Chef and Nobel Peace Prize nominee José Andrés was the keynote speaker at this week’s Foundation for the Carolinas luncheon. His 30-minute talk, followed by a question and answer session with Andrés and North Carolina’s own chef Vivian Howard (owner of Chef & the Farmer in Kinston) left us feeling inspired and really, really impressed.

The D.C. chef was a natural fit to speak at the event, which focused heavily on the Foundation’s work on increasing upward mobility in Charlotte and its support of hurricane relief efforts following Hurricane Florence. Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which travels to disaster-struck areas to provide food for those stranded or in need, arrived in Wilmington five days before the devastating storm hit the Carolina coast. Howard, Andrés shared, was the first person his team called in advance of the hurricane.

During his keynote, Andrés discussed why chefs are naturally fit to handle emergencies, why feeding people is the first step to recovery, and his newfound respect for Waffle House. Here are our favorite moments from his speech. —Kristen Wile

On first working at non-profit D.C. Central Kitchen: 
“The most important thing was I was cutting potatoes next to ex-convicts and homeless, and we were on equal paths. Because sometimes being homeless is just a lottery ticket, believe it or not. I’ve been very lucky with my life lottery ticket. Some people are not. [Founder] Robert Edgar told me one day, charity seems to be about the redemption of the giver, when charity should be about the liberation of the recipient.”

On the start of World Central Kitchen:
“I was one man with two hands. And you know what I know how to do? Cook. I always say I cook for the few. If you let me, we can cook for the many.”

On serving 150,000 meals a day in Puerto Rico:
“The difference between making something happen and not is not what you know, it’s not who you know, it’s not your skills. It’s only the moment that you say, ‘I’m going to make it happen because I know I can make a difference.’ That’s what we say. No meetings, no planning. We start cooking and we start cooking and we start feeding.”

On his newfound love and respect for Waffle House:
(Displaying a photo of Andrés with Walt Ehmer outside of a Waffle House in Wilmington). “You know who Walt Ehmer is? He’s the CEO of Waffle House. Talk about a learning experience. He was right in front of Wilmington; his Waffle House, he kept open the entire hurricane. You talk about leadership, sometimes I tell my guys, ‘Leadership is only being there when things happen.’ He’s not the leader because he’s the CEO, he’s the leader because he’s there when he needs to be there. For me it was a big learning experience. … Waffle House, they are like the best of the best.”

On World Central Kitchen’s ability to get running so quickly:
“We don’t have power assets, we don’t own property. We are not about power, we are about software. We have our brain, we adapt to every situation. This last few months, we’ve been in the volcanic Guatemala, fires in California, we’ve been in the tsunami in Indonesia, the two earthquakes in Indonesia, when the last disruption happened in Mozambique. We always arrive with our brain and we adapt. That’s why we are  always able to be more quick than others, because we always adapt to whatever we have around us.”

On why chefs can handle emergencies so well:
“We read plans and books of ‘This is what you do when this happens.’ And then sometimes you read the book and you put it back in the library and nothing happens for five years and the people that made the book are gone. The people that have worked behind the book are gone. The new people come and now we don’t have a book, and then something happens and everything collapses. … We let 3.7 million American lives alone in the dark. And I’m never criticizing that moment, because Maria, what happened in Puerto Rico, we can never prepare for, it was so devastating. I’m talking electricity, water, gas, for weeks and months. It was like an atomic bomb detonated in Puerto Rico. So how do you prepare for something like this? You can’t. But what you can be preparing for is resilience, is preparing your teams to adapt.

That’s what the private sector does. I have my garlic and shrimp. The recipe’s perfect. I made it. I have a customer that comes and says, I don’t want garlic and shrimp with the shrimp. I want no garlic. Make the garlic shrimp without the shrimp and garlic. He’s my guest. I adapt. If we reacted the same as we do in the private sector in the non-profit and government sectors, we’d become much more resilient and much more willing to adapt to the unforeseen circumstances.”

On dining with those World Central Kitchen serves:
“Nothing makes us more human than when we are able to share a plate of food — especially when we share the food with somebody we don’t know. Nothing has made me more feeling like a human than sitting next to a person in the slums of Haiti or Nairobi. … Most of the time, we try to speak a different language to each other, a lot of times we’re sharing a beer or a coke or a plate of food. And that plate of food is always the start of something amazing. In these situations, I do believe that when you are able to deliver a fellow American a good, humble, hot plate of food, it’s just the beginning of sending the message: tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow, we will rebuild. Together we will have the resilience we need.”

Other notable moments: 

“We only care about one thing. When any American or anybody is hungry, we feed them. Feeding people should never, ever be political.”

“I was Catholic-born and going through religion classes and watching Jesus multiplying bread and fish, and then you’re a cook and you’re like, ‘Shit, he’s my hero.’ No, think about it, you’re a cook, you’re cooking and your religious leader is the best cook in the world.”

“Sometimes I feel more American than the Americans. I love what America stands for. We the people. We the people, I don’t care what political party you are. I don’t care about your religion, your skin color, we the people means we’re one, together in these moments, we come out stronger.”

“When you let the bottom make things happen, the boots on the ground, the most amazing things happen.”

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