Chef Jose Andres who has 31 restaurants in North America and the Caribbean, arrived on Puerto Rico five days after Hurricane Maria hit and quickly set up shop to get food to those affected. He worked with World Central Kitchen and 20,000 volunteers, staying roughly three months and serving about 3 million meals.
To date, World Central Kitchen has served over 3.6 million meals reaching every municipality in Puerto Rico from 25 kitchens with the help of over 19,000 volunteers. Learn more about the story of #ChefsForPuertoRico.
WCK founder José Andrés and the World Central Kitchen team arrived in September 2017 just a few days after Hurricane Maria wiped out the entire power grid and decimated agriculture and infrastructure. After cooking a few thousand meals from his friend Jose Enrique's restaurant in Santurce, we began receiving calls for aid from all over the island.
We began to expand operations all across the island, mobilizing a network of emergency kitchens, food trucks, and partner organizations to make sure that communities in need received quality meals. The #ChefsForPuertoRico movement quickly grew to serve over 150,000 meals in a single day to communities all across the island, becoming the largest fresh meal operation following the hurricane.
#ChefsForPuertoRico continues to remain active by empowering our chef and food truck partners through rebuilding grants and investing in agriculture, fishing, and culinary training.
Chef Jose Andres has some choice words for President Donald Trump.
The president on Thursday rejected the official death toll from hurricanes that slammed Puerto Rico last fall. Without evidence, he blamed Democrats for grossly inflating the tally.
Andres, who traveled to Puerto Rico to help those on the island shortly after Hurricane Maria hit, told CNBC on Thursday, "This is insane."
"Nobody should be proud," he said on "Power Lunch."
"We should be honoring those people, those men and women, that died. What is astonishing to me is that a year later we are still talking about this," he added.
Trump made his comments Thursday morning on Twitter, saying "3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico."
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000... This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!
The president on Thursday rejected the official death toll from hurricanes that slammed Puerto Rico last fall. Without evidence, he blamed Democrats for grossly inflating the tally.
Andres, who traveled to Puerto Rico to help those on the island shortly after Hurricane Maria hit, told CNBC on Thursday, "This is insane."
In August, the Puerto Rican government raised the official death count dramatically to 2,975, after maintaining for months that only 64 people had died as a result of Hurricanes Maria and Irma.
Andres said this should have been known a long time ago.
"If we knew officially that there were so many deaths, the full weight of the federal government will be there in Puerto Rico making sure that we will help those American people in the Caribbean," he said.
The chef, who has 31 restaurants in North America and the Caribbean, arrived on Puerto Rico five days after Hurricane Maria hit and quickly set up shop to get food to those affected. He worked with World Central Kitchen and 20,000 volunteers, staying roughly three months and serving about 3 million meals.
"If I was able to know how many meals I was serving every day, if I knew how many volunteers I had, if I knew how many kitchens I had, … if a little NGO [non-governmental organization] that was not supposed to be there was able to know all of that, how is it possible the federal government and the government of Puerto Rico were clueless on the real number of deaths? Those questions need to be answered."
Earlier in the day, he slammed Trump on Twitter.
José Andrés@chefjoseandres
You are the face of "No shame"! That actually people died in the days, weeks and months after María, only shows how little you care. Those deaths happen on your watch.
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