As soon as I heard that there was a quarantined ship running out of food, I teamed up with the Central World Kitchen to help them. Since I was their founder Jose Andres, they had to help As I loaded the pots and pans from the kitchen into the truck. I wondered about the problems I would face while helping all 2666 passengers on board “The Princess”. When I arrived at the location where we will be staying to help the quarentied passengers, I truly saw how big the ship was. I was sure that doing this would be impossible without my team. All of us started to prepare starting with unloading all of the food and tools. We set up a canopy to provide shade from the scorching sun on the port. We then moved all of our tools and ingredients onto tables. I decided to wear a fishing vest and cap, then got ready to cook by adding oils to the pot. Our goal was to make sure everyone gets a plate of warm food. With all of us armed with cooking utensils, aprons, and a dream, we got to work.
As soon as we heard that we needed to start, we started preparing the ingredients we would use for breakfast. We were going to use big pots to cook food such as rice and beans, then mix all of it together to ensure more people get to eat more food. The ship’s crew helped us by delivering our food to the passenger’s door steps. I was very happy to see that these people were delighted to eat our food. Some even posted photos of our food on social media. Not soon after we hear that someone died aboard the ship and that the number of infected was going up. It pained us to hear this but we were reminded that we were helping by bringing food to this.
The work was brutal, all of our arms were sore from stirring soup and stew. The final stretch was near and the quarentied passengers would be let go and tested once again. I realized that everyone was always talking about this pandemic that brought us away from each other, bringing sadness and despair. I thought to myself that we are still together, although we are apart we are not alone. This drove me to finish the job of helping these people. I’ve done so much to change people's lives, I thought that I could surely do more.
The last day came out of nowhere, we were down to our last sets of ingredients to use for the last set of meals. We got to work right on schedule, with the unforgettable aroma of food being cooked and soups being stirred. The ship’s crew took and delivered a plate as soon as it was finished and ready. All throughout breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we worked to make sure we kept our promise to ourselves. All you could hear most of that day was the sizzling of meat and the clanking of pots. Although everything seemed fine, at this point there have been a total of 14 deaths. We cooked our hearts out to be able to help those that really needed it. I could only hope that we were doing enough to help the passengers.
The passengers finally were able to leave, those who were still infected had to be treated. After our work we packed our things and went back to the kitchen. Word spread quickly about the work we did and I received multiple interview requests. We also got many thank you’s from victims on social media for helping them. One of the interview offers, from TIME magazine, I accepted. They asked me lots of different questions, most of them asking why I did it or how. They asked me how I thought about the panic around the pandemic. I remembered what I thought about during the ship’s quarantine and told them, we are still together and going through the same thing. However we are simply apart but still not alone and that we are all going through this together.