Feeding Frenzy

World Central Kitchen, founded by chef José Andrés, has helped millions of people through disasters. The pandemic brought a new challenge

- By Robb Mandelbaum

The rush began early in the kitchen of Blueprint Cafe Lounge, a fusion restaurant in the East Ward of Newark, N.J. On a Thursday morning in December, Isabel Melo, a chef, arrived at 5:30, well before sunrise. First she retrieved trays of zucchini-carrot salad, prepared the night before, from the cooler, then filled a couple of large stockpots with water to boil penne— 20 pounds of it. As the pasta cooked, she finished offa cream sauce simmering in a large saucepan with curry. By 9 a.m., assistant Antonio Flores had begun grilling trays of chicken that had marinated overnight in a savory mix of basil, cinnamon, and garlic.

It was a lot of food for a restaurant in a city that was once again on the brink of lockdown. And that was only half the morning’s order—the chefs also prepared a banquet’s worth of fried fish with potato casserole and roasted vegetables. But none of these meals were meant for Blueprint’s regular clientele. At about 10:40, the restaurant’s manager, Charles Steiner, loaded up his Audi with a hundred freshly boxed fish meals bound for a community service organization a few miles away in Newark’s North End. Then he came back for a hundred chicken meals to take to the Metropolitan Baptist Church.