José Andrés is one of America's most successful chef/restaurateurs, with 13 restaurants, one food truck, two television shows, two books, a catering company, and a charitable organization to his credit. Read on for a preview of Andrés' upcoming Harvard lectures, why failure is integral to success, and how rice, tomato sauce, and fried eggs sparked a remarkable career.
Gourmet Live: You grew up just outside Barcelona and at 15 decided you wanted to be a chef. Why?
José Andrés: 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. At the beginning of the month, when we had more money, we would cook more meat. But at the end of the month, we would make more humble dishes made from the vegetables, beans, cheeses, and eggs we found at the markets. It's funny—I would always look forward to the end of the month. These were the dishes that were comforting to me. I remember making huevos a la cubana, a humble dish of rice, tomato sauce, and fried eggs. It was these dishes that made me appreciate every ingredient, made me realize what the goodness of the earth had to offer and how we can use these ingredients to come up with the most amazing dish just by allowing those ingredients to interact.
GL: You attended culinary school in Spain in the 1980s. What type of philosophy was instilled in you? Was it the importance of high-quality ingredients? Spain's iconic dishes? Technique, technique, technique?
JA: 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. I studied at the Escola de Restauració i Hostalatge de Barcelona [the School of Restaurants and Hotels in Barcelona], and at that time Spanish gastronomy was undergoing an evolution, so it was really an amazing time. I began to understand that to be a good cook you have to have a relationship with every ingredient to really understand how they come together, because sometimes the best dishes are made of the most simple ingredients.
GL: Starting out, was there a chef whose career you admired and wanted to imitate?
JA: Anyone who knows me knows that I have never been shy about how important Ferran Adrià has been in my life; he is a friend, a mentor, an inspiration. But when I first began, and this was also during my time with the Spanish navy on a tall ship, I wanted to learn and see what was happening out there. Those experiences, the foods I was able to taste and see during my time on board, they only fed my passion. But don't forget, where we were in Catalonia, there had already been great men like Josep Mercader who had begun to transform Spanish cuisine, then the great chefs in the Basque region, like Juan Mari Arzak. Where I was, I could easily look over to France at what had been happening there in the '80s. After school, I traveled to see Michel Guérard, Michel Bras, Frédy Girardet. I wanted to see it all. I was hungry to learn, to see, to understand.
GL: What was your time like training at El Bulli? What did you learn from your now-good friend, Ferran Adrià?
JA: When I came to El Bulli, right away I knew I was becoming part of something incredible. It was like watching the big bang happening right in front of me. We learned how to think beyond the ingredients in front of you. But what we were experimenting with, what we were questioning was, why do we only have to be feeding our stomach, and our brain, within the parameters we know? Why can't eating also be feeding our brain, our senses, beyond what we feel comfortable with?
But maybe the most important lesson I learned from El Bulli was to not be afraid of failure because success could be just around the corner. We experimented with techniques that nobody has ever tried before and sometimes we would discover something so amazing. But there were also times that we failed. I think it was Winston Churchill who said, "success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." Those are words that I live by.
GL: Are you sad El Bulli closed, and will there be another like it? What is its place in the pantheon of the world's most important restaurants?
JA: I think El Bulli is the most important restaurant in the world because really it's so much bigger than a restaurant. Ferran and El Bulli, the philosophy, the open sharing of ideas—they changed the way many people thought about food and that really got people excited, because we started to see that the possibilities are endless.
El Bulli is not gone, but you can say that it is entering a new chapter with the El Bulli Foundation. One of the most amazing things about Ferran is that he is always willing to share his knowledge. He's very generous in that way, and because of that El Bulli has inspired some of the best chefs in the world. I only see that this will continue and El Bulli will only become a bigger source of inspiration for so many people around the world.
I don't think there could ever be another restaurant like El Bulli, but that's the legacy of it. I opened Minibar by José Andrés in 2003, not as a way to duplicate it but as my own way to learn, to be inspired, and to create a conversation around food—to create things that may challenge the mind and excite your senses. Creativity most often happens when you are working, so Minibar is a story of working, of talking over ideas and refining, reimagining flavors and ingredients we are familiar with. Minibar is the heart of what we do in my company. From here we are able to create É by José Andrés in Las Vegas and Saam at the Bazaar in Los Angeles, very unique places that continue this conversation and bring excitement and new ways of looking at food.
GL: When you opened Jaleo with Rob Wilder and Roberto Alvarez in 1993, it was one of the first Spanish restaurants doing tapas and modern Spanish food. It broke new ground and began a Spanish restaurant revival and appreciation for the cuisine. Was that what you set out to do?
JA: I was a young kid, just 23 years old, when I came to Jaleo and I didn't realize how important it would become in setting the stage for what Spanish cooking in America was going to be. You can hope that what you are doing people will understand, but you never really know if people will accept it. What we were doing with small plates nobody had ever done before. It was so new, but slowly people started to like it and then we saw that people were starting to replicate the tapas style in Washington, D.C., and even in other cities. As a Spaniard, this was so important to me. Tapas were the mechanism to share Spanish cooking and culture. But what we told ourselves when we opened Jaleo was not, We want to be the best Spanish restaurant in Washington. We want to be the best Spanish restaurant, period. Ten years after opening our first Jaleo, I was able to create Minibar, where I could really explore the ideas and inspirations of avant-garde Spanish cooking. And now at É by José Andrés, we really bring a focus of modern technique and thinking to the true flavors and traditions of Spanish cooking.
GL: You went on to open Zaytinya, Oyamel, and Minibar all in D.C. and then spread out to Los Angeles with the critically acclaimed Bazaar. Now you are creating other hotel restaurants for the luxury chain SBE hotel group. How have you managed this expansion, and what have you learned along the way?
JA: It is amazing, and I have a very good team that works alongside me at home in Washington and at each of my restaurants. And now we have just opened with SBE the SLS and the Bazaar by José Andrés in Miami. We built an unbelievable Jaleo in Las Vegas with the Cosmopolitan, we created a new concept, China Poblano, and a unique creative space with É by José Andrés, hidden inside of the Jaleo there. Now we are getting ready to open with the Ritz-Carlton in December in Puerto Rico.
With each partner we learn more and more about how we do what we do. My team and I have learned many lessons along the way—how to do what we do smarter, more quickly, more efficiently. If you know my restaurants, you know that our menus have an astonishing variety of dishes. Some people think I am crazy. But it's how I like to eat. It's not only smaller plates, but also intense flavors, each dish uniquely composed. I think this is part of the future of dining: Impeccable ingredients, fascinating presentation, and thoughtful ideas with a story to share on the plate. Our guests want to be part of this journey; they want to see something, learn something, taste something they've never had before. But at the same time, they want to bite into something and taste something so familiar, so comforting. This is the challenge.
GL: Made in Spain was a popular PBS series you hosted. We hear you are a star in Spain. What is that like?
JA: I never considered myself a big star. But I think the first time that I realized that people knew about me, I was at the airport and somebody asked me for an autograph. At first I thought maybe I heard them wrong, but they told me that they had seen me on Vamos a Cocinar and they liked my cooking. We filmed something like 300 episodes of our show Vamos a Cocinar with TVE before we did Made in Spain here in the U.S. It was a breakthrough format for a cooking show. We had special guests, we had musicians, politicians, actors, all stopping by my set, knocking on the door, and they would come in and we would talk about food and life. It was amazing. But exhausting—I was flying back and forth between Washington, where my family and my restaurants were, and Spain, where we were filming. Then the show began to air across Latin America. That is when my wife said, "Do you want to be a TV boy or a chef?" I could have stayed in Spain and probably done many more years of TV, but we decided that truly being a chef, having these restaurants, is where I wanted to be, and I wanted to do that in America. I still had my dream of sharing the story of Spain with America, and that is what we were able to do with Made in Spain. And now, the new Spanish Studies program at the International Culinary Center in New York City is something I never could have imagined, but always hoped for. I also never would have imagined that I would be a dean. Here I am alongside greats like Jaques Pépin and André Soltner, men I have long admired.
GL: Tell us about the nonprofit organization you founded, World Central Kitchen. What is its purpose and what drew you to opening it?
JA: Truly to tell the story of World Central Kitchen, I have to begin with the amazing work of Robert Egger and D.C. Central Kitchen. When I first came to Washington, my partner Rob Wilder introduced me to the work they were doing, distributing food and giving culinary training to help put people on a new path in life. It was amazing. I was so moved and humbled by the people I met there. I've worked with them for many years and have become Chairman Emeritus. Watching what they have been able to accomplish, what you can do to change lives, has always inspired me to be better.
In January 2010, I was in the Cayman Islands with my family. Then the earthquake hit Haiti not too far from where we were. When I heard about what was going on, that was the true moment when I realized that as a chef I could be helping. So I went to Haiti [with] some solar cookers that friends of mine in Spain had been making and I had been working with. We went and we cooked meals for people, showing them what we could do with the power of the sun, and we left this for them to make part of their community. I was amazed by the people and the country, and wanted to do more. I created World Central Kitchen with the goal of helping people to feed themselves in a sustainable way. Our approach is to find solutions through research and development, to reevaluate throwing money at the problems and focus on investing in long-term sustainable solutions. We have several projects we are working on right now.
GL: This fall you are lecturing on culinary physics at Harvard in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. What is scarier—lecturing to the best and brightest or dealing with a Boston winter?
JA: Teaching at Harvard is really a huge honor for me. I was never a good student, so as a young boy in Spain I could have never imagined that one day I would be teaching at one of the top universities in the world. We have had an amazing experience putting this program together, with Ferran, with the university. For me it's like a dream to be able to teach science and cooking because it's everywhere in the normal everyday things that we eat. One of the most common foods that we eat is also the result of the most fascinating emulsion—mayonnaise. If we can better understand the why of something so basic like mayonnaise, then it can help us to discover more, and better understand the future of food.