On José Andrés, World Central Kitchen, and Speaking in today's Classroom

And a killer spinach recipe

In Barcelona: The Culinary City, one of the courses I teach to American study abroad college students, we reflect on the changing role of the chef throughout the history of gastronomy. It’s not until extremely recently that chefs acquired the status of celebrity rock stars, with a big help from TV cooking shows.

I always use chef José Andrés as an exemplary case of a celebrity who has used his fame to do amazing things. Andrés took advantage of the popularity from his restaurant empire and media presence, and added a whole bunch of hutzpah, and turned it all into World Central Kitchen, which I think is one of the best things happening in the world right now.

I show my students a clip from the recent documentary on Andrés’ humanitarian work, directed by Ron Howard, called We Feed People. It never ceases to generate interest and admiration among my students, and there is always at least one who comes up to me at the end of class and tells me how inspired they felt by it. Though I cringe when I watch Andrés’ histrionics (his extremely heavy accent after decades in the US also bothers me a bit, as if he were playing the role), I truly admire his endeavours, and I hope they do give him the Nobel Peace prize one day.

This past semester, just a day or two after we touched on WCK in class, the bombings on their convoy in Gaza happened. I, of course, brought it up at our next class, due to the coincidence and also because I like to bring world events into a class on food studies. I did so not without some caution, as a few weeks before, all of the instructors at the school I teach at had received a concerning email from the Provost in the US, asking us to stick to our course topics and not talk about politics in the classroom, basically.

How can you avoid politics in a course on food, which is so tied to politics? Most of my colleagues would have something similar to say, whether their courses stem from the fields of history, psychology, sociology, women’s studies, economics, marketing, international business and a long etc. It is pretty impossible to avoid political goings on in any university setting, isn’t it?

In any case, all I did was start out the class by saying “hey, I introduced you all to José Andrés and his work with World Central Kitchen last class, and in the meantime did you hear what happened?” Of course, they had.

“Yes,” said one student, “their convoy in Gaza was targeted by Hamas while they were providing relief.”

Oops.