Chef and humanitarian José Andrés's advice: Be bold, take risks, adapt
The book consists of memoir-ish essays that tell stories of Andrés's early cooking jobs, a stint in the Spanish navy that took him to America for the first time, what it was like to work at
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Andrés seems to draw on boundless energy. He joined his restaurant partner,
Book jacket for 'Change the Recipe' by José Andrés with Richard Wolffe
handout/Handout
It began in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and right away he learned an important lesson from local women who had set up a shelter and were cooking. Andrés made a pot of black beans and rice. He and the women didn't have a common language but he saw they didn't like what he made. They showed him how it should be done. They took burlap sacks and used them to sieve the black beans into a saucy puree. 'It ended up so beautiful and rich and velvety, this perfect texture that I had never seen before from beans.'
If he was going to do this, he would have to listen to the residents where he was. 'I still have trouble listening sometimes,' he writes, 'I love thinking I'm right. I love to be the one who is telling people what to do.'
He set up shop at more natural disasters, and most recently in Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza.
Wherever he is, writes Andrés, he has 'to be ready for the loud voices that will line up against you.' He was accused of profiting from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, 'when the truth is,' he writes, 'that I don't earn a penny for my work in disasters.'
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When people in other organizations, far from the crisis, try to tell him what to do, the only expert he's interested in talking to is someone with boots on the ground. An MBA thousands of miles away, he says, doesn't have more knowledge of the situation than 'a guy with a bulldozer who is building a jetty in Gaza out of concrete rubble.'
Photo of José Andrés, chef and humanitarian
JOSH TELLES
In April 2024, seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza were killed by Israeli air strikes that hit their convoy. He ends the book with a tribute he gave to them at a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral.
'Change the Recipe' touches on many of the deep issues our society and what people have to contend with. You can imagine that someone like Andrés can tackle some of this.
But the book has a TED talk quality, with each chapter ending in a go-get-'em motivational summary of how to handle, overcome, rise above (fill in the blank) various situations.
In January 2024, several members of Congress
The modest author never mentions it.
Sheryl Julian can be reached at
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Chicago Tribune
3 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Restaurant news: Cerdito Muerto, a cocktail bar and Mexican American kitchen, transforms an old family home in Pilsen
Cerdito Muerto, a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with a contemporary Mexican American kitchen that's transformed an old family home that survived the Great Chicago Fire, opened in Pilsen on June 26. The name translates in Spanish to 'the dead piglet,' but is meant in a playful way, said Emidio Oceguera, owner of the debut business. 'Being a first-generation Mexican American son of farmers and ranchers, pigs and piglets are pretty endearing in our culture,' said Oceguera. The space was his mother Consuelo Oceguera's restaurant, Tacos Palacio, and his late father Miguel Oceguera's neighborhood pool hall. 'Even to this day, my partner calls me Piggy, so Piggy and piglets have always been kind of part of my identity,' he said. His wife and business partner Sarah Dickerson is their head of marketing and brand development. Speakeasies were sometimes known as blind pigs or blind tigers or striped pigs during Prohibition, as a front for illegal bars that would charge admission to see fictional animal curiosities, then offer a free drink. Hence the curious dead piglet, or cerdito muerto. 'This has a very speakeasy feel to it,' said Oceguera, who was general manager at Chicago Cut Steakhouse for a decade. 'But I do not advertise myself as a speakeasy.' In fact, when asked about the best-selling items so far, he mentioned the food program that's constantly changing under chef Becky Carson, previously the opening executive chef at the reimagined Ramova Grill and Taproom. Carson has brought a branzino to the menu, with chimichurri, citrus and fresh oregano. 'But (the menu) does have a few of my mother's staples,' said Oceguera. That includes a goat birria taco from her rural hometown in Jalisco, Mexico. 'It's no frills, there's no cheese,' he said, clarifying that theirs is decidedly not like the relatively recent quesabirria taco. 'It's just the way it was meant to be eaten, as if you were in a pasture.' They've also kept Mamà Coco's al pastor taco, but that's not traditional, he added, and eats almost like cochinita pibil instead. Rachele Byrd-Townsell, previously beverage director at Pizza Lobo, and Guillermo Martinez, bar manager at Estereo, were both beverage consultants. A classic Saturn cocktail, mixed with gin and passionfruit, has emerged as an early fan favorite. Their variation on the Paloma has become another popular drink. 'We named it Guillermo's Palomo, because we make our own 'Squirt' in house,' said Oceguera. The grapefruit-flavored soft drink is a common mixer in the cocktail. Mexican Squirt is as prized as Mexican Coke, made with cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Both are available among the bar's non-alcoholic drinks. 'It is so imperative that I do not cheat on any ingredient, because every seat counts for me, so every experience is crucial,' Oceguera said. His experience with the space runs deep. According to his research, the building was built in 1853, originally as a house, eventually with a barber shop. His father emigrated from Mexico in 1973, and he rented a cot in the basement from a family friend. 'After some time, he was able to get on his feet, moved out and met my mother here in Chicago,' he said. 'Ten years later, in 1983, they purchased this building from that family friend.' The elder Oceguera came from a small ranching town, where shooting pool was their pastime. 'My dad was really good at pool, but not a gambling man, so he made it a pool hall,' said the younger Oceguera. 'And my mom started selling menudo on Sundays to the young men.' The pop-up precursor turned into a pretty good business so they got rid of one of the pool tables. 'And my father made a little kitchen for my mother in the front,' said their son. That became a tiny taqueria with five stools, and the pool hall stayed in the back. After Oceguera received a grant from the city's Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Road to Recovery Plan for communities most impacted by the pandemic, they closed Tacos Palacio in 2022. That grant allowed him to execute the renovation at a high level, he said, which was a labor of love. But he lost count of the number of times, he said laughing, that he was crying in the basement in the fetal position asking, 'When is this gonna happen? Why isn't the permit here? Why is construction taking so long?' Now, when you walk up to the building, you'll see that it's been restored as close to period correct as possible on the outside. But you won't find a sign. You'll enter through an 1800s courthouse door from Maywood, which he refinished and painted black. Inside, past an old family photo of goats in Mexico, down a corridor laid with classic penny tiles, you're greeted at a restored lectern with their reservation book. 'We're not using a reservation system,' he said. 'We're just doing it old school and writing your name down.' You can call, text, email or just walk in. There are no pool tables in the small space, which has a capacity of only 30 or so, but there are mementos. 'There's a photo of my father taken around the time he got here, shooting pool at a bar that wasn't far from here,' said Oceguera. 'So it's almost like an ofrenda.' And there's a rack with 10 or so pool cues, which all belonged to people who are no longer here. An open kitchen honors how his mother worked, he said. A booth runs the span of the room, with a 12-seat bar to the right, which he built himself. The seating was designed to some unusual specifications. 'I built the space with women in mind,' said Oceguera. The bar is two inches lower than the standard height, and the booth allows diners to touch the floor. 'I'm not a tall man, so sometimes my feet go kicking as well.' First and foremost, he said, Cerdito Muerto is a safe space. 'I really built the space to be inclusive and inviting,' he added. He's also focused on working with minority-owned and women-led businesses. From designer Aida Napoles of AGN Design, to Cristina Gallo and her husband Marty Sandberg of Via Chicago Architects + Diseñadores, as well as producers of the primarily Mexican-made spirits at the bar. Has his mother experienced the transformed space yet? 'Oh yeah, if you're lucky enough, you might see her. She loves talking with people,' said Oceguera. 'It's just nice to see my mother, in her 70s, being able to see something of a retirement.' His father, who died in his mid-50s in 2013, never retired. His mother was looking at a completely full room at 11:30 on a recent Saturday night. 'And she said, 'I can't believe this is like this,'' Oceguera said. 'I said, 'Oh, I've seen it Mom.' I always pictured this. It's like I'm looking at a memory.'More openings, in alphabetical order: Bell Market at Bell Works Chicagoland Sommelier Chantelle Corbo, previously at the critically acclaimed L2O restaurant, just opened a food hall with her husband, chef Richard Corbo, and their hospitality group. The food hall is a sibling to their business at Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey, aka the Lumon building in 'Severance.' Bell Market at Bell Works Chicagoland celebrated its grand opening in Hoffman Estates on June 23. Outies can order breakfast sandwiches from Honeybell Bakery, poke bowls from Jōzu, gyros, greens and grains from Broadfork, with more to Cafe From the minds behind Mirra, Lilac Tiger and Coach House, including 'Top Chef' contestant Zubair Mohajir, pastry chef Reema Patel and chef Jacob Dela Cruz, comes the newest bakery with hourslong lines, this one with Indian and Filipino influences. Sarima Cafe began baking in Wicker Park on July 25. They're already selling out fast of their ube cheesecake cookies, but look for a breakfast dosa and a latte with dates Cheval Logan Square The Freeze, the dearly departed seasonal soft serve ice cream and fast food stand, has become a fast food restaurant. Small Cheval began flipping in Logan Square on July 14. Best known for their smaller Au Cheval-esque cheeseburgers, the 10th location also offers cocktails, including a pink vodka lemonade, and a variety of ice cream, featuring Magic Shell-style hand-dipped cones and boozy Zaragoza, the beloved original home in Archer Heights of the Zaragoza family's signature goat birria, closed temporarily due to a fire on June 23. They've launched a GoFundMe to rebuild, while their Uptown location remains open.Ärt-is Restaurant & Lounge, the Black, brown, queer and women-owned Creole restaurant that opened in April, and was the site of a drive-by shooting that killed four people and injured 14 more in River North on July 2, closed permanently July 15. Their GoFundMe remains open to rebuild another future for chef Brandi Artis and her wife Brittany Artis. The Violet Hour, the pioneering cocktail bar that opened in 2007 behind an ever-changing unmarked muraled facade in Wicker Park, closed permanently June 27 due 'unexpected damage to the building' and 'despite extensive efforts and negotiations' with their landlord. But it's not the end of the brand, which may reappear elsewhere.
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
In ‘The Broken King' Michael Thomas chronicles his experiences with fatherhood, being Black in Boston, and mental health
The memoir also emphasizes place. While he currently lives in Brooklyn, Thomas paints a vivid, indelible portrait of growing up in Boston from birth through his childhood in the '70s. He writes about dealing with racism, driving a taxi cab, and his love for the Celtics and Red Sox. We met at Pavement Coffeehouse's Fenway location, near where he'd attended a Sox game at Fenway two days earlier. In the book Thomas recalls going to Fenway with his father, also a Boston native, who would keep a scorecard and guide his sons skillfully through the crowded park; later, after his father left the family, Thomas writes, he would attend Red Sox games with white friends who looked the other way when he faced Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up At the coffeeshop, Thomas told me going to the past weekend's game was 'melancholic yet peaceful.' Against the cacophony of usual cafe noise, Thomas admitted that writing 'The Broken King' wasn't as peaceful. Advertisement 'This was different from anything I've written,' said Thomas, a Warren Wilson College MFA graduate and Hunter College English professor. When writing his first book, ' Advertisement In addition, he explained as we sipped our coffee, the book was easier to write in part because it was a novel. He felt comfortable in part because he could refer to the novels of his favorite authors, from Ralph Ellison to James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston, as models for his own work. And, he added, he could use the book's main character as a proxy to work out issues, leading the characters through a contained story that he mapped out. . With 'The Broken King,' he was older, the world was moving faster, and the memoir form required him to say goodbye to his fictional proxy. 'That's a habit I had to break,' Thomas said. '[I had to] say what I thought and felt directly without artifice, where the only artifice is the craft on the page or illusion.' He also had to change his writing process. In the past, Thomas said, he would handwrite four or five pages over and over before typing them on a computer. He'd then edit them two to three pages at a time while committing them to memory. But that didn't work with the memoir. 'I had a lot of drafts, let's just say that,' Thomas said. 'Writing the same thing over and over again, finding different currents, eliminating proxy, perhaps at times being more journalistic.' He said it was interesting to lay it all out and see different versions of the memoir and what needed to be added, and what had to be left out — even if he didn't want to leave anything out. Advertisement 'I think I've had a full and strangely absurd life,' he said. In six interlocking sections, 'The Broken King' chronicles the author's experiences with father, his estranged older brother, and his two sons. With each section Thomas traverses memory and the sometimes tricky line between 'empirical' fact and personal truth; a relationship that he said people often confuse. As he was writing the book he had to reckon with his own shifting perspective on his personal experiences because, he said, as you live you change, and so does your perspective. 'One perhaps searches oneself and returns changed, and so the perspective on the self is changed, someone has to search themself again,' he said. 'So, how do you make that be still?' He said it made him question how to talk about an experience when doubting his perspective of the memory. 'Can you capture what you believe is the truth, or when you believe you're being honest about what you think or feel — and let it go before you doubt yourself so much that you have to change it?" he asked. The deepest complexities surround his relationship with his father, a vexing figure in his life. 'I can think about it and I can tell stories about him and me,' he said. 'I can sympathize with him and be angry with him and feel compassion and practice it.' But perhaps the hardest compassion to find is for oneself. 'It's been a lot of time trying to convince myself that I'm not here,' Thomas said. 'And so having read some of this in public and having part of it be published, by having people read the advanced copies and they have real reactions — and they have real reactions— I have to admit that I'm here on the planet and I have an effect on people positive or negative.' Advertisement In the book's final section Thomas writes about struggling with not wanting to live. 'I want to die, but I'm always trying to stay,' he writes. 'In these mercury days, there are too many reasons to live and die. I stay because I don't know what's next. Sometimes all I can do is survive.' Thomas will read at Harvard Book Store at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 26.
Eater
16 hours ago
- Eater
The Tire Shop Food Stand Serving Unique-to-Seattle Venezuelan Hot Dogs
is a freelance journalist living in Seattle. A contributor to Eater since 2023, his work has also appeared in Outside Magazine, The Stranger, and Seattle Met. In Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, where Mexican food and people are the most visible representatives of Latin American culture, Latin American cuisine often gets oversimplified to Mexican food, which in turn gets over-over simplified to tacos, burritos, and $5 margaritas. But if you look beyond Mexico's southern border, there's a literal world of food in Central and South America that deserves appreciation and recognition. Fortunately for North Seattleites, taking the first step toward something new is easy. Just walk across the street from the Wallingford Chipotle into the parking lot of Omar's Tires, and you'll find Fido Hot Dogs, a new Venezuelan hot dog stand that has emerged as the neighborhood's most wonderful surprise. 'I heard about it through TikTok,' said Jonathan, a customer making his first visit on a busy Saturday night. 'This guy I always see on my feed lives in Venezuela, but somehow was doing promotion for a place in Seattle! My friend went before me, and now here I am.' (Eater Seattle conducted the interviews for this story in Spanish.) For just over two months, Fido Hot Dogs has been bringing a street food vibe to North 45th Street, a slightly dingy strip of Fremont dotted with ice cream shops and Thai restaurants. Fido has no website, no Instagram — just a TikTok mixed with guest creators promoting Fido Hot Dog's locations in Seattle and Tacoma — and only accepts cash and Zelle. The owner Fido (pronounced fee-dough), declined to provide his last name, but says that he is friends with the Omar's Tires owner. A hot dog at Fido Hot Dog. Charlie Lahud-Zahner But what even is a Venezuelan hot dog? Basically, it's a regular steamed dog in a split-top brioche bun like those typically used for lobster rolls that is then heaped with toppings that might impress even the most ardent Seattle dog supporter. The menu options range from a regular hot dog to one with sliced hard-boiled egg to mechipan, a dog with egg and a rich shredded stewed beef (carne mechada), distinct to South America. A full toppings package includes egg, diced onion, shredded cabbage with carrots, crunchy small fried potato strands (papas al hilo), carne mechada, shredded cheese, mustard, ketchup, and mayo. It's humongous and even if you think you're an adult, use two hands and take small steps. Despite the presence of dairy, egg, and two different types of meat, the varying textures get along well and are relatively light on the stomach. The fried potato bits and onions add crunch, the egg yolk and the cheese blend well with the carne mechada, and the cabbage makes the whole thing a meal. The only downside is the slightly undercooked dog — the meat is often barely larger than how it came out of the package and would definitely benefit from grilling. However, without a doubt it's the carne mechada that sets Fido Hot Dog apart. The beef is super savory, juicy, and easily worth the extra two dollars. For drinks there's Frescolito, a Venezuelan soft drink with an almost bubble gum-esque flavor, Coke, or Maltín, a soda best described as a malted cola. A scene one recent night at Fido Hot Dog. Charlie Lahud-Zahner 'This is the food I ate growing up in Venezuela, the same way you'd have tacos in Mexico or McDonalds here,' says one patron named Uriel. 'The food is different, but the feeling is similar.' With that being said, most customers are of Venezuelan descent and/or Spanish-speaking. Non-Spanish-speaking Wallingfordians seem simultaneously intrigued and intimidated by the bilingual scene. Jokes, jeers, and jibes in a distinctive fast-paced Venezuelan Spanish fill the air and the cling cling of Doordash notifications is a constant background refrain. According to Michel, the second half of the two-man stand, the majority of the patrons are delivery drivers, and it's not uncommon to see hot dogs eaten at Joey Chestnut speeds as they maintain quick turnaround times. English speakers do their best to ask clarifying questions while Fido and Michel do their best to give clarifying answers, but small miscommunications regularly occur. Fido and Michel hope that the new printed English menu will help attract even more locals. With this in mind, any curious diners should make their best Spanish effort if they have the ability to do so. If not, an order of uno con todo will give you the most bang for your buck. Fido Hot Dog's is located at 2221 N 45th Street in the parking lot of Omar's Tires in Wallingford; open from 7:30 p.m. to midnight Tuesday through Sunday; the Tacoma stand is located at 11111 Pacific Avenue South, in the parking lot of another Omar's Tires. Eater Seattle All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
