Celebrity Chef already in Bahamas ready to provide food after Dorian

MIAMI BEACH, Fl. –

Celebrity Chef José Andrés is in the Bahamas Sunday. He is calling himself the "Food First Responder."

Andrés, whose restaurants include The Bazaar on Collins Avenue in South Beach and Fish inside The Cove Atlantis in Paradise Island, Bahamas, runs the World Central Kitchen Chef Relief Team, a nonprofit he started about a decade ago. 

Andrés was deployed to Florida on Thursday evening to prepare for Hurricane Dorian. On Sunday, at 1:36 a.m., Andrés, tweeted from his @chefjoseandres Twitter account that he was meeting with Bahama officials "to help coordinate a feeding response."

In his follow up, Andres said he met with Prime Minister Hubert Minnis and was ready.

A WCK Dorian Response map shows areas where chefs would be deployed in Freeport and Abaco, and in kitchens inside Abaco Beach Resort, Atlantis Bahamas, Grand Lucayan Resorts in Grand Bahama Island, and Castaways Resorts and Suites in Freeport.

Andrés is ready for possible devastation at resorts that might not have kitchens remaining from Dorian's Category 5 wrath.

"If kitchens are destroyed, we build one and cook in big paella pans," Andrés tweeted.

The chef emerged as a leader of the disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. As of December of that year, his non-profit organization had prepared more than three million chef-prepared, made-from-scratch meals.

In 2013, WCK established its chefs network, which includes more than 100 professional chefs, kind of a "chefs without borders," according to Andres, but it was Hurricane Maria that put his disaster relief efforts into action. WCK originally received $1.5 million from FEMA, but Andres said that it is private funding that fuels the relief efforts.