The World Central Kitchen founder talks about the importance of restaurants.
(Bloomberg) — José Andrés has an almost supernatural ability to show up at disaster-stricken areas around the world. The founder of the nonprofit hunger organization World Central Kitchen materializes out of nowhere—as he did on Ukraine’s border, days after the Russian invasion—bringing with him gigantic pots of simmering stews and soups like a bearded, culinary Mary Poppins, and earning the Order of Merit from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
When he’s not on the front lines of a catastrophe, he’s running around his home country in the new Discovery+ series, José Andrés and Family in Spain.
He’s a man in constant motion. So it feels unusual to see Andrés lounging in a restaurant. But, one Friday afternoon, there he was in a corner booth at his new New York dining room, Zaytinya, on an increasingly buzzy stretch of Broadway in midtown. The chef was taking stock of the surroundings, examining the glassware on the blond wood table, and asking every five seconds if you wouldn’t like something to eat or drink?
Andrés—who this year has also opened three new restaurants in Los Angeles—says the pandemic only reinforced the need for restaurants as gathering spaces and community sources. The staffing crisis that has severely affected dining rooms in the US and around the world isn’t stopping the chef’s plans for expansion. And he doesn’t begrudge those who have decided in the past three years to exit the industry. (Despite some recovery, it’s estimated that there are half a million fewer restaurant jobs in the US than there were in February 2020.) Andrés will, he says, double-down and open more restaurants to serve as temporary escapes.
“A restaurant can transport you—take you from the streets of Manhattan, as you are at Zaytinya, and then boom, you are on a Greek island eating dolmades from your hands,” he says, about the stuffed grape leaves that are a staple of his Aegean, Turkish and Lebanese menu.
The restaurant is on the ground floor of the new Ritz-Carlton NoMad. The space was designed by famed architect David Rockwell, the founder and president of the Rockwell Group, to be eye-catching to both passers-by and customers inside. Floor-to-ceiling windows that wrap around the corner are lined in ombré curtains to match the sand-and-sea motif and offer some privacy. Plates are meant to be shared, served on tables sporadically lit with candles. The bar is framed by a waterfall of blue and white glass, complemented by soaring ceilings and soft lighting.
“At Zaytinya, we’re returning to that golden age of experience we all felt before the pandemic,” says Rockwell. To create that, his team worked on making a space that felt as “authentic as possible.” They employed small touches like hand-painted woven textile pendants inspired by Mediterranean harvests as well as the bar that literally glows, thanks to a custom screen made up of two-toned blue glass discs curving upward. “It acts as a glowing beacon on the street and the central hearth of the space once inside, creating a harmony you feel, but may not be aware of,” says the designer.
It might be some time before Andrés and Rockwell can collaborate again—though not for their lack of interest. The chef is famously busy running WCK and bringing food and moral support to communities facing strife and disaster. Besides its ongoing work in Ukraine, the group has recently mobilized in Northern California, after the deadly 6.4 magnitude earthquake. But Andrés also has 31 restaurants, and visits whenever he is in proximity to them. Rockwell, meanwhile, is famous for his vast array of projects that range from designing the new Bad Bunny restaurant Gekko in Miami to the Nobu Hotel in Barcelona and the set for the latest production of the musical Into the Woods.
Andrés says the key to staying on top of all his responsibilities is to treat each project and restaurant, new or established, as the only project at a given moment.
“Some of the best ideas happen when you’re doing other things,” says Rockwell, appraising Andrés ability to cover so much ground. “So it’s important to get out in the world and see things, colors and ideas that are different. José has a huge worldview to that. I try and match that so that when we’re doing this we’re looking at every possible thing at our fingertips.”
As for Zaytinya’s menu: Although they’re not small, the plates of spreads and dips get a major boost from pillowy pita bread that servers refill as soon as you demolish a basket. The menu isn’t short of meats, yet the vegetable options shine thanks to the grassy olive oil and bright lemon that punch up rather than overpower. The cocktails, too, are distinct, featuring ingredients like za’atar, mint tea, the chickpea liquid aquafaba and plenty of thyme among the house drinks.
The discussion between Andrés and Rockwell ranges the way it might at a friendly dinner, touching on how the pandemic caused many people—from within the restaurant industry and out—to assess what they want out of their lives. If that includes working in a restaurant, great, Andrés says, but he also doesn’t begrudge anyone who quits to seek other jobs, although it’s making his professional world more challenging.
“Some people like to be in a restaurant because it’s part of who they are, or they need to pay the bills,” says Andrés. “There’s no one answer that fits every reason why anybody would want to join a restaurant, open a restaurant, open a food truck.” But if someone wants to give that up, they should leave, he believes. Given the chance, Andrés says he would backpack around the world. But seeing it through work and new restaurants “will make do.”
The duo are already dreaming up future outposts to bring to South Florida, Las Vegas and California. Zaytinya has been open since July, and they hope its sweeping footprint in NoMad—itself home to a growing wave of restaurants aiming to keep the lunchtime desk-salad crowd around after work hours—serves as a reason to make a night of the city once again.
And that, too, can be the work of supporting a community. Perhaps it’s not as visible a humanitarian act as the work Andrés does with WCK, but it’s helpful through the good times, too, whether providing jobs for servers and staff, connection with your fellow diners, or increased traffic to a given neighborhood. “Every time we open a new restaurant, we are building a stronger connection within the community,” he says, citing his network of Washington spots, as well as his plans to expand in cities like Los Angeles and New York.
“They really are the connective tissue in cities,” Rockwell says of restaurants. “We rarely think about an experience without thinking about a meal to go along with it.”
(Corrects name of streaming service in the second paragraph.)
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