Jorge Fuentelsaz
New York, Feb 26 (EFE) .- Luis and Alex plating in the dining room of the restaurant “Addictive Wine and Tapas” the 250 trays of pasta Bolognese that the staff of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx will have for dinner. They are part of chef José Andrés’ initiative to offer food to public hospitals in New York and, at the same time, prevent the bankruptcy of a score of dining rooms.
“If there is an emergency, these restaurants do not operate and what better way than to put those restaurants at the service of using them to feed those who need it,” the chef explains to Efe.
In the last month, José Andrés’ NGO, World Central Kitchen, has offered the 16 public hospitals in the city some 30,000 meals a day prepared in 20 restaurants in the city that are paid between 6 and 8 dollars per plate .
The initiative, subsidized by a fund of almost six million dollars from the Department of Health of the city, started at the end of January and concludes this Friday, coinciding with a timid reopening of restaurants, which since last February 12 can already offer their dishes in the interior rooms although with a reduced capacity.
A LIFEGUARD FOR RESTAURANTS
Francisco Díez, the owner of “Addicive Wine and Tapas”, tells Efe in the empty room of his business, located in the battered neighborhood of Jackson Heights, in Queens, how this initiative was the lifeline that rescued him from sinking in the pandemic .
And it is that this project is the second part of another similar one born last May and that lasted about 20 weeks, when the covid-19 was rampant in the city, and that, then, was subsidized by the businessman and former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg.
“During the pandemic we closed on March 15 and closed completely because we did not have the concept of ‘take out’ – that people can come and pick up – because the beauty of tapas is eating it at the moment,” says Díez.
While explaining the food that they prepare today for health personnel -a different concept with which they have adapted to the new reality- he insists that collaborating in this project: “It helped us in an incredible way to survive the pandemic that was so difficult for restaurants in 2020 “.
“Right now, we are making up to 3,000 meals a week. In total, during the pandemic about 60,000, between the previous 20 weeks and four weeks” of the new project.
José Andrés points out that since the first response of his NGO to the pandemic, attending to people in quarantine on an ocean liner in the port of Yokohama, in Japan, in February 2020, his organization has distributed 40 million meals.
“We have been meeting the needs of hospitals, homes for the elderly, the indigent, and poor neighborhoods, especially at the beginning of the pandemic when no one knew how to respond and in which all traditional food systems, for different reasons, they collapsed “, says José Andrés, who recalls that in the United States they managed to coordinate 3,000 restaurants and have” peaks of 300 and 350 thousand meals a day. ”
A NEW SOLUTION FOR AN UNINTENDED CHALLENGE
Grace Ramirez, one of those in charge of the World Central Kitchen response to covid-19 initiative in New York explains to Efe how the pandemic changed the NGO’s work system.
“Normally, until the pandemic started, we were used to going to a place, establishing kitchens and cooking for the community. Once things start to improve, we leave. In this initiative, specifically, everything was very different, it was a pandemic and no one knew very well what was happening at the beginning, “he says.
In New York “we have worked with more than 250 restaurants to date, which makes us proud to say that we have saved more than 250 restaurants from closing,” he concludes.
The Spanish chef, who has repeatedly criticized the federal government’s response to the beginning of the pandemic, has spent months working with legislators from the Republican and Democratic parties to activate the response of the US emergency agency FEMA to situations of this type.
For José Andrés, responses to crises of this magnitude should not depend “only on the generosity of some individuals or businesses that want to help on time. When there are emergencies, you have to be very organized, you have to professionalize the response.”
ELMHURST HOSPITAL, ONE OF THE BENEFITED
At the Elmhurst hospital in Queens, located in the middle of one of the areas hardest hit by COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic, the NGO offers food to about 3,000 people, who usually pick up their tray when they start their shift. between an option with meat, another vegetarian and a third suitable for practicing Jews and Muslims.
“We are here helping people not to have to cook at home, they do not have to think about how they are going to eat during the day,” World Central Kitchen project manager Russell Bermel told Efe before explaining that in hospitals As big as this, the food is ordered from a caterer, because restaurants do not have that much capacity.
It is seven in the afternoon and night has already fallen on the city, where still some accumulations of snow remind of the recent snowfall.
Anthony Jarzembowski, associate director of the hospital, recounts how the “environment is stressful” in the current situation and “all energies are going into caring for patients in the community.”
“Doctors and nurses work long and long hours and this helps, at least it is one less thing they have to think about when you come to work every day,” he concludes. EFE
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| K: SOC: SOCIEDAD-SALUD, SALUD AGR: AGROALIMENTACION, RESTAURACION |
| Q: SYS: en-ES: 07001001: Sanitation and health: Diseases: Contagious diseases AGR: en-ES: 98012000: Agri-Food: Restoration |
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