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131 reviews for:
We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
José Andrés
3.9 AVERAGE
131 reviews for:
We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
José Andrés
3.9 AVERAGE
We Fed an Island is famous Chef José Andrés' account of feeding the hurricane survivors of Puerto Rico in the weeks and months following Hurricane Irma and Maria's devastation of this US Territory. Unabashedly critical of the Federal Emergency Management Administration's handling of aid to the island and other US soil disasters, Andrés sings the praises of organizations which are largely unheralded providers, like the Southern Baptist Convention, of mass-scale aid. He's learned from more than a decade of providing relief and observing other organizations much that became vital in aiding our citizens in Puerto Rico.
When Andrés first arrived five days after Hurricane Maria, he managed to serve 1000 meals a day (stew and sandwiches) from a friend's restaurant. As he grasped the extent of the evolving disaster, he refused to listen to naysayers, and gradually managed through a network of local providers and his wide range of contacts to build an operation on Puerto Rico that was feeding 150,000 people a day at its height. This is a compelling story made even more engaging by Andrés' heart-felt narration of the audiobook. Regardless of your political leaning, this kind, caring man has provided sustenance in times of need for countless people. He's proven that mass scale delivery of food and water is possible and has lessons to share about how it can best be accomplished.
Andrés' World Central Kitchen continues to provide aid to the island in the form of grants for rebuilding. WCK was also on the ground in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, in California after the wildfire, and has served meals and created food delivery networks after disasters in seven countries.
We Fed an Island was my non-fiction read for the blog for the month of May. (Sigh, yes, I know, late again, but getting better!)
When Andrés first arrived five days after Hurricane Maria, he managed to serve 1000 meals a day (stew and sandwiches) from a friend's restaurant. As he grasped the extent of the evolving disaster, he refused to listen to naysayers, and gradually managed through a network of local providers and his wide range of contacts to build an operation on Puerto Rico that was feeding 150,000 people a day at its height. This is a compelling story made even more engaging by Andrés' heart-felt narration of the audiobook. Regardless of your political leaning, this kind, caring man has provided sustenance in times of need for countless people. He's proven that mass scale delivery of food and water is possible and has lessons to share about how it can best be accomplished.
Andrés' World Central Kitchen continues to provide aid to the island in the form of grants for rebuilding. WCK was also on the ground in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, in California after the wildfire, and has served meals and created food delivery networks after disasters in seven countries.
We Fed an Island was my non-fiction read for the blog for the month of May. (Sigh, yes, I know, late again, but getting better!)
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
I think this man is brilliant. I think what he did for Puerto Rico was amazing. Mr. Andres has my utmost respect. With that being said, this book was in need of some better editing. And it was repetitive. There's only so many ways you can make it clear that you fed people while Trump and FEMA messed up, majorly. Interesting story, maybe just not 250 page interesting.
Who knew nonprofit administration could be fascinating! José Andrés writes about how he ran circles around US government relief efforts after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. The secret to his success was finding and engaging local and international partners, who get full credit. He also ruffles a few political feathers, none of which didn't deserve it.
Amazing how he got this project off the ground and then kept expanding and expanding.
Great initiative, inspiring perseverance, and a good model for humanitarian food relief to apply elsewhere.
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
The work that Jose Andres and his teams did in Puerto Rico is amazing. The ways in which the federal government fucked everything all to hell are so intensely infuriating.
We Fed an Island is famous Chef José Andrés' account of feeding the hurricane survivors of Puerto Rico in the weeks and months following Hurricane Irma and Maria's devastation of this US Territory. Unabashedly critical of the Federal Emergency Management Administration's handling of aid to the island and other US soil disasters, Andrés sings the praises of organizations which are largely unheralded providers, like the Southern Baptist Convention, of mass-scale aid. He's learned from more than a decade of providing relief and observing other organizations much that became vital in aiding our citizens in Puerto Rico.
When Andrés first arrived five days after Hurricane Maria, he managed to serve 1000 meals a day (stew and sandwiches) from a friend's restaurant. As he grasped the extent of the evolving disaster, he refused to listen to naysayers, and gradually managed through a network of local providers and his wide range of contacts to build an operation on Puerto Rico that was feeding 150,000 people a day at its height. This is a compelling story made even more engaging by Andrés' heart-felt narration of the audiobook. Regardless of your political leaning, this kind, caring man has provided sustenance in times of need for countless people. He's proven that mass scale delivery of food and water is possible and has lessons to share about how it can best be accomplished.
Andrés' World Central Kitchen continues to provide aid to the island in the form of grants for rebuilding. WCK was also on the ground in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, in California after the wildfire, and has served meals and created food delivery networks after disasters in seven countries.
We Fed an Island was my non-fiction read for the blog for the month of May. (Sigh, yes, I know, late again, but getting better!)
When Andrés first arrived five days after Hurricane Maria, he managed to serve 1000 meals a day (stew and sandwiches) from a friend's restaurant. As he grasped the extent of the evolving disaster, he refused to listen to naysayers, and gradually managed through a network of local providers and his wide range of contacts to build an operation on Puerto Rico that was feeding 150,000 people a day at its height. This is a compelling story made even more engaging by Andrés' heart-felt narration of the audiobook. Regardless of your political leaning, this kind, caring man has provided sustenance in times of need for countless people. He's proven that mass scale delivery of food and water is possible and has lessons to share about how it can best be accomplished.
Andrés' World Central Kitchen continues to provide aid to the island in the form of grants for rebuilding. WCK was also on the ground in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, in California after the wildfire, and has served meals and created food delivery networks after disasters in seven countries.
We Fed an Island was my non-fiction read for the blog for the month of May. (Sigh, yes, I know, late again, but getting better!)
Chef Jose Andres has developed his theories on food relief first by working with a homeless shelter who used restaurant left overs to feed people and then expanding their process after the earthquake in Haiti. The biggest test so far of his small non-profit came after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.
His ideas are simple:
- Find a working commercial kitchen and chefs. He started in a friend's restaurant in San Juan.
- Source the ingredients locally to avoid delays and to let businesses in the supply chain start to rebuild. In Puerto Rico he used the normal suppliers that restaurants would use.
- Make a few simple dishes that can be made in huge quantities. They started with a stew, pans of chicken and rice, and thousands of ham and cheese sandwiches.
- Use local food trucks to deliver food to the hardest hit areas. Also partner with whatever group is going into areas and have them deliver food. Among his best delivery teams in Puerto Rico was Homeland Security.
- Open other commercial kitchens in strategic areas around the disaster area and repeat. Throughout his time in Puerto Rico they used a convention center, school kitchens, culinary school kitchens, and a church.
One of his major complaints about the food situation in Puerto Rico was that the groups who normally handle this in disasters on the mainland decided that it was too hard to get food to the island so they didn't. The Red Cross for example, didn't bring in the Southern Baptists and their mobile kitchens to cook like they normally do so they didn't have any food to deliver. (I had no idea the Southern Baptists have a whole relief cooking operation despite going to a Southern Baptist church for four years. Never heard of it.) Food and water distribution was not listed as a priority for most groups.
When food was getting distributed it was MREs. These are prepared military food packets and they can get you through a few days but you don't want them long term. He was also angry that water was being given in bottles only. He campaigned for tanker trucks of water to be taken to towns and let people fill their own containers instead of adding all the plastic waste to the environment. That idea didn't get taken up.
A lot of this book is about his fight with FEMA. He wanted a government contract to pay for his supplies. He had started ordering food and supplies on a handshake with the distributor with no idea how he was going to pay for it. At their peak they were spending over $50,000 a day on food. Government contracting is a slow business that is doubly hard in a disaster. He talks about contracts that were given to people who never delivered food. The husband was a government contract person (not with FEMA). He listened to some of this part and talked about the other side. After disasters, FEMA contractors are apparently reviewed and taken to task for working too quickly, for not getting bids even if there is only one supplier in the area, etc. Careers get ruined because people were trying to do the right or fastest thing in an emergency and now there is a lot of trouble trying to get anyone to do those jobs and those who remain aren't likely to take risks. Things are just going to get worse.
This is a good review of what happened in the disaster from the point of view of an outsider to the government. His ideas are definitely worth listening to and I'm interested to see where his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, goes from here.
This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story