Internationally acclaimed celebrity chef José Andrés made a name for himself with his vibrant creativity in the kitchen. Part of the wave of Spanish chefs that have taken the world by storm for the last two decades, he took his talents from Barcelona to Washington, D.C. in 1991, and has since built a world-wide empire of 27 restaurants.
For the last two years, however, Andrés has become famous for something else: subtly but effectively pushing Donald Trump’s buttons. He did it again Saturday with a brilliant tweet aimed at the president’s pathetic war with the media:
To all the winners for Mondays’s Dishonest and Corrupt Media Awards of @realdonaldtrump I want to contribute with lunch on me in any of my restaurants as a reward…. https://t.co/LuCkd0c1pG
— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) January 7, 2018
President Trump set-off a hilarious backlash when he announced on Twitter that he’d be ‘honoring’ the most “dishonest & corrupt media” for “Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories.” Late night host Stephen Colbert even purchased a Times Square billboard ad with his suggestion for the categories. The president promised to announce the ‘winners’ of these ‘awards’ on Monday, January 8th.
Now José Andrés is piling on with his epic lunch giveaway that’s sure to set the president off.
Andrés first made headlines in 2015 when he announced publicly that he was cancelling his plans to open a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital after Trump disparaged immigrants and Mexicans during is infamous speech launching his campaign for the presidency.
Andrés said at the time that, as both an immigrant and as an employer of Mexicans who work in kitchens in cities across the country, he felt he could not do business with someone like The Donald after those statements he made. The Trump Organization sued him for breach of contract, and they settled earlier this year after nearly two years of litigation.
Later, Andrés earned the president’s ire when he slammed the administration’s recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria leveled the Island.
“People are hungry today. FEMA should be in the business of taking care of Americans in this minute,” he told TIME in November, nearly a month after Maria devastated the Island. “The American government has failed.”
Andrés and his restaurant group took pennies on the dollar from FEMA to cook and serve meals to relief workers and battered Puerto Ricans, often at a rate of one hundred thousand per day, so he was keenly placed to make that kind of assessment.
Andrés became a naturalized American citizen in 2013, and he isn’t in Puerto Rico for the press. He’s been called the “face of disaster relief” by the Washington Post, and has made a very sincere push to feed people in need.
Unlike President Trump, whose tweets reveal a man concerned only with how he’s perceived during disaster relief. It seems, once again, an immigrant is willing to do a job that an American won’t.
