or what did you want to be when you? | ||
| I think my father was the cook on the weekends. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And he will invite the entire hospital. | ||
| He'll never keep track of who he invited. | ||
| We could be 10, we could be 50, literally. | ||
| And my father was good at that because he had different pan sizes. | ||
| But it's not the same to buy and cook for 10, that buy and cook for 50. | ||
| And my father was like, whatever. | ||
| My mom was like always, the woman is the one with the brain. | ||
| Like, and what happened? | ||
| If more people come. | ||
| My father, for that, had a very good answer. | ||
| My father would always say, if more people come, just we add more. | ||
| Rice to the pen. | ||
| Problem solved. | ||
| So my father had a way with big problems, simple solutions, even not necessarily work that way all the time. | ||
| Good luck that my mom was always the one prepared, used to make the true adjustments so everybody could eat. | ||
| But I love watching my father cooking on the weekends, he would cook for friends, always a big paella pen or very big pot. | ||
| If you come with me, especially in vacation summers or Christmas, you will see that they have a lot. | ||
| I mean, as my wife, she'll roll the eyes. | ||
| She's like, how many of these paella pens we have to own? | ||
| Because I have many. | ||
| And I have many of different sizes. | ||
| I have so many that sometimes local hotels call me to, can you lend us some of your pens? | ||
| Because we have, and I'm the, this is my summer house, my vacation house where we rent. | ||
| So I love those pens. | ||
| And then you began realizing that food, especially, food especially. | ||
| I kept making the croquettas, my wife, to my daughters, the same way my wife and the mother of my wife made for her and I. | ||
| And I keep trying to cook for everybody, friends, family, and if we are more, the merrier, as my father did. | ||
| So, food-wise, if you think about it, I'm sure all of you right now, you're going through your memory lane, and we all have these memories that food somehow is involved. | ||
| Food has this unbelievable power to connect us to the past, to connect us to the people we love. | ||
| And that's why we have such fond memories of anything related to food and cooking. | ||
| When you graduated from high school, what did you want to do? | ||
| You went into the Navy eventually, right? | ||
| I barely, I didn't graduate from high school. | ||
| Traditional education was not, traditional education was not the best thing with my brain. | ||
| Okay, so you didn't graduate? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I barely began, yeah, first, yeah, I did first the first year. | |
| You volunteered for the Navy. | ||
| But my father saw that I had love for cooking. | ||
| I was already helping him. | ||
| And very early on, I was barely 15, 16th, he put me in culinary school. | ||
| You had to be 18, 19, you had to finish high school. | ||
| But the good news was a private school. | ||
| They needed students that paid the fee. | ||
| I was tall, nice looking. | ||
| First year school, they put me in the school. | ||
| I didn't graduate from that school either. | ||
| Big. | ||
| Because it was very boring. | ||
| I mean, the school opened without the kitchen being finished. | ||
| And you know, when you talk about virtual reality and AI, I experienced the first virtual reality and AI because we had no kitchen and then cooking class will be, okay, people, so here we are going to cook gambas alajillo. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| Well, it was virtual. | ||
| You have this rim in front of you, check that they are good quality, and then we'll grab the imaginary shrimp. | ||
| And then I will get in trouble because I'll say, my shrimp is melt, teacher. | ||
| And they kick me out of class often. | ||
| And then I began going to restaurants because, you know, I kind of be like, you know, like, okay, Jose, you are born in the garlic. | ||
| I'm like, I didn't have the garlic yet. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| And yeah, they kicked me out every single class out of class because they say I was making a mockery of the class. | ||
| But I'm like, well, the mockery is to be paying a fee and not having ingredients in the kitchen to cook in a cooking school. | ||
| That's why I didn't graduate. | ||
| They gave me my diploma 30 years later. | ||
| So you went into the Navy. | ||
| And I went to the Navy. | ||
| You read the book. | ||
| Right, I did. | ||
| But when you're in the Navy. | ||
| So I went to the Navy. | ||
| And when you're in the Navy, you got a job cooking for a while, right? | ||
| I did because I already was young champion of Spain of a championship. | ||
| They did the Chain des Route Series, a French organization promoting cooking. | ||
| And I became champion of Spain. | ||
| I was barely 17th, 18th. | ||
| And I went to represent Spain to France in the finals. | ||
| And I ended second or third. | ||
| And so I already was a good cook. | ||
| I already was working in restaurants, one to Star Michelin, some of the best restaurants in Barcelona. | ||
| In El Buy, world famous best restaurant in the last hundred years of humanity with Ferran Adria. | ||
| I go to the military service. | ||
| I land in the Navy. | ||
| And what they put me? | ||
| They put me to cook with the Admiral. | ||
| And I'm like, really? | ||
| And I had other ideas. | ||
| When I was young, I saw a boat in Barcelona. | ||
| The boat was the training ship of the midshipmen of the Spanish Navy, the Juan Sebastian Del Cano, the first man that finalized the circumnavigation of planet Earth. | ||
| Miguel and began as the commander. | ||
| He died halfway through. | ||
| Juan Sebastian del Cano ended. | ||
| They named this boat after this man. | ||
| Four mast sailing across the world. | ||
| I wanted to go on the boat. | ||
| The admiral didn't let me. | ||
| No, you're cooking for me. | ||
| I'm like, holy cow. | ||
| So at the end, kind of I was so persistent that at the end he rolled his eyes one day. | ||
| He's like, you're a good guy. | ||
| I'm going to send you to the boat, but don't tell my wife, okay? | ||
| Because we're really happy with you. | ||
| And so one day, right before, I still remember the scream, what are you doing? | ||
| Who do you think you are? | ||
|
unidentified
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The Admiral? | |
| Well, he was the Admiral, but he put me in the boat and I joined the military. | ||
| First time I saw the world beyond Europe, first time I saw Africa, Canary Islands, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, Germany, England. | ||
| First time I saw the world was because I was able to join that boat and travel around the world during six months. | ||
| And you came to the United States? | ||
| Pensacola, Florida, the Blue Angels, the white beaches of Pensacola. | ||
| Anybody from Pensacola here? | ||
| A beautiful place. | ||
| Softshell crops. | ||
| Oh my God, my first soft shell crop. | ||
| I had it in Pensacola. | ||
| So when did you say I got to get out of the Navy and become a chef and own my own restaurant? | ||
| Well, I finished the military service was mandatory back in the day. | ||
| Two years later, you stopped being mandatory. | ||
| But it still was probably the most important moment in my life. | ||
| I mean, putting my wife besides me and my wife. | ||
| So I finished my military service. | ||
| I worked one more summer in this restaurant, El Bugi. | ||
| I went to Madrid to work in a few restaurants. | ||
| I was doing a stash, learning from different restaurants. | ||
| And then I got this opportunity to come to New York. | ||
| It's 91, 92, to come to be a cook in a restaurant. | ||
| In the days they used to give the E2 visas. | ||
| Somebody had heard about you. | ||
| Somebody owned this. | ||
| Was it a Spanish restaurant? | ||
| This was before the Olympic Games of 1992. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And was a lot of interest from Catalan and Spanish companies to have presence in the United States to kind of forge bigger bridges. | ||
| And the different type of business, one of them were restaurants. | ||
| And so it was Catalan restaurants that they were opening in Washington, Spanish restaurants opening in Washington, in New York. | ||
| This was one restaurant opening in New York. | ||
| They needed cooks. | ||
| And I came as a cook. | ||
| You came as a cook, but when did you say I can do this myself, own my own restaurant? | ||
| It didn't happen overnight. | ||
| It was on my way to Japan. | ||
| I remember I was in La Jolla, San Diego. | ||
| I left already New York. | ||
| I got an offer to be a chef in a Spanish restaurant in Tokyo. | ||
| But then before all of that, I get this phone call. | ||
| Hey, it's these guys in Washington, D.C. | ||
| They are trying to open a Spanish restaurant. | ||
| They're going to call it Haleo. | ||
| And they are opening very soon. | ||
| And they don't have a chef yet. | ||
| And I'm like, okay. | ||
| So I took a plane. | ||
| I came. | ||
| And this was late 92. | ||
| I came before Christmas, around December. | ||
| And 1993, around January 1993, I came back. | ||
| And I never left Washington, D.C. | ||
| So you met your wife here? | ||
| I met my wife here dancing in Alice Morgan Cafe Atlântico. | ||
| All right, so you began building your own restaurants. | ||
| In other words, you were working as a chef somewhere, but then you say, I can do this myself. | ||
| What was your first restaurant that you bought and owned yourself? | ||
| It was not so simple. | ||
| It was not black and white. | ||
| I was the head chef of Halejo. | ||
| I was very much fired three times in the first two years. | ||
| Higher, rehire, higher, rehire. | ||
| But I was always around. | ||
| Why did they fire you? | ||
| Because I didn't know how to run a kitchen. | ||
| I didn't want to run a kitchen. | ||
| I wanted to learn about life. | ||
| I was working in Jalejo. | ||
| I was the head chef. | ||
| I opened. | ||
| Then Rob Wilder, who owned Austin Grill, Roberto Alvarez, who owned Cafe Atlantico, both came together. | ||
| They opened Halejo. | ||
| Anne Cashon, one of the great chefs we ever had in this city. | ||
| She was the secretary chef and partner. | ||
| And me, I was the head chef. | ||
| I began helping in Cafe Atlántico. | ||
| So very early on, I didn't even know how to manage one restaurant. | ||
| Then I'm managing two restaurants. | ||
| I'm like, really? | ||
| With two different owners, who are partners? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And everybody, you have to take it more time to this place. | ||
| No, more to this place. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the great news is that 33 years later, those two guys still are my best friends and are still my partners. | ||
| So much of what I do, I own it to them. | ||
| But slowly, we kept, then we opened Citinia, and I was then the head chef of two or three. | ||
| We opened Mini Bar of four or five. | ||
| They had the management company. | ||
| I became partner of the management company. | ||
| In the process, I became the owner of the management company. | ||
| And now I don't want to be the chef or the owner or anything. | ||
| I only want to go into a cave. | ||
| It's like, my God, why didn't I stay in the Navy? | ||
| No. | ||
| But as you see, it was never black and white. | ||
| Life is never black and white. | ||
| In my life, it's never been black and white. | ||
| It's only been moment after moment after moment after moment that, yes, now, 33 years later, here we have Jose Andre's group, where I'm the lead owner of the group. | ||
| How many restaurant partners? | ||
| How many restaurants do you have? | ||
| I think 47, maybe 48 by now. | ||
| 48 restaurants. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And in what cities in the United States? | ||
| It's Washington. | ||
| So we are in Miami, we're in Chicago, we are in Las Vegas, we're in Washington, we are in Los Angeles, we are in Palo Alto. | ||
| And are they Spanish restaurants or all kinds of different restaurants? | ||
| All kinds of restaurants, because I'm a storyteller, like you. | ||
| Right, okay. | ||
| And you know the stories because you read the book. | ||
| You know, next time, don't read the book before you interview me because I know you know the answer. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I'm, I mean, oh my God, this is a world don't read so much. | |
| All right, but let's talk about your restaurants. | ||
| You now are overseeing many restaurants. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right. | ||
| And in addition to that, you got involved in Washington in something called the Washington Central Kitchen. | ||
| This is Andro Kitchen, yes. | ||
| Right, D.C. What was that? | ||
| So this was amazing. | ||
| Who knows this is Andro Kitchen? | ||
| But you know the story too. | ||
| You're so boring, people. | ||
| Can we talk about things you don't know? | ||
| So this is Andra Kitchen for me was, obviously in my restaurant, I fed the few, was great, bringing tapas to America. | ||
| Not bringing them, they were already here, but helping popularize more tapas in America. | ||
| Washington was very important. | ||
| We had La Taverna de la Labardero, the other Spanish restaurant. | ||
| But very quickly, obviously, I began partnering, volunteering in something called Share Our Strength, SOS, Bill Shore and Debbie Shore. | ||
| Bill Short retired from Congress and he saw that in relationship to food, lobby and Congress was very important. | ||
| And this for me was. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So I began volunteering with them. | ||
| The same croquettas my mom taught me how to make, and making things out of leftovers and feeding a family. | ||
| All of a sudden I couldn't imagine that that same legacy my mom gave me. | ||
| Even I never really had a very good relationship with her for different reasons of mother and so on, and my mom probably needed I wish I knew what I know now so I could be there more for her as the older son, versus not understanding what she was going through. | ||
| Still, my mom was very loving and very giving, but the biggest legacy I realized besides she was always giving her love to everybody around and more, even sometimes will be Dr. Jagil and Mr. Hyde, that legacy of her maximizing, giving love to my brothers and I through the dishes she'll make and out of the leftovers is what I began doing with SOS. | ||
| All across poor neighborhoods and low-income family neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., I was helping with this program of Share Our Strength, how to help families learn how to cook, what to do with leftover, or how to maximize anything they will buy to do more with less. | ||
| This for me was the moment I saw food as an agent of change, and then is when I joined DC Central Kitchen, because my partner Rob Wilder, the same guy that hired me to bring me to Jaleo, he was the chairman of this Eccentra Kitchen, and he said, I think with the work you're doing with SOS, probably you're going to enjoy even more DC Central Kitchen. | ||
| I arrived to this Eccentra Kitchen again as one more volunteer to one of the shifts and 33 years later, in one way or another, I'm still part of this Eccentric Kitchen. | ||
| You're doing that with DC Central Kitchen. | ||
| Then all of a sudden, Katrina happens. | ||
| And when Katrina happened in New Orleans, why did you say, hey, I can help that? | ||
| You weren't living in New Orleans. | ||
| Why did you say I'm going to go help people with food in Katrina? | ||
| But I didn't. | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| I thought about doing it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's why sometimes when we go through these moments in life, sometimes it's equally important what you may be doing, but equally important of what you may be dreaming about doing and going through the process of learning what you could do. | ||
| And then one day, execute on that dream. | ||
| In Katrina, we saw what happened at the Superdome. | ||
| I'm not talking all New Orleans, I'm not talking Louisiana, I'm talking the Superdome. | ||
| And we left 10, 20,000 Americans forgotten for over a week. | ||
| Even with the great people of FEMA and the great people of the state and Red Cross and others, we left 20,000 people without food and water for over a week. | ||
| That moment for me was kind of very shocking. | ||
| I watched out of the comfort of my home, but they didn't move a finger. | ||
| But my brain began thinking what a cook like me could do, activating the network of chefs and restaurants. | ||
| At the end, America is a food country. | ||
| 10% of the people live for work around food. | ||
| Directly, indirectly, everybody has a relationship with food. | ||
| Everybody knows something about food, or knows where to buy the food, or knows where the kitchen is, or knows what the water is, or knows where the gas is. | ||
| Bring all these people together. | ||
| We can feed anybody. | ||
| So New Orleans, they didn't move a finger. | ||
| But then it's when I learned many other stories. | ||
| Across the street from Hallejo, probably none of you has visited, and I forgive you. | ||
| But the founder of the American Red Cross is where she had her house, an office. | ||
| Even she had another house in Baltimore. | ||
| Clara Barton herself is a woman that worked as a nurse like my mom was in the flying hospitals during the Civil War. | ||
| With an important role, is the woman that created the office of the Mississippi Aldiers, bringing closing to the families that they didn't know what happened to the loved ones. | ||
| The woman that created the American Red Cross. | ||
| A nurse like my mom, she was taking care of the few, but she created organizations to take care of the wounded. | ||
| You put that moment that for me were like, man, Clara Barton, you live in front of Jalejo? | ||
| Visit that mini museum because they will love your support. | ||
| And it's a beautiful story of America. | ||
| But with that idea, Katrina, the lack of response, even when you know that everybody wants to help, but sometimes we are highly unorganized in knowing how we can be efficient in the help. | ||
| Haiti happened? | ||
| That moment I was with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Rippert in Cayman Island, not too far away, and I was watching again, like I saw in Katrina, what the people in Porto Prince after the 2010 earthquake was going through. | ||
| I said, you know what? | ||
| I'm not going to watch dreaming and thinking that I could do something. | ||
| I'm going to go, not to help, but to start learning what I could do. | ||
| And very much the beginning of World Central Kitchen, thanks to this central kitchen in many ways and Roberger, is when World Central Kitchen began on the January of 2010 in the streets of Puerto Prince. | ||
| With Haiti, how did you just get on a plane and go down there and say, hey, I'm a chef, I can cook and I can bring in food? | ||
| What did you actually do that enabled you to get it done? | ||
| And where did you get the money and the food? | ||
| Well, that's a good news. | ||
| Very much I did it that way. | ||
| I couldn't land in Haiti. | ||
| I didn't know anybody really so much in the humanitarian work, but I was able to buy a ticket. | ||
| I landed with two friends. | ||
| One was a journalist. | ||
| The other one is a crazy guy, Manolo, who is an expert on solar cooking. | ||
| And he had solar kitchens. | ||
| And we knew that Haiti has a problem with deforestation because they cut the trees to make charcoal to be able to cook. | ||
| I landed in Dominican Republic with the help of a local NGO in Haiti that was from Spain. | ||
| And that's the connection I had. | ||
| And they had 40 years' experience in Haiti. | ||
| I crossed the border through a place called Malpaz. | ||
| I arrived to the outskirts of Puerto Prince. | ||
| I joined some of the camps they were managing, they were helping manage there. | ||
| And I began going, where do you get the food? | ||
| Even in emergencies, you always get the food in the same places, in the supermarkets. | ||
| Yeah, you can laugh now. | ||
| Because I've been in situations that people ask me, where do you get the food? | ||
| And my answer is always the same. | ||
| In the supermarkets, in the food warehouses, in the same places. | ||
| Even in a hurricane, believe it or not, it's going to be farmers that still they save their crop. | ||
| Even in an earthquake, you have supermarkets that are going to be saving food. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's always food around. | |
| Somewhere. | ||
| Who has the biggest chance of knowing where the food is? | ||
| Cooks like me. | ||
| We always know where there is food. | ||
| And if we don't know where the food is, we know the people that will know where the food is. | ||
| Then you find the fire. | ||
| Then you find the water. | ||
| And then the most important, because cooking is easy for us. | ||
| Right, but you go to Haiti. | ||
| What did you tell your wife you're going to do? | ||
| You say, I'm going down to Haiti. | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| And what did she say? | ||
| Like, vacation time, she said, for her. | ||
| All right, she did Haiti and you. | ||
| Thank you for giving me a break. | ||
| To this day, she packs my things. | ||
| Every time she sees something, she packs my things. | ||
| I don't know if she does it to help me or used to force me out of the door. | ||
| So after Haiti, you had Puerto Rico? | ||
| Well, Puerto Rico. | ||
| So Haiti, we responded to other hurricanes that came. | ||
| The operation was not very big for a few years. | ||
| But really, before Puerto Rico, we had what was Irma in Houston, right a month before. | ||
| FEMA was, and we had a smaller one also, North Carolina, I think. | ||
| So that year already, FEMA, everybody were like tense. | ||
| Because it was almost three hurricanes hit America. | ||
| But Houston was a big one. | ||
| I was on there. | ||
| I spent there almost two weeks cooking in children's hospital, in a couple of churches. | ||
| We went in the outskirts with some food trucks. | ||
| We did a small operation. | ||
| But then Maria came and I'm like, okay, let's go, Maria. | ||
| Maria was as bad as we saw it was. | ||
| But does the government of the United States or the local government say, look, you're a private citizen. | ||
| We're going to handle the problems of feeding these people. | ||
| Do they say, get out of the way, or do they say, thank you? | ||
| No, it sometimes happens lately, But they don't even have time to tell you, don't bother. | ||
| In those situations, everybody needs all the help you can get, including governments, including the United States of America. | ||
| When Russia-Ukraine happened, did you go over and feed people in Ukraine? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And was it hard to get in there? | ||
| And isn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Was it hard? | ||
| Was it hard to get the food? | ||
| No, I mean, everybody was leaving Ukraine, only a few people going into it. | ||
| And it's a war zone at the time. | ||
| Did your family say, you know, Jose, it's a war zone there? | ||
| You might be. | ||
| Well, at the beginning, I didn't tell them I was going inside Ukraine, but yeah, you need to remember to your iPhone, make sure your location is kind of turned off. | ||
| Then when Israel-Gaza happened, you had people there, and then I think seven of your people were centralized. | ||
| That was no small motor. | ||
| This probably was one of the most on-paper-secure humanitarian operations you could have in a situation like this. | ||
| Some of them were good friends, like Somi, because we were doing this alongside the Israeli military, the IDF. | ||
| So it was no reason why we were supposed to go through what we went through. | ||
| Where do you get the money to do all this? | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because I can expend it quickly. | ||
| I don't do, I've never done fundraising. | ||
| Obviously, the organization is not so small anymore. | ||
| In the early days, we will have a big party in my restaurants that we will close. | ||
| Many of you, some of you probably remember. | ||
| And we will raise money for Wall Centra Kitchen through that way. | ||
| The first 100,000, my parent Rob Wilder put 50,000, and Robin, my wife and I, we put another 50,000. | ||
| And with 100,000, we created Wall Central Kitchen. | ||
| And then we began doing these parties. | ||
| And it was money that the restaurants created. | ||
| I'm talking early days. | ||
| Now, the way we do it is we don't meet. | ||
| Obviously, social media became very important for us. | ||
| For me, I began, my teams complain that I use my social media more to talk about the emergencies than about my own restaurants or books. | ||
| But that's the way I feel. | ||
| I don't like to be selling myself. | ||
| Come to my restaurant. | ||
| If you like it, I know you'll come back. | ||
| You have a lot of restaurants you're overseeing, and you've got World Central Kitchen. | ||
| How do you divide up your time? | ||
| And what do you do for relaxation? | ||
| There's no time for relaxation. | ||
| Spending time with you, cooking for you. | ||
| I like to scuba die, but you know, the long story short, obviously, Wall Centra Kitchen has become, I'm very proud that that happened right here in Washington, D.C. Right now we are, I don't know in how many locations. | ||
| We're in Jamaica. | ||
| I think we reach 100,000 meals a day today. | ||
| We're in the Philippines, we're in Brazil. | ||
| I think we are still, I don't know if we're still in Texas. | ||
| After the flooding, I don't know if we're still in Alaska because it was a typhoon that hit many of the natives in the southern part of Alaska. | ||
| For all of this, the president of Ukraine, we're in Gaza. | ||
| The president of the United States gave you the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and it's widely rumored that you're likely to get at some point the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| So, you know, it's incredible, and you're still running your restaurant business. | ||
| So, how do you really divide up your time? | ||
| How do you decide where you're going to be? | ||
| And you can travel all over the world saving people's lives or I have good people that manage kind of my time, but I try to do what I like the most or what I think I can be the most helpful. | ||
| My restaurants have great chefs, great managers. | ||
| I used to be the CEO of my company. | ||
| I'm now the executive chairman, which is okay. | ||
| But I cannot be doing TV and running 48 restaurants and doing podcasts and spending time with you, doing your TV show. | ||
| That's your TV show, it's my TV show. | ||
| That's your TV show. | ||
| You owe me one. | ||
| You owe me one. | ||
| You wrote a book about this now. | ||
| It's called Feeding Dangerously, right? | ||
| Your new book. | ||
| Yeah, that's a comic book. | ||
| A comic book. | ||
| That was not my idea. | ||
| That was Orlando, one of the best comic guys around. | ||
| He's one of the main guys. | ||
| I mean, if you go to Comic Con, I mean, he has 100,000 people waiting in line. | ||
| And Steve Orlando, he's amazing. | ||
| And he approached me one day. | ||
| Hey, I would love to tell the story about what you do. | ||
| And he came to one of the missions. | ||
| And after that, he said, we are going to be doing a comic book about Bolshendra Kitchen. | ||
| And at the end, when I saw the cover, he added my name to his name and to the guy that did the drawings. | ||
| But it's not really my book. | ||
| It's a book that is helping tell the story of Wolsendra Kitchen. | ||
| And Steve Orlando was so generous, used to make me believe that I was kind of the co-writer of the comic book because he knows I love comics. | ||
| I really love comics. | ||
| And manga. | ||
| I love manga and comics and cookbooks. | ||
| And yeah, we have this book, which is amazing, tells the story of the many people that they've been part of, Wolsendra Kitchen over the last 15 years. | ||
| You call it a comic book? | ||
| It's more of a picture book, an illustrative picture. | ||
| Yeah, because comic book has pictures, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So yeah, you're right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| It's a book that we did in very large format. | ||
| So every page almost you can spend one hour looking at it because it's very beautiful and tells you the story really of what the people of Wall Sandra Kitchen and the people that Wall Sandra Kitchen is helping go through. | ||
| So now today, a lot of people want to eat healthy foods. | ||
| Is that something that you specialize in as well? | ||
| Or do you think people should eat whatever they want? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Perfect. | |
| I mean, I mean, we need to define healthy. | ||
| For four years, I was the chairman of the health, fitness, and nutrition of the White House. | ||
| I was the co-chair. | ||
| And I was until I was fired by the actual president. | ||
| President Donald Trump. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've been fired as well. | ||
| I was fired before you. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| I was fired on the night of the election. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| No, I was fired on the night. | ||
| Oh, yeah, January 10th is when they took over, right? | ||
| Yeah, I was fired on the early hours of January 11th. | ||
| Shit. | ||
| But I was very, I mean, I already resigned. | ||
| So technically, I was not fired. | ||
| We should do the Brotherhood of the Fire people. | ||
| You had a food conference, a food and nutrition conference at the White House. | ||
| And did you organize a conference on food at the White House? | ||
| Or was there ever such a conference on food? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Listen, a few things happened. | ||
| You know, I love food that goes beyond restaurants, goes beyond food TV shows, goes beyond recipe books. | ||
| But I believe food very much. | ||
| It's one of the great opportunities we have to make the world a better place. | ||
| And I believe in policy and in good policy that then becomes good politics. | ||
| We are seeing right now what bad politics can create for America. | ||
| Republican or Democrats, leaving 42 million people almost on the edge of being hungry. | ||
| I would say that's bad politics. | ||
| So in Vice President Biden's presidential campaign during the pandemic, I was given the amazing opportunity to be one-on-one with then, Vice President Biden. | ||
| And we had maybe what was the first town hall ever in a presidential election where the issue was food, which, you know, I'm very happy. | ||
| And yes, the White House kind of led and where I was part an amazing conference on food from every angle. | ||
| When we talk about food, seems it's only in America will be through the Department of Agriculture. | ||
| And we began pushing the idea that food is so much more. | ||
| Food is national security. | ||
| Food is immigration reform. | ||
| Food is health. | ||
| Food is a science. | ||
| Food is history. | ||
| Food is culture. | ||
| Food is a science. | ||
| And for me, it was amazing just to see that it's been pushes to make food not work in a silo within government, not only in America, but governments around the world, but make sure that food becomes part of housing and urban development, veterans, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| So if all the departments work around the issue of food together, more better policies and better ideas can make many of the problems we face go away. | ||
| Why America, the richest country in the world, is many places that don't have a supermarket for many people that can buy a head of broccoli or some spinach. | ||
| Today in America is many places that people don't have access to those fresh fruits and vegetables. | ||
| And I do believe when that happens, it's the role of the government to provide for those people. | ||
| But when you go to a restaurant and they know who you are, and you sit down and you ever get the food and you say, I don't really like it, send it back. | ||
| No, I'm not like you. | ||
| I've never done that, but some people do that. | ||
| But you are highly opinionated. | ||
| I'm like, but you're with me. | ||
| I made you You said one of the best vegetable dishes. | ||
| I'm like, this would leave it crunchy. | ||
| I say, I want it crunchy. | ||
| So I know you were not complaining. | ||
| You were opinionated about the situation, which is why we love you, David. | ||
| But I don't, I don't, I smile. | ||
| I mean, listen to me, Dave. | ||
| We never wait for the turkey. | ||
| The turkey waits for us. | ||
| When the turkey waits for us, means the turkey is always dry. | ||
| And the turkey complains. | ||
| That's what gets so brown. | ||
| Man, sit on time, wait for the turkey until it's ready, and the turkey will be juicy. | ||
| So I don't complain. | ||
| The ingredients complain. | ||
| You kill me for that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You put me in the oven for that. | |
| So people sit on the table and wait for the turkey. | ||
| So the turkey will be juicy. | ||
| So I don't complain. | ||
| The ingredients complain. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because they feel mistreated. | ||
| Now. | ||
| Really? | ||
| You did this to me? | ||
| You have these amazing scallops from Massachusetts and then you overcook them in the pan. | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because some team is about to score a touchdown. | |
| Shit! | ||
|
unidentified
|
The touchdown can wait, but the scallop can't. | |
| It's obvious to me. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So is it hard to run a restaurant these days, hard to get help today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And it's very hard because of migration or other. | ||
| All of the above, because I've been saying for years, immigration reform is broken. | ||
| And we had Republican presidents trying to pass, and they didn't got help even from Democrats. | ||
| And I have Democrats will get upset with me for saying this, but it's true. | ||
| We had President Bush try to pass immigration reform, and we didn't do it. | ||
| President Obama had the opportunity. | ||
| I love he passed Obama McCarr. | ||
| Perfect or imperfect was better than what we had. | ||
| But I wish he passed immigration reform too. | ||
| How is it possible that we have one million dreamers that maybe didn't born here, but they arrived here when they were in diapers? | ||
| They are as American as any American. | ||
| And still that million people are still on the edge, not knowing if they are going to kick them out tomorrow. | ||
| You may be a Republican or Democrat, but we're going to waste one million children of America that they are contributing to America. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| So we have, as we all know, an economy that is running on the shoulders of 11, 12 million undocumented. | ||
| That we need to do something about it totally. | ||
| That we need to protect the border totally. | ||
| That we need to know who comes into America 100%. | ||
| That we need to bring people that are the people that we need to cover the jobs that we need. | ||
| If we need nurses, let's bring nurses. | ||
| If we need people to take care of the golf courses, bring people that are experts on grass and et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| But obviously, especially not only the restaurant industry, but we've seen in St. Michael's, Maryland, people that they didn't produce more shock oysters because they had the people to shock the oysters. | ||
| Or people that didn't clean more crabs because we didn't have the crap pickers to clean them. | ||
| We've seen wineries that they are not producing more wine because they don't have the people to have the harvest. | ||
| The same is happening with a lot of farms across America. | ||
| So immigration is not a problem for America to solve. | ||
| It's an opportunity for America to celebrate. | ||
| I'm disappointed that since I arrived here, we've talked numerous times about immigration reform, but only serves for a fight, one hitting each other. | ||
| And still we have over 12, 13, 14 million America, people living in America that they've given their lives to America, that they are making America better, that many of them, believe it or not, pay taxes, even if maybe their social securities are not the right ones, that that's the other conundrum. | ||
| But they are paying those taxes and contributing to America. | ||
| So it's about time we fix immigration reform for the American business, especially the small, the farmers of America that have not enough employees to fulfill, especially for those people that are helping us make a better America. | ||
| I'm only thankful to America because I was given that opportunity, but I remember how I came. | ||
| And technically, they could kick me out because I came with an ETU visa. | ||
| The E2 visa was not for an employee, was for the guy doing the investment to open a restaurant. | ||
| Why they were giving the employees of the guys doing the investments? | ||
| Because they didn't have the system to give to the employees. | ||
| So shit, let's fix immigration reform once and for all. | ||
| I'm a Catholic Christian. | ||
| Sunday will ask for forgiveness, so sorry. | ||
| So let's make sure that immigration and immigration reform becomes a plus to America as America has been the home of immigrants since very much its creation. | ||
| Let's make sure that this dream that began in 1776 keeps moving forward two, three more centuries ahead. | ||
| You have World Central Kitchen, you've got a lot of restaurants. | ||
| What is your next big thing you're going to do? | ||
| Well, this is great. | ||
| I just came back from, I want to go to the space station, so I need to get in shape. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I would like to go to the space station. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And the cookie? | ||
| No, because this is this machine. | ||
| We cooked with it in Cambridge, at Harvard the other day. | ||
| But this is the first kitchen that you can cook in Gravity Zero that was created by this guy, James Hearst, and he gave me and my team the first two prototypes. | ||
| And we've been cooking for the last two, three years a whole bunch of different recipes that you will be able to cook. | ||
| I mean, we've done Brownie's and we've done Felix's. | ||
| Space Central Kitchen. | ||
| A Space Central Kitchen because one day they will need help in Jupiter. | ||
| I know, and I want to get ready. | ||
| But I want to do that. | ||
| I know I sound like a fool, but you know, but also I said one day I want to go 500,000 feet under the ocean and I did it too. | ||
| So my point is, yeah, I want to go to cook at the space station. | ||
| If I go to a restaurant, I mean, it's going to be so crappy so soon that nobody will want to go, so they'll take anybody that wants to go. | ||
| Now, are people afraid of inviting you over to their house for dinner because they'd be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for you? | ||
| Well, and they're right, they shouldn't invite me because sometimes, my God, it's terrible. | ||
| And that's okay, that's why I don't see it. | ||
| But you don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But that's fine. | |
| That happens. | ||
| But you know, I have a friend that always, when he goes a country and he's super invited by people, I'm not going to say who he is, but he always said, I have some virus in my stomach and I have a lot of allergies, so don't worry for me. | ||
| And then when the food starts coming, and he sees, you know, actually, my doctor recommended this. | ||
| And that's a good way to do it, you know? | ||
| And at the end, if everything is right, he ends eating everything. | ||
| And the guy's like, man, I thought you had a virus or flu. | ||
| No, but I felt so much better. | ||
| So it's good to, no, but listen, when people cook with love for you, it's great, but, you know, the dry turkey in Thanksgiving is used unnegotiably. | ||
| It's always dry. | ||
| And we are all big liars because I never heard anybody telling me my turkey was dry. | ||
| Everybody says, I had the best turkey ever. | ||
| And they're dying. | ||
| We are all lying. | ||
| But I guess, you know, it's fine. | ||
| I mean, especially Catholics, we're in good shape because we ask for forgiveness. | ||
| Sorry, I lied to everybody, but yeah, turkeys are so dry. | ||
| That's why gravy exists. | ||
| The issue is when the gravy is so thick, that it's so thick that it's drier than the breasts of turkey. | ||
| And then that's a trouble, Meka. | ||
| So are your daughters impressed with their famous father? | ||
| Do they tell you that they like your cooking and they tell you how great you are on the way? | ||
| When they invite me one time to George Washington University to be the commencement speaker, and actually it was the first time anybody there to invite me to be a commencement speaker. | ||
| And was controversial because it's like, why? | ||
| Everybody has an actor and a president or a minister, a secretary. | ||
| And then some people say, we have a cook. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So yeah, they make a point. | |
| So anyway, when I told my daughters, I was very happy. | ||
| And already the controversy was in the Washington Post. | ||
| And I was like, really? | ||
| I should do this. | ||
| But anyway, I was telling my daughters, yeah, they invite me to give this speech. | ||
| And my daughter said, my oldest daughter said, Daddy, are you sure that they invite you, they invite you to give the commencement speech or to cook for the graduates? | ||
| So this is very much my life at home. | ||
| So believe me, they keep me my place. | ||
| Now, did your parents live to see your success? | ||
| Well, Winston Churchill said that success was going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. | ||
| So yeah, my mom, my dad, so, you know, my daughter is born and myself, whatever, doing event TV in Spain, which for them was. | ||
| So I think they're up there and they're proud. | ||
| I only wish I had much closer relationship after I left home. | ||
| But you know, I will keep going back, obviously, every year. | ||
| But I always felt like if anything, if any regret was not being even more connected. | ||
| Good thing is in the last years of the life, and in part, no, in a small part, thanks to my wife, I spent very good quality time as they already retired and they were getting older. | ||
| So at the end, you know, it's not so much what you read, but at the end, you hope that you ended in the best possible way anything, especially what has to do with your parents and relationships. | ||
| So yeah, I think they were annoyingly very proud. | ||
| Every time I went to visit, I will have to say hi to every single person they knew in the town they live 100 times. | ||
| So yeah, I think they were very proud of me. | ||
| Fuck, thank you. | ||
| I know you've got another event tonight you've got to do. | ||
| Oysters. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. Great job. Thank you. | |
| Jose Andres and David Rubinstein viewed Catholic University's rare book collection. | ||
| This is actually from the papers of Bruce Moeller, who served in World War I with the U.S. forces and then worked with the American Red Cross to do aid relief in war-torn Eastern Europe at the end of the war, particularly doing food, but also heavily water relief in what's today Poland and what is Ukraine, particularly during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. | ||
| So this is his passport and his Red Cross pass. | ||
| And this right here is his notebook where he was planning how to go about getting things like planning the logistical supplies. | ||
| He has drawings of his water pumps, all of that working throughout. | ||
| After the war, he actually then worked with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to found their Department of Immigration helping with refugees up through the 1960s. | ||
| So he continued to do a lot of this work for the next 40 years as well. | ||
| Welcome to the Olivera Lima Library. | ||
| The home of Manuel and Flora. | ||
| And as I said, this library has been here 100 years. | ||
| Really? | ||
| It's 101 years old. | ||
| And then it's the collection of menus that I mentioned. | ||
| And here is one of my favorites. | ||
| It's actually the menu from 1915 that was on the boat that they came from England during the First World War to Boston because he was a professor at Harvard. | ||
| And this is the dinner that they served on September 22nd, 1915. | ||
| It's really pretty and that's quite special. | ||
| The other one is that I thought you would enjoy seeing a chef from the time. | ||
| Yes, but you wouldn't guess when this is from. | ||
| This is from 1892 and that's the menu. | ||
| It's 31st of December, so it's New Year's Eve. | ||
| And I actually do not know where it is from. | ||
| So we would need to dig a little more about João d'Amata. | ||
| But it has some bad handwritten stuff. | ||
| I was excited and then Christmas dinner or something like that. | ||
| This is French. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so Janta is Portuguese, so it's a mix of languages. | |
| Yeah, and then he said something about Natalino, which was Christmas. | ||
| So it's hard to tell, but it's really pretty. | ||
| See more with Jose Andres, including his historic cookbook collection, on America's Book Club, The Treasures, available at C-SPAN.org slash ABC and C-SPAN's YouTube page. | ||
| C-SPAN invites you on | ||
| a powerful journey through the stories that define a Nation. | ||
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries and institutions comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Frita Dove, Hulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. |