Karla Hoyos is a chef ready to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice.
Whenever she gets the call, she leaves her taco business in Miami to go anywhere in the world to help feed victims of natural disasters or war.
She is one of dozens of chefs connected to World Central Kitchen (WCK), the nonprofit group founded by renowned chef Jose Andres that provides meals at global hotspots where people face trauma.
A few days ago, Hoyos, 35, returned from Israel, where she spent two weeks teaching volunteers how to make huge pots of food for those who had to evacuate their homes after the attacks by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed, according to Israel.
Security issues forced her to return to Florida, but WCK remains in Israel and Gaza, where it delivers food to those affected by the war between Israel and Hamas.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed almost 15,000 people, mostly Palestinian civilians, according to Gaza’s Hamas government.
“It was a new experience. I’ve never seen missiles go off and having to go seek shelter,” says Hoyos, who is Mexican and was also recently deployed to feed victims in Ukraine affected by the war with Russia.
“But at the end of the day, conflicts are conflicts, and innocent people suffer all the time and we are there to help whoever is hungry.”
Andres, the Spanish-American restaurateur who founded WCK in 2010, mobilizes his network quickly after any catastrophe, and they serve up to 100,000 meals a day with the help of local relief groups and markets.
In recent weeks, the organization has mustered to action in the Mexican resort of Acapulco in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis, as well as in the Middle East and Ukraine.
The role of Hoyos is to set up the makeshift kitchens, manage logistics and even offer the recipes used to prepare dishes.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a garage, if it’s a basement, if it’s a warehouse, if you have running water, electric and air vents, I’ll build a kitchen,” she says.
– Vocation to feed –
Hoyos speaks passionately about her trade from Tacotomia, the small restaurant she opened four months ago in a gastronomic market in downtown Miami.
For her, there is little separation between her humanitarian work and what she does in her business. It’s all part of the same vocation, born at age 12 when she baked her first tray of cookies.
“I want to put as much detail, as much love, in both things. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Michelin star restaurant or you’re eating a taco or you’re going to receive a free plate of rice because you haven’t eaten in days.”
Inspired by her grandmother and rejecting her father’s wishes for her to become a lawyer, she studied at a culinary school in Mexico before traveling to Spain — where she spent a year at a restaurant awarded three Michelin stars — and on to Italy.
Upon her return, she settled in Indianapolis and opened a Mexican restaurant with her aunt. There she began to help others, in an association supporting immigrants.
Her collaboration with WCK began in 2017, when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The catering company she worked for at the time, Bon Appetit, decided to send chefs to the Caribbean island to help Andres feed the population.
Hoyos immediately agreed to go despite widespread power outages and scarce potable water. She initially sized up Andres as a “grumpy man,” but her admiration for the Spanish chef grew, and she worked at his side for three months, eventually hiring on at his Miami restaurant.
Six years later, Hoyos sometimes wonders why she travels to dangerous places like Ukraine or Israel, but her vocation to help always prevails.
The hardest part, she says, is returning to the normalcy of home.
“When you are trying to help people, and [you have] leave, it’s very hard to accept that you have to go home, to your AC, to your fridge full of food, to your job, to your comfort. And there’s a lot of guilt in there.”
