Chef Jose Andres' Culinary Wild Ride

Jose Andres calls himself a pilgrim from Spain - a chef who arrived in the United States 20 years ago with just $50 in his pocket and a set of cooking knives. But these days it's hard to call him anything less than an amazing American success story. He was GQ magazine's chef of the year, runs restaurants on both coasts and has been nominated for outstanding chef in America by the James Beard Foundation.

Andres' personality is enormous, as are his plans to charm America into changing its eating habits. But it's his avant-garde approach to cooking that has really made him famous, and has his diners rethinking how much fun food can be.

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Link: D.C. Central Kitchen

"Eating has to be fun, has to be a social event, but where you have fun that you are relaxed. But at the same time that you are relaxed, doesn't mean that you cannot be putting a lot of thought behind what eating, what the food means to you," Andres told correspondent Anderson Cooper.

"Minibar is a window into creativity, that's all," Andres added, laughing.

Jose Andres' "minibar" is a kind of culinary laboratory in Washington D.C. where Cooper was lucky enough to skip a month-long waiting list for one of just six seats.

He got the first course and the first surprise: a temperature layered cocktail.

"This is what we call the drink by the chef," Andres explained. "A cocktail can be made by the bartender. But the cocktail also can be made by the chef."

"It's great. It's hot but it's cold. There's cold underneath it," Cooper observed.

"Already your taste buds are already being excited because they are asking themselves, 'What's happening here?'" Andres said.

What's happening here is "molecular gastronomy" - a cooking technique that embraces science and technology. Andres says his 30-course menu is as much about the brain and the eye as the tongue and stomach.

Listen to his explanation of "the air" floating on top of caviar brioche: "It's like if you are walking in Fifth Avenue and you could open your mouth and right there in the middle of Fifth Avenue you would have that flavor in your mouth, that's what air is all about."

Then there was what appeared to be a miniature ice cream cone, with salmon roe "bubbling" out.

"Bagel and lox. Inside has cream cheese and instead of the smoke salmon has salmon roe," Andres explained.

Dishes are a bite or two with some complicated combinations. For example, Cooper wondered why there was cotton candy wrapped around seafood.

"Cotton candy is the most amazing form of caramelization ever invented by man. You're gonna love it. It's going to be sweet and the smokiness of the eel," Andres explained.

Andres dishes are cutting edge, so what he thinks about ingredients may surprise you.

"I believe the future is vegetables and fruits. They are so much more sexier than a piece of chicken," Andres said.

"You find vegetables and fruits sexy?" Cooper asked.

"Unbelievably sexy," Andres replied, laughing. "Come on, think about it for a second, okay? Let's compare a chicken breast, the best chicken breast from the best farm with a beautiful pineapple. Cut the pineapple, already the aromas are inundating the entire kitchen. Acidity. Sour after notes, touches of passion fruit."

"All right. You're makin' me excited," Cooper said.

The chef told Cooper he thinks meat is overrated. "Well, meat to me, it's slightly boring. Hold on, I love meat too but only once in a while. You get a piece of meat and you put it in your mouth, you chew, the first five seconds, all the juices flow around your mouth, they're gone, and then you are 20 more seconds chewing something that is tasteless at this point. Something like this doesn't happen with a pineapple, an asparagus, or a green pea," he explained.

"How would you describe José Andrés to someone who's never met him or never tried his food?" Cooper asked Ruth Reichl, one of America's most respected food writers.

"Expect wonders," she said. "Food is going to do things that you never imagined. It's going to come floating at you. It's going to explode. It's going to have textures that you didn't ever think that would be in your mouth."

"So it's not just a gimmick?" Cooper asked.

"It's not a gimmick? It's a kind of magic. It's like a circus of the mouth," Reichl replied.

Reichl says Andres started a revolution when he moved to America almost 20 years ago. "He was the first person to really start thinking about molecular gastronomy in this country and what molecular gastronomy says is 'What if we think about deconstructing food?'" she explained.

Asked what she means by deconstructing food, Reichl said, "Taking the parts of the food you know, separating them and recombining them in interesting ways."

To show how he can deconstruct food, Andres focused on Cooper's favorite soup, New England Clam Chowder, probably one of America's most traditional soups.

"The traditional New England clam chowder the clams are over-cooked. These ones are raw - already so much better," the chef explained.

Every ingredient is the same: clams, bacon, cream. The same, until he adds the potato.

"A potato mousse. But is the lightest form of potato mousse ever," he explained. "This is what America is all about. A Spanish boy that came 18 years ago actually trying to move forward a classic American dish. New England clam chowder."

Andres techniques are so advanced he's been asked to teach a course in culinary physics next fall at Harvard.

"One of the things we are trying to do today is to make sure that we are able to feed people, maximum flavor, with a minimum quantity of food," he explained.

He has been visiting the scientists there for years, working to understand the chemistry of everything in his kitchens, and while we were there with him, he spent the better part of a day trying to better understand a complicated emulsion known as commonly as mayonnaise.

"We are surrounded by science. Everything that happens in our lives, especially food, is a science. Finally what is happening, is that we know the why," Andres said.

The "why's" and 'what's" of high school didn't interest Andres too much, so he dropped out and enrolled in a cooking school in Barcelona. His big break came when he was hired by the world's most celebrated chef, Ferran Adria.

Adria trained him in avant-garde cuisine. Andres left for America and in 1993, opened up a classic Spanish tapas bar called "Jaleo" in Washington D.C. where he built a reputation and a following.

Now the cook who arrived in this country with just a few dollars in his pocket runs eight successful restaurants. His latest, called "The Bazaar," has him spreading the gospel of Spanish influenced molecular gastronomy in Beverly Hills.

He introduced Cooper to a treat that combined liquid nitrogen and popcorn.

"Caramelized popcorn. Are you ready for this because I believe your life is gonna change forever. I mean it," Andres joked.

"This is gonna change my life?" Cooper asked.

"Maybe. Ok. That's dragon breath boy," Andres explained, as vapors came streaming out of Cooper's nose and mouth.

"What just happened?" Cooper asked.

What's happening in The Bazaar's kitchen is that Andres and his culinary director Reuben Garcia are creating dishes with tastes and textures that have customers delighting in his creations, like cotton-candy wrapped foie gras.

"When I cook, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm very selfish, me and my team. We need to please ourselves. We need to make sure that we are convince of what we are doing and eating and that we see ourselves in that dish we are creating. If I don't please myself, it's impossible I will be able to please you," Andres said.

The Bazaar is the only restaurant in Los Angeles with a four star review from the L.A. Times, and getting a reservation here is a bit like getting a seat next to Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game.

While Andres is proud of his success in sunny Los Angeles, he is probably prouder of the kitchen he has volunteered at for the last 17 years in a tough Washington D.C. neighborhood.

"I came here as a cook, sharing my time peeling potatoes," Andres told Cooper, as they walked into the "D.C. Central Kitchen."

The kitchen was founded by Robert Egger, who says Andres wandered in and offered his expertise, just weeks after he moved into town.

"We couldn't get rid of him, man. I mean, he came down here and he was always down here helping," Egger said.

"I always felt like I have to give back to America what America has given to me," Andres explained.

He was drawn to their model: a 12-week culinary training course for people with little hope - former prisoners, drug abusers and homeless. Now they distribute fresh meals daily prepared from one ton of donated surplus food.

Staffers say they've stopped being surprised when they hear Andres saying, "Hola guapa…Hola senior, que pasa" first thing in the morning, when the chef shows up to work.

"Chefs of America, we should be more outspoken about the way we are feeding America, not only about what I'm feeding them in my restaurant or in the great restaurants of America. It's only one, two or three percent of the Americans that eat in those restaurants. We should be more committed about the other 97 percent of Americans that don't come to our restaurants. That should be what I hope one day will be my little contribution," Andres told Cooper.

The chef has hired 10 graduates from the D.C. Central Kitchen and personally mentored 50 of their interns. He has also helped to raise a million and a half dollars for the program that helps to feed 4,000 people every single day.

"Do you see yourself as a Spanish chef working in America or an American chef who is trained in Spain?" Cooper asked.

"See more and more myself as an American chef that was trained in Spain," Andres replied.

At 40 years of age, this unofficial ambassador from Spain is about to open restaurants at the new Cosmopolitan Resort in Las Vegas, also in Miami, Mexico City and Paris. But Washington D.C. remains home for Andres, his wife Patricia and their three daughters, Carlotta, Ines and Lucia.

It's also in D.C. that the chef, who wants to change the way America looks at food, offered Cooper one last lesson during last call at "minibar."

"This is a mojito," Andres told Cooper. "Put this on your tongue and it's gonna explode. And you're gonna find this amazing…take a look. What you see here like a solid thing. Like you will think actually inside is liquid. Because outside is a very thin membrane. But is liquid. And you say how we make that? Well, in the end, it's simple. We use a seaweed that we call algae. We use a salt that is a salt of calcium. That one with the other allows us to make things like this. Sphereification. I don't like to tell people about the ingredients I'm using. But they are very not normal ingredients. Average ingredients. The right use of those ingredients allows me to make dishes like this."

"I'm trying to resist licking that off the plate," Cooper remarked.

"Hey, cut the cameras off," Andres joked, laughing.

Produced by Bill Owens