In the months prior, Andrés and I had spent time together in Chicago, where he was opening two new restaurants, and at his home base in Washington, D.C. “Everywhere we go in Ukraine…food is at the center of resistance!” Andrés tweeted. We saw a bakery in Lviv turning out thousands of loaves for refugees sheltering at the train station chefs in Kyiv making cabbage-and-potato-stuffed pyrizhky to send to orphanages the food hall in Odesa, turned into a food donation and distribution center WCK’s signature giant paella pans repurposed for massive batches of borscht and applesauce 18-wheelers filled with flour and other staples, headed to areas of fighting too intense to set up cooking operations.
Many were the signature selfie videos that have become a vital part of WCK’s storytelling and identity, and are often among the first images on the ground that the world sees following a disaster. By then, Andrés had spent nearly four weeks sending out messages from the Ukraine border and inside the war-torn country itself.
