José Andrés’ Moment of Crisis and Grief

But pretty much any statement asserting culpability in the Israel-Hamas war is liable to piss someone off. But where many of the chefs pushing the local restaurant scene were content to stick to their own social world, Andrés became something of a Washington man about town, showing up at Beltway social events like the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and scoring bylines in The Atlantic — a guy who knew how to play nice with people in public life. Late last year, a withering Bloomberg News story reported that as World Central Kitchen moved from responding to natural disasters to entering war zones, Andrés’ aversion to bureaucracy — credited with helping the organization remain nimble in the face of daunting challenges — also exposed its people to danger. Andrés has taken political stands before — though not the sort likely to make waves with conventional D.C. establishment opinion or get in the way of awards celebrating “civility.” In 2015, before the Trump Hotel had even opened on Pennsylvania Avenue, the chef responded to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign comments by abruptly pulling out of a deal to bring one of his restaurants to the nascent hotel. On “Meet the Press” last month he called for a cease-fire — although he also said that “at the very least” Israel should avoid hunger, and elided into a sort of culinary kumbaya statement: “The time I’ve spent in Israel, the time I’ve been spending in Gaza, seems everybody loves falafel and everybody loves hummus with equal intensity.” For the most part, though, Andrés’ political comments have stuck to bipartisanship and general enthusiasm for the home town, its restaurant industry, and his fellow business owners.