At some point in the last decade, my investment in mega chef José Andrés was no longer about one day visiting one of his many revered restaurants, but more about his one day winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
Andrés’ unlikely transition from culinary genius to culinary first responder is the focus of We Feed People, Ron Howard’s latest documentary collaboration with National Geographic Documentary Films following 2020’s Rebuilding Paradise. The Oscar-winning director has rather quietly turned into a curious and solid ultra-mainstream documentarian – truly the Ron Howard of documentaries – and We Feed People continues on that journey. It captures enough of the methodology behind Andrés’ career to be consistently interesting, and pragmatic enough not to be exclusively adoring.
We feed people
The Conclusion An inspiring, if slightly uncluttered, portrait of a remarkable man.
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Documentary Spotlight)
Director: Ron Howard
1 hour 29 minutes
Required background: José Andrés grew up and was educated in Spain, including three years at the legendary outpost of modernist cuisine, El Bulli. He came to the United States and in just a few short years had carved his place as one of the most exciting chefs first in Washington, DC and then across the country. He then managed and owned a number of acclaimed restaurants, wrote best-selling cookbooks, and became a near-ubiquitous presence on food-centric television.
In 2010, after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, Andrés founded World Central Kitchen, an organization dedicated to feeding civilians after various disasters. He then traveled the world responding to humanitarian crises such as Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, volcanic eruptions in Guatemala and most recently the aftermath of the Russian attacks on Ukraine.
It would be easy, and maybe even right, for Howard to treat Andrés as a kind of gastronomic avenger, selflessly traveling the globe bringing paella to those in need, while also engaging on various social media platforms. And there is something of that. Andrés is a gregarious, endlessly telegenic personality with a telegenic wife and three telegenic daughters, and they are all full of stories, usually with home video documentation, of Andrés’ larger-than-life approach to everything. The most negative thing you’ll hear about Andrés in the documentary is that his daughters sometimes have to check Twitter to find out where he is.
But altruistic intentions and an altruistic idea are not the same as doing, and the things Howard and his crew want to document most are the many steps between wanting to do good in the world and actually doing it. Yes, this is a documentary about a heroic man, but it’s much more a documentary about the bureaucracy of compassion.
It starts with the lessons Andrés learned in Haiti, which boils down to “cook the beans people want to eat, not the beans you want to cook,” but broadened to something like: “Each emergency situation is different and presents different challenges, and you have to be willing to adapt.”
Andrés may be the focus of the story, but Howard is careful to give time to figures like WCK CEO Nate Mook, the man who must carry out André’s ambitious plans, and also countless workers and fixers on the ground – the people responsible for it hauling supplies across flooded roads and setting up work kitchens amidst rubble – and various local chefs, who saw opportunities to do good themselves through Andrés’ burgeoning infrastructure.
“We must try to create systems where people take responsibility for their situation and their own problems,” Andrés says at one point, one of several references to systemic change rather than the more conventional charity he is trying to implement.
Howard does a good job of depicting how tough the life Andrés has chosen is and it gives insights into the toll it takes on him. Andrés is treated here like a lovable bear who delivers picnic baskets instead of stealing them, but he’s not immune to outbursts of anger. There are glimpses of how he might lose track of social niceties in the process of getting things done. Certain indications of borderline abusive behavior are presented here, but nothing that will surprise anyone who has read Kitchen Confidential. Chefs are fickle, and I’m not saying Howard needs to poke at every raw nerve, but he definitely leaves uncommented some things that some viewers might want to discuss.
There are also hints of tension between Andrés/WCK and more traditional disaster relief organizations. Since I’m interested in the detail-oriented side of what Andrés does, it’s worth considering when he may or may not work with something like the Red Cross or Amnesty International. There’s a feeling that some establishment types might see Andrés as a threat, which could play a role in some tabloid articles that have accused him of being a hustler and pocketing donated money. Andrés denies these allegations and no substantive allegations of this nature have been made, but questions as to where such allegations come from and why are worth asking.
We Feed People is moving and inspiring and – at a brisk 90 minutes – no longer than welcome. Perhaps a longer, more chaotic version of the story would be even more rewarding, but Howard’s bias is toward order. And if this documentary does nothing but introduce some people to the ambitious thing Andrés is doing before he gets that Nobel Prize? That’s not bad.