In Other Words We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time by Jose Andrés
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reads thusly: physiological needs — i.e. food, water, warmth, rest. Then safety needs, then belongingness and love needs (friends, Tinder dates), then esteem (prestige, accomplishment, Instagram likes), and finally, selfactualization (food blogs, paintings). Despite dealing with the concerns of the bottom of that pyramid, celebrity chefs tend to operate at the top — crafting destination restaurants, made-to-order desserts, and organic molecular sauces — leaving the task of doling out soup in the wake of a disaster to religious volunteers and federal aid organizations.
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017, ripping through the tiny Caribbean paradise populated with over 3 million U.S. citizens, reducing many of our fellow Americans to the bottom of that pyramid again. Enter José Andrés ( José Ramón Andrés Puerta), a bona fide culinary star whose passion, besides regional Spanish cuisine, is feeding a world of hungry people, on the ground, with ladle in hand.
Andrés is a Spanish-born celebrity chef credited with bringing the concept of “small plates” (i.e. tapas) to the United States. He is less of a household name than Wolfgang Puck or Giada de Laurentiis (probably because he doesn’t have a TV show), but Andrés has fulfilled the top of his Maslow pyramid in other ways. He owns a fleet of restaurants across
the country, teaches culinary physics at Harvard, received a National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2016, and has won two James Beard awards. Additionally, he founded the World Central Kitchen in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. His new book, We Fed an Island (Harper Collins, 2018) chronicles his work in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, where Andrés spearheaded efforts to cook over 2 million meals during the island’s time of dire need, utilizing closed restaurant kitchens, arena kitchens, school kitchens, or even just making sandwiches out of a truck by the side of the road.
We Fed an Island is peppered with a good amount of contextual history and background information on both the region and the current state of feeding people in disaster zones in the modern world. Andrés gives the lay of the land, describing the roles and pitfalls of FEMA, the Red Cross, and other organizations, making the book a surprisingly rich one-stop-shopping guide on how to navigate a place where infrastructure has been swept away by natural disasters and the effects of climate change (and we have an ever-increasing list of those places).
The book, by virtue of its subject matter, is also a biting indictment of both President Donald Trump and his administration. Andrés co-wrote the book with his longtime collaborator, well-known journalist and Barack Obama biographer Richard Wolffe. Andrés has his own personal beef with the president — once slated to open a restaurant at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the chef canceled the project after Trump made his first round of derogatory remarks about Latinos. Unsurprisingly, Trump sued him, and the two reached a settlement in April 2017. But even as Andrés was camping out in a disaster zone, trying to bring a little basic human kindness to the people of Puerto Rico, he watched the president kick Puerto Rico’s people while they were down, paying lip service to their plight and then heading off to play golf, tossing paper towels at his aides on camera to signify his care.