José Andrés

José Andrés trained in the kitchens of El Bulli in Catalonia before moving to Washington, DC, in 1993, where he built a string of restaurants and became a well-known face of Spanish cooking in America. He also spent years running a nonprofit, DC Central Kitchen, that turned donated food into meals for the hungry, work that shaped what came next.

After the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Andrés flew down with a portable stove and cooking pots rather than send money from afar, and set up outdoor kitchens cooking rice and beans for survivors. He founded World Central Kitchen that year to make this repeatable: a small, fast-moving relief group that goes wherever people are hungry after a disaster, working with local cooks and restaurants rather than shipping in prepackaged rations.

The organisation has since fed people after hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, wildfires in California, the war in Ukraine, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, and the war in Gaza, where in April 2024 an Israeli strike killed seven of its aid workers, a loss that briefly halted operations and drew international criticism. Andrés has pushed for accountability while keeping WCK running. He has become one of the most visible advocates for treating food as urgent emergency infrastructure, not an afterthought.