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In his new memoir, “Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs” (to be published April 22 by Ecco), chef José Andrés, founder of the humanitarian aid organization World Central Kitchen, offers life lessons and teachable moments about responsibility and commitment to a shared humanity.
Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Kelefa Sanneh’s interview with José Andrés on “CBS Sunday Morning” April 6!
“Change the Recipe” by José Andrés
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Commit to What Matters
I had come from a world of higher-end restaurants, of finesse and creativity. So a tapas restaurant was not exactly what I was looking for. But my new partners in Washington, DC, had a clear idea: they wanted to open a Spanish restaurant that was fun. They called it Jaleo, which means “merrymaking, a joyful celebration,” inspired by the John Singer Sargent painting of a Spanish woman dancing to guitars. It lives in Boston, but it had traveled on loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and they had seen it there. They even painted a reproduction of it on a wall of the new restaurant.
I understood that sense of joy. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like tables. I prefer standing up at bars. If I can, I like to hop around to five different bars and eat good food at each one. Jaleo was a chance to show how I like to enjoy life. These little plates of tapas were also a chance to give people more access to different bites of Spanish food, different tastes of the various regions of Spain. Maybe people didn’t know what they wanted to eat, and the small plates would be a way to move a little bit further out of their comfort zones. Of course, it was an opportunity to make a mark for myself. And I could do that while being a kind of ambassador for my country, in the capital of the United States, not too far from the White House and the US Capitol. It felt like an extension of my military service, going from port to port on a historic tall-mast ship, showing the best of Spain to the world.
I knew there were immigrants before me who had brought Spanish food to every corner of America. They opened restaurants, maybe some of them played guitar or danced flamenco. They were mythical places. Tio Pepe in Baltimore. Café San Martin in New York. Montse Guillén’s El Internacional in Tribeca, which was short-lived but put Spanish food and drink on the map. There was already a high-end Spanish restaurant in Washington called Taberna del Alabardero, and the more informal Churreria Madrid in Adams Morgan.
Washington at that time was not seen as a culinary mecca, even by the people of DC, and Jaleo opened in a downtown neighborhood, known as Penn Quarter, that was empty at night. But it would not stay that way. It would become a very important part of the city, not too far away from where all the big decisions were made that affected the country and the world. It was a part of the city where senators, congressmen, lobbyists, and business executives would gather. It was the home of new businesses like America Online, and so many other amazing new companies. Slowly but surely, Jaleo became a huge success.
That’s not to say it was easy. I was young, just twenty-three years old, and I was still learning how to run a kitchen. The movie in my head cast me as the creative guy, but now I needed to learn how to run the place. Fortunately, I had a wonderful, patient teacher: Ann Cashion, who was the first executive chef of Jaleo, showed me how to do the job properly, even though I preferred the creative side of things.
We didn’t really know whether American diners would accept these little plates, or the idea of sharing plates at all. What happened if people didn’t want to share? Our waiters were concerned and would often tell me how some people said they weren’t comfortable with sharing. I had a simple answer. If they didn’t want to share, they could move the plate ten inches closer to them and use their knife and fork to protect the dish for themselves. I wasn’t going to Americanize tapas for them. It’s what we did in the south of Spain and in Catalonia. They would adapt because it was a fun way to be with friends. Who doesn’t want to dig a fork into the plate of the person across the table?
My heart was full of the joy that comes from introducing Spanish food to new people. That joy translated into happy guests eating the dishes I knew. Jaleo was a place where I could share what I knew about Spanish food: croquetas, gazpacho, gambas al ajillo, sangria. But it was also a way to learn more about what I didn’t know about Spanish food. I had not traveled all across Spain at the age of twenty-three, nor did I know about all of Spanish gastronomy. Far from it. The reality is that you need to keep learning in any line of work. People say I’m one of the biggest experts in Spanish cooking, but I still feel clueless sometimes. Every time I go back to Spain and discover a new ingredient or a new dish, it feels to me the same as looking at the stars. You can see a few, but how many more are out there that you cannot see? You can read books, and you can travel, but learning is a lifetime of curiosity and discovery.
Sometimes that work can feel less joyful and more of struggle. In particular, in those early days, it was a struggle to buy the right ingredients. Believe it or not, I’m a pragmatic guy. You can support the local economy, buying local fruit and vegetables for instance. But there are some ingredients that cannot be replaced. I observed the success of Italy, where they have been amazingly successful in supporting the small towns where their unique food products are made. I believed we could do the same for the small towns and food producers of Spain. Manchego cheese is like no other. Sweet roasted piquillo peppers are unique. Our olive oil is the envy of Europe, and even gets repackaged under Italian names. Our sherry vinegar is unmatched. And nothing compares to our pure-bred Ibérico ham, the very best ham in the world. You can’t have Spanish cooking without some of the staples. It was a symbiotic relationship.
Still, importing food is not always easy. There are regulations and policies, rules to protect consumers and businesses. The US Department of Agriculture insists that slaughterhouses operate according to American standards, not European ones, if they want to sell their meat in the United States. They need to be inspected, even though Europeans have been eating these foods for centuries without any problems. It was crazy but also fascinating. Of course, it wasn’t just a question of safety; there were concerns that ham from Spain would hurt ham in America. So one day I met a bearded man visiting Washington, and he happened to be a great Ibérico ham producer who was investing to comply with US regulations at his slaughterhouse: Santiago Martín, the owner of Embutidos Fermín. I helped producers like Santiago navigate these challenges with Congress and the administration, finding a lawyer who assisted the Italians in bringing Parma ham to America. Because in reality these European hams were much more expensive than the American hams, and they helped elevate the perception of all pork products in America. It was a win-win for America and Spain.
That’s the world of work. Your commitment to your values, to what’s important, can turn a seemingly small decision—like buying a type of roasted pepper or a slice of ham—into something as big as international relations.
Your sense of responsibility is what matters. How was I going to be a Spanish chef without all these ingredients? I had to do the work, just like other chefs and importers who made Spanish food available in the United States. People like Tim Harris, who created the incredible Spanish food store La Tienda, and Juana Gimeno Faraone, who started La Española Meats. Or Almudena de Llaguno and Steve Metzler bringing Spanish wines to America; and Jorge Ordóñez, who would walk the streets of Manhattan with a big bag filled with wine bottles, trying to get his wines into a few restaurants. The whole ecosystem of Spanish food people kept me going, and I needed to play my part, too.
So Jaleo became much more than a restaurant; it was a way to build bridges between these two countries, to inspire American chefs to buy and cook with Spanish ingredients, to spread the culture that made me who I am. Something like 80 percent of all restaurants close before they reach their five-year anniversary. Jaleo has now been open for thirty years, and we have new Jaleos in Orlando, Las Vegas, and even Dubai. Because we committed from the first year to what we value—to what matters—even when we didn’t yet have all the expertise to make it happen.
I feel a sense of joy when I see Ibérico ham, or Spanish anchovies, or wines from the Bierzo region in restaurants and shops. I know that nothing would have happened without the persistence and vision of so many people who may now be forgotten. They built the bridges that will last forever—because they cared so deeply.
Follow what you feel is your purpose—not what others tell you to do. Otherwise you lose your soul and become a commodity. Don’t be a commodity. Be true to yourself.
Excerpted from “Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs” by José Andrés. Copyright © 2025 by José Andrés. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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