Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen distribute thousands of meals in Western NC
Two thousand meals were on their way to Banner Elk Wednesday when a closed road rerouted them to Boone.
“The most amazing thing happened — 2,000 meals were just dropped off from Raleigh,” said Emily Brinker, who co-owns the Rhode’s Motor Lodge in Boone.
The meals were part of World Central Kitchen’s massive feeding mission in Western North Carolina in response to the region’s devastation from Hurricane Helene. Prepped in the Raleigh kitchen by Rocky Top Catering and driven across the state, the trays of pork barbecue, mac and cheese and baked beans will later be airlifted and possibly driven or walked into the hands of someone in need of a warm meal.
As the region continues reconnecting the broken wires and pipes that have unmoored the western mountains from normalcy, a meal remains the most essential need and can mean the first step forward.
“I think this is all you can do, to try and understand why you’re okay,” Brinker said. “We’re okay so we can help everyone who’s not okay.”
Rhode’s Motor Lodge was expecting World Central Kitchen on Thursday, but the detour meant a helicopter was on its way to her boutique hotel in Boone and the meals would be air-lifted to a hospital site in Banner Elk. This is an expansion of the feeding operation the group had already set up in downtown Asheville.
Comparatively unscathed by the storm, Brinker said once her family was able to get from their house to the hotel she had a better sense of the storm’s toll on the region and what it might take to recover.
“It’s complete and total destruction,” she said. “You can’t get many places, most roads are collapsed, most people have zero cell phone service....Everybody who can wants something to do, something to contribute. It’s the only thing that makes you feel okay — to help.”
World Central Kitchen has become a global leader in humanitarian aid, a stabilizing symbol in the midst of disaster. The group, founded and led by world-famous chef José Andrés, was last in North Carolina in 2018, responding to Hurricane Florence with about 150,000 meals in and around a flooded Wilmington area.
Operations for World Central Kitchen typically look to the restaurant kitchens in impacted areas as sites to prepare and distribute meals.
This week the group has a presence in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, where Hurricane Helene made landfall before weakening into a still-punishing tropical storm.
Andrés in Asheville
In the early morning hours on Monday, Andrés posted a video from a Waffle House in Abingdon, Va., saying that he was on his way to Asheville.
The video has been seen 1.7 million times that, along with others he’s shared since landing in Asheville, speak to the chef’s role in shining a light on a crisis as much as lending a helping hand. Since he’s been on the ground in the mountains, he’s surveyed flooding from a helicopter, delivered meals to fire departments working the disaster and sent food to cut-off communities.
The World Central Kitchen site in Asheville has been set up at Bear’s Smokehouse downtown. On Wednesday, a line of tanker trucks sat parked on the street with 100,000 gallons of potable water to hand out.
Bear’s co-owner Cheryl Antoncic said that with the power out Saturday, but the restaurant unharmed, workers made the decision to start cooking what was in the walk-ins for anyone who might need a meal. When World Central Kitchen landed later that weekend, operations escalated.
Antoncic said World Central Kitchen isn’t the sort of help you want your community to need.
“It’s been very surreal; honestly there aren’t really words for it,” she said. “There’s this sense of gratitude that World Central Kitchen brings, but also, ‘Oh my gosh,’ I don’t want you here because I know what that means. It means mass devastation.”
By Tuesday night, more than 60,000 meals had been served by WCK between North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.
Beyond World Central Kitchen, numerous groups and restaurants in the Triangle have collected donations and supplies, prepared meals and shopped for groceries to deliver to the Western mountains. For a complete list of aid groups you can help, follow this link.
This story was originally published October 3, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Chef José Andrés and World Central Kitchen distribute thousands of meals in Western NC."
