Celebrity Chef: José Andrés

As a kid, José Andrés tended fires for his father's backyard paella cookouts. Later, he trained with the best Spanish chefs, and began building a restaurant empire that would transform the way many Americans dine out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Guy Raz?

  What did you think of New York? Was it overwhelming to you? What did you think of it when you got there?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  It looked like a very strange place. This New York that you see in movies, like it was Gotham, where the smoke is coming in a very cold night from every street. So I had like 50 bucks in my pocket. I was going to 50th Street between Lexington and 3rd. And the driver dropped me in 193 between 8th and 9th.

• 0:35Guy Raz?

  So how'd you get to the restaurant?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Walk in. Walk in. I arrived very late. They were very upset with me. It took me like almost two hours to make it there.

• 0:51Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:04Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Jose Andres went from tending the fire at his father's cookouts to building a restaurant empire, and eventually, changing the way Americans eat out.

• 1:22Guy Raz?

  So over the past 10 or 15 years, you might have noticed a trend at restaurants all across the US, where you get there and the waiter says, OK, here's how it works. Everybody orders one or two or three plates, and you all share it family-style. And you get, you know, some octopus or some shrimp floating in olive oil and some lamb or whatever, and everybody eats it. Well, the person who might be most responsible for that trend is the Spanish celebrity chef, Jose Andres. He basically started the small-plates movement in the US. And his company, Think Food Group, now has 25 restaurants across the country in places like LA, Miami, Vegas, and here in Washington, DC. Anyway, Jose grew up in Barcelona.

• 2:06Guy Raz?

  And even when he was a kid, he was fascinated with food.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  My father, probably, is the one that helped me to understand the meaning of being a cook. My father would always cook on Sundays for families, for friends. And he would make a big paella, that traditional Spanish rice. And he would never let me cook. He would always put me in charge of making the fire. He would send me to the forest to pick up the wood. And one day I got upset, Daddy, I wanna cook. And he said, no, I need you in charge of the fire. It's very important. I got so upset with him, he sent me away. When the paella was finished and he fed everybody, he got me on the side and told me, my son, I thought that you understood. I gave you the most important task. Cooking itself, it's easy.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  If somebody's controlling the fire, you wanna be a great cook? Be in charge of the fire, then you will be able to cook whatever you want in life. That was the big lesson.

• 3:12Guy Raz?

  So you're a kid and you decide, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna become a chef.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I was not very good at school. I had a very difficult time concentrating. And I went to cooking school. I never graduated. They gave me the diploma last year.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Almost thirty years later. And I failed cooking, English, and accounting.

• 3:38Guy Raz?

  You failed cooking, English, and accounting.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, not a very good future.

• 3:41Guy Raz?

  Great, great, yes. A good recipe for success.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  That was amazing. And then I will always be working. For me, it was not working. For me, I was like a little kid in a kitchen. For me, it was like if I was a little wizard and I was, you know, in this castle, in this tower where the witch or the master wizard was there trying to teach me. I was that kind of a guy. I will spend every minute I could, and I had three, in any kitchen that there was in need of help.

• 4:14Guy Raz?

  Where was this? This was in Barcelona?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  In Barcelona at the time.

• 4:17Guy Raz?

  And so wherever there was a kitchen, you would go and work?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  I would be there. So I was working in very high-end restaurants for lunch. I was doing caterings for thousands of people at dinner, but always doing something. During summers, I was very lucky because I feel I always had somebody looking after me.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Thinking about what I should do next or taking care of me in trying to

• 4:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  To learn. So was this man called Jose Puch? For some reason, I became like his child.

• 4:50Guy Raz?

  He was a chef?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  He was an amazing chef, one of the best chefs in Spain. He ran a restaurant called Reno. The restaurant of the aristocrats of Barcelona. And he was the one always guiding me where to be. But then, one summer, he sends me to Rosas, a tiny village of fishermen two hours north of Barcelona, very near France. And I went to work with a man called Ramon Closas. A crazy man, a crazy chef that he will give you guidance by throwing you a hot pen towards your head. That was the way of learning and the way of teaching. But I'm telling you that this town was very important for me because there is where I met Ferran Adrià.

• 5:36Guy Raz?

  And Ferran Adrià was the legendary chef at El Buie, which is, I guess, the place that sort of introduced molecular gastronomy.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:46Guy Raz?

  So how did you meet him? Did he just like walk into your restaurant?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, he sat at the bar. He ordered gambas al ajillo.

• 5:54Guy Raz?

  And he was already famous at that point or no?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 5:57Guy Raz?

  Unknown.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  He was a 23-year-old kid. I was a kid, but he was a kid too. But already he had an aura around him of the guy that was pushing the envelope. The guy that lived in this kind of little house up in the mountain where the restaurant was and where sometimes nobody show up, no one guest, no one customer. But he had an aura around him. And right there, right then, is the moment that kind of I sealed with him the deal of I'm going to your restaurant next year. To the restaurant that somehow, almost over the last 30 years, has set the bar of what cooking and what's the future of gastronomy.

• 6:40Guy Raz?

  I mean, so, so you have this encounter, a chance encounter with Ferran Adria, and you basically figure out a way to work with the guy. And not just that, but the restaurant that becomes the most important restaurant in the world.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  Wow, I mean, that's, that is, that is luck.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  The way, but the way I see that was, I think luck only happens when you are actively moving and searching for what is next. I think when you are at home saying, man, things are not happening to me. Sure, what are you doing at home? Go and walk. I don't care where, start moving. Look for the horizon. I was looking for my horizon.

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  So, so what was it like to work at, at El Bulli?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  In that restaurant, we began kind of rebelling to anything was coming from France.

• 7:27Guy Raz?

  From France?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not in a bad way. It was only like Ferran was very clear, like, we, we cannot keep looking for inspiration going to France. We need to start looking inspiration within ourselves. And I feel I was in the beginning of the explosion. I was in the moment that something amazing was created, a new universe was being created. I was there right when the explosion happened.

• 7:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  And it's something you don't realize until a few years later.

• 8:01Guy Raz?

  What was it like to be in that kitchen in those early days? Was it just crazy? Was Ferran nice, kind? Was he tough? Was it, what was the atmosphere there like?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Well, Ferran was all of the above because things were happening in very quick moments. One moment, I remember I had a gelatin of almond milk. Everybody knows that the gelatin is good when it's cold. If it's hot, melts. I had a pot of hot oil. Ferran came towards the gelatin of almond and he began looking at the oil. And I could see that he was thinking about dropping the almond milk into the hot oil. All of the cooks in the kitchen, we were five at the time, we were quickly looking at each other. He's gonna do it, he's gonna do it. Why he's gonna do it? This is gonna be bad. Everybody knows if you put a hot gelatin in hot oil, it's gonna melt and it's gonna explode.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Well, in that moment, the almond milk going into the hot oil exploded. Twelve years later, he created the liquid croqueta

• 9:10Speaker 01

  that you will put in your mouth, will be like a traditional croqueta, the flavor of chicken, and will explode in your mouth. But that was the message of who Ferran Adria was. The message was, don't be afraid of trying and don't take things for granted. You have to experience and discover things in your own. If you follow the teachings before you, you are only following what somebody else has done before you. You need, not only to read and learn the theory, you need to discover on your own. That's a moment of true learning.

• 9:47Guy Raz?

  So you're at El Buie, you're into the early 90s, and you moved to the US. How did that happen? How did you end up coming to the US?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Well, in between working at El Buie, I was in the military service. I had to do the military service.

• 10:00Guy Raz?

  It's compulsory in Spain, right?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  You had to now, no, but in the old days, yes. Well, happens that I got my military service. They sent me to Cádiz in the south of Spain. I had a great service in the Navy. I had my own apartment, cooking for the admiral, dancing flamenco and drinking sherry and living the life of a young sailor. So I finished my military service and I was like, I guess I am without a job. I have no place to go back to. Then I call, I make one phone call, one of my teachers. He tells me, it's a restaurant opening in New York, Jose, and they need somebody in three days.

• 10:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I'm like, OK, three days, all right, I'm ready.

• 10:48Guy Raz?

  What did you think of New York? Was it overwhelming to you? Did you think of it when you got there?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Well, the arrival was very amazing because it looked like a very strange place. This New York that you see in movies, like it was Gotham, where the smoke is coming in a very cold night from every street. So I had like 50 bucks in my pocket. I was going to 50th Street between Lexington and 3rd. And the driver dropped me in 193 between 8th and 9th.

• 11:23Guy Raz?

  So how did you get to the restaurant?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Walk in. And walk in. I arrived very late. They were very upset with me. It took me like almost two hours to make it there.

• 11:33Guy Raz?

  Wow, what was the restaurant?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  The restaurant was called Paradis Barcelona. That was a chain. This was right before the Olympic Games of 1992 Barcelona. And every Spanish company, and especially Catalan company, they all wanted to be in America. And they wanted to be in New York.

• 11:54Guy Raz?

  So you're working in this restaurant. And I mean, did you like it? Was it, is it interesting?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  No, so I arrived there. Very quickly, I realized that that's not the place. I was aiming for coming from El Bulli. So I told them I was leaving. I get a phone call from Chicago. The great Richard Melman, one of the legendary restaurateurs of America with hundreds of restaurants. I met him and he tells me, Jose, I don't know what you will do in life, but whatever you do, throw the anchor and belong. Learn to belong. In that moment, I received this phone call from Washington DC. I have these opportunities. I come to Washington DC. I met my partner.

• 12:43Guy Raz?

  You mean, these are your new partners?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:45Guy Raz?

  And what did they want you to do?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  They were dreaming to open a Spanish restaurant. And I landed with the aim of opening Haleo around January 1993.

• 13:01Guy Raz?

  OK, now, Jose, we should pause here and mention, because we're in DC. And I've been here a long time. This is like 1993, 94. Like, at that time, people did not really know what Spanish food was. That wasn't common food in America. So how did you know that you could actually create a market for that?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Tapas are a way of life, more than a type of food. Tapas in Spain, in Seville, you go with your friends in a bar. You don't sit. You are always standing up, and you have one beer, one, two snacks, and you move to the next one. Obviously, I cannot come to America and try to impose a way of life. What Haleo did that was very different from the Spanish cooking that was happening before, especially restaurants in Florida, in New York, with big Spanish populations. What we did was that we had a very long menu and where we were really telling people that sharing was the way forward.

• 14:08Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Jose Andres with some advice about sharing plates, sharing a business, and sharing the title of chef. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 14:36Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the early 1990s, and Jose Andres has opened a new tapas restaurant in Washington, DC, his very first, and it's doing well. Except some of his diners don't really want to share their food.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  And I always gave this answer, which is very true. It's like, I do believe that forks and knives were invented and created not for eating, but they were invented to protect the plate from anybody take away your plate from you.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  As we became more civilized, we began using forks and knives really to eat instead of protecting our territory. But I always tell people that tapas versus no tapas is only 20 inches.

• 15:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  If you want to do tapas, you put the plate in the middle of the table, and people know that that's the signal to share. If you don't want to do tapas, people, move your plate 20 inches towards you. Raise your fork, raise your knife, and everybody will know that you don't want to share. That was my simple solution to make sure that even those people not liking the sharing will be comfortable in a place like Haleo.

• 15:45Guy Raz?

  And at this point, you are still, I guess, in your early 20s. So how did you handle being the head chef?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  When I opened, I learned that I was ill-prepared to be the head chef. Think about it, barely, I'm 23. I work in very high-end restaurants where we don't do necessarily volume and we aim for

• 16:06Guy Raz?

  Precision, right?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Quality and precision.

• 16:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, I'm coming to open this tapas Spanish restaurant when I really never managed a very big kitchen. Again, very young, but with a lot of hours of experience in different environments, different restaurants, different people. All those things kind of without me realizing, my time in New York, prepared me for very much believing that anything was possible. Everything can be possible.

• 16:38Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's amazing because that restaurant, Haleo, is so associated with you, right? And this concept of like small plates. But it was these partners who had the vision of creating it. And now you have 25 restaurants and somehow you guys are all still together, right?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, everything has advanced and changed a lot over the years.

• 17:00Guy Raz?

  But like you're still with the same people. You didn't like fall apart and like have ego fights and like kill each other.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 17:06Guy Raz?

  It's amazing.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  We had fights, we had exchange of views, exchange of opinions. I imagine for them, I was a very young kid when I came, and much of what I have, I own it to them. And this is the message I send to many, not only chefs and restaurant people, but any business people. It is good that you are able to, very early on in your life, to surround yourself with people you want to be with for many years ahead. Not only for family, not only for friendship, but also for business. And if you can mix the three, it's even more wonderful. This is a very powerful tool. And that's why I always tell people, don't think that alone, you can do more.

• 17:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Together, you can conquer the world.

• 17:51Guy Raz?

  I mean, given that you're running a major company now with hundreds of employees, do you get to log as many hours or spend as much time in the kitchen or in the creative side of really building up interesting menus? Or do you kind of have to let go a little bit and let other people come up with that stuff?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I spend a lot of my, what I would call, brain time thinking and creating. I cook at all hours, in my free time and in my non-free time. Cooking is what I really enjoy. I see myself very much like an orchestra director. He doesn't play any instrument, but he's able to produce beautiful music. But you know one thing? I'm very lucky that I have chefs, sous chefs, GMs, managers, homeroom leaders. That many of them, they are as talented, if not more talented than I am. And what I have that always worked very well is, in my thin food group, we have what we call the thin food tank.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  That's my creative arm. For me, creating that arm of eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 individuals, that the only thing they do is thinking, creating, and maintaining quality, is a very powerful research and development tool. And I use it a lot. My team travels with me a lot. We always go to faraway countries. We are always getting inspired, because if you want to get inspired, you have to be on the move.

• 19:25Guy Raz?

  When you put together this very big menu at Haleo and you created this sort of small plates system there, was there also any consideration of how the economics of that would work? Because presumably, you would be selling more plates of food, right? So presumably, it could help. Did it help the restaurant meet its bottom line and beyond?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. At the end, it's a business like any other. I can tell you, you work harder when you have to put out 3,000 small plates in one service than 1,000 big plates. It's more work. Uh, so sometimes, believe me, I'm like, I'm tired of small plates. I'm gonna be sending the super big one.

• 20:10Guy Raz?

  Just a giant steak and potatoes.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  But at the end, it's like any other business. Listen, at the end, even, even it's people that will tell me, Jose, I, I don't want a small plate. But then they go to a sushi restaurant. Um, what is a sushi restaurant? It's one small piece at a time. Uh, it's people that complain about the small plates and they go to Greek restaurants. And what they give you is small balls of hummus, of tzatziki, of babaganoush. Uh, at the end, uh, it's very funny that today, even when we have people complaining about certain things, uh, they're doing those things. They need to be thinking what's on their plate. Because today, the way we eat is an amazing form of democracy. Because by what you eat, you are voting about the things you think should be not only on your plate,

• 20:57Speaker 01

  but in the plates of many others. So we all need to start thinking that you can vote with your plate. A plate is an amazing form of democracy.

• 21:06Guy Raz?

  If you are a young chef or a young businessman or man or woman trying to get into the food industry today, what advice would you give to a, you know, a, a 22-year-old Jose Andres today?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Well, um, the biggest advice is, I wish I, I finished high school. I wish I finished university. I have a 17-year-old daughter, Carlota, and we're going through the process. And it kind of seems she, she's agreeing, we're going into, she's gonna do business. Because you can be anything you want and you will always work for yourself. I don't care if you wanna be painting in the middle of the streets of Washington DC. I don't care if you wanna be singing with a rose in Fifth Avenue. I don't care what's the crazy business you want to be part of. Make sure that you have the business background.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Business is something I wish I learned when I was 15. I had 30 years of the school of life. Now, I think I'm going to be putting these next 30 years in putting into practice everything I learned over the last 30.

• 22:19Guy Raz?

  You have like 25 restaurants. You've been on TV. You've got cookbooks. I mean, you're like a major celebrity chef, right?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:28Guy Raz?

  But when you were a teenager in Spain, just like learning to cook, did you imagine you could ever get to this point?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I don't think I ever trained more than making sure that the next plate I put forward in front of somebody is the best it can be. Quite frankly, I always say I don't open restaurants. I tell stories. Sometimes I wish that I only had one restaurant, and only one. And I will be there every day and every hour. But I know that I will be so bored. So I created a company around me that will fulfill my personal needs. But to this day, I still consider myself that I am only as good as the last plate I serve.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Even if you do radio, you do the radio show once, you hope it's good, you fix it. But the radio show is going to be there forever and ever for anybody to listen to it. But food is very ephemeral.

• 23:31Guy Raz?

  You get one chance.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  It disappears.

• 23:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  So this is how hard my profession is. You only have one chance to make it.

• 23:44Guy Raz?

  Jose Andres, he is a chef and the co-founder of Think Food Group. By the way, you should try his gazpacho. It's pretty easy to make. Just get some fresh tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, a little sherry vinegar, olive oil, and garlic. Throw it all into a blender, and that's it. Delicious.

• 24:05Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. And if you have a chance, please subscribe to our show through iTunes and let other people know about it. You can also write us directly at [email protected] or tweet us. That's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 24:50Guy Raz?

  You still with us? OK, great, because we are now at the part of the show where we talk about your stories. And this one came to us from Dennis Darnell.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  You know, when I used to get home, you'd come in the house and there'd be that one fly flying around. You'd have no idea how it got in there, but it's flying around. It's bugging you.

• 25:06Guy Raz?

  I think we can all relate to that problem. Anyway, one summer day in San Diego, where Dennis lives, he and his wife, Joy Lynn, were sitting in the kitchen and they were watching a fly buzz all around.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  We sat there and watched it trying to get into the garbage can. And one of us said, why don't we drill a hole in the lid and let it in, but put a trap on the underside of the lid?

• 25:29Guy Raz?

  And that is how the garbage can fly trap was born. Flies, of course, love garbage. So Dennis designed this trap where you drill a hole in the lid of your garbage can, and then you pop in this little plastic doorway for the fly.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  But there's also a second part, which is the cartridge, which is lined with fly paper. And so while the fly thinks it's going down into the garbage can, it actually walks into the disposable cartridge and becomes stuck.

• 25:57Guy Raz?

  And once the cartridge gets full with, like, 100 flies, you don't have to look at them or touch anything sticky or gross. Instead?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  You just push the button on the lid and the cartridge falls into the garbage can.

• 26:10Guy Raz?

  Dennis and Joy Lynn have filed three patents for this fly trap, and they've sold them on their website and at Ace Hardware stores in San Diego.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  And just last week, we reached out to Ace Hardware headquarters, as well as Home Depot.

• 26:23Guy Raz?

  For now, though, they're keeping their day jobs and enjoying the fact that their kitchen? He's pretty much fly free. Hey, if you want to tell us about the company or idea that you are building, go to build.npr.org. That's build.npr.org. And thanks.

• 26:43Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you're still looking for another great NPR podcast, please check out Pop Culture Happy Hour. There is so much out there to watch and listen and read and discuss. It becomes so overwhelming. But this show, Pop Culture Happy Hour, helps you sort it out and figure out what's worth binge watching, downloading, or reading. Pop Culture Happy Hour calls out the best, most creative, and most fun things out there. You can find something to make you happy every week on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Find the show at npr.org/podcasts and on the NPR ONE app.