Tom Roston - The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York

Copyright 2019 Tom Roston

Cover 2019 Abrams

Published in 2019 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958827

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3799-2
eISBN: 978-1-68335-693-6

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To Hannelore and Bob,
an immigrant and an American
who made me a part of their New York story.

America is a gooood country.

It was a joke, but not really. Its what the Windows on the World crew said to one another after a heavy night, after turning and burning a station of eight tables with more guests waiting at the door.

Its what the front waiters said to the back waiters, who said it to the busboys, managing the stress of six hundred covers or more through banter and a nod to something bigger.

It was one of the many running jokes for a staff that treated one another like family or fellow combatants. It was a sarcastic sign-off, as in, This is what I signed up for? As in, Ive got to be on my feet for six hours straight, in constant motion, doing a hundred things at once and always with a smile?

But it also, in fact, meant: This is the answer to my prayers. As in, I came to this country unsure I could survive the week, and now I make enough for my children to have a future I can be proud of.

Most nights, it was said when tips were paid out, accompanied by handshakes and backslaps and competitive bravado about just how much one had made that nighttwo hundred dollars, three hundred dollars, five hundred dollars, the number always slightly inflatedand the recognition that, yes, everyone was happy to be there.

And it was followed by nights in fluorescent-lit restaurants where the Windows staff would go after their shifts were over, so that they could be together into the wee hours to laugh and drink and suck on black bean shrimp heads in Elmhurst, Queens, or wash down sushi with cheap sake near Tompkins Square Park.

Of its four hundredplus employees, the Windows on the World staff included immigrants from more than two dozen countries: the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Ghana, Mexico, Bangladesh, Poland, Peru, China, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Pakistan, Cuba, and so on.

And here they all were, some undocumented, most living in the outer boroughs, working together, at the top of the greatest city in the world.

Im never going to leave this place, Paulo Villela, a captain and sommelier, would say to his friends on staff. Villela had studied agricultural engineering in his native Brazil but had moved to America in 1983 because his son, Bernardo, had a rare metabolic disease that required care he could find only in the United States. Windows on the World gave us full benefits. I would have worked there just for the insurance, he says. But the money was so good. There were busboys, straight out of Bangladesh, making sixty thousand dollars a year. People from all over the world. We got along great. It was the best place to work.

* * *

At two oclock in the morning on September 11, 2001, Moises Rivas was still awake in his home in Queens, playing his guitar and singing to his wife, Elizabeth. A songwriter and musician, Rivas supported his family by working as a cook at Windows on the World. The alarm went off at 5:00 A.M ., and Rivas turned it off. But by 6:30, the twenty-nine-year-old from Ecuador was up and rushing. He said he had to fly, to get to work in the cafeteria serving breakfast on the 106th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Luis Alfonso Chimbo, also from Ecuador and living in Queens, worked in the receiving department. When the thirty-nine-year-old got his first job at Windows on the World, he acted like a little boy getting a toy that hed always wanted. He would walk in the market with his wife, Ana Soria, and their twelve-year-old son, Luis Eduardo, and show them how to smell a melon to gauge its freshness. He was up by five that morning and quietly left around five thirty. Normally, he would kiss his wife, still in bed, but not that morning. As he drove away from the house, Soria went to the window and said, Goodbye, my love.

Executive pastry chef Heather Ho didnt want to be there. Shed given notice several weeks before, but she was staying on for a whileshe was not the sort of person to leave someone high and dryuntil executive chef Michael Lomonaco had a replacement. The daily grind of churning out hundreds of desserts wasnt the right speed for the Hawaii native. Ho was a tireless worker, but she wasnt about volume. She had a boutique sensibility.

The Gomez brothersJose and Enriquefrom the Dominican Republic were doing prep work, as usual, cutting vegetables and cleaning seafood. Their other two brothers, Ramone and Miguel, werent working that day. Lucille Francis, a grandmother from Barbados, arrived early to lay out the towels that she would be handing to patrons in the womens bathroom. Her son, Joseph, a Windows waiter, took the day off to oversee a construction project at home.

Most of the seventy-three Windows employees working that morning were in the banquet area on the 106th floor, one floor below the main restaurant. The morning was a cherished time, because it was relatively calm. Its when waiters might help themselves to a generous slice of yesterdays chocolate cake, if they could get to it. You could sneak five minutes, sitting at one of the east-facing tables, with your feet up and naval-style jacket falling open, watching the sunrise.

Windows had been annually serving hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors, putting on a massive and intricate high-wire act, for two and a half decadeswith a three-year gap when the restaurant went dark after the 1993 bombing in the World Trade Center basement that killed six people, including one of its employees. Business was now at full throttle; Windows was the highest-grossing restaurant in the country and was preparing for its triumphant, twenty-fifth anniversary party in October.

The lions share of the responsibility for the celebration would fall on the shoulders of Chef Lomonaco, a Brooklyn native who could remember, when he was a taxi driver in the 1970s, how Windows represented the ne plus ultra of great New York dining. Hed been running the kitchen since 1997 and was a primary force behind turning the restaurants flagging fortunes around.