'But New York will prevail, and restaurants will contribute, as they always have, to a city reborn.'
On September 11, 2001, Wilson Tang was selling insurance for Morgan Stanley on the 74th floor of 2 World Trade Center. When the first plane hit the neighboring tower at 8:46 a.m., Tang didn’t feel the impact, but he did notice paper flying everywhere.
Less than an hour before Tang evacuated his office, Michael Lomonaco, the executive chef and restaurant director at Windows on the World atop the north tower, arrived at the World Trade Center. As usual, Lomonaco was early for work, so he detoured to LensCrafters to have his reading glasses adjusted. After a few minutes he felt a shudder. Within minutes building security staff evacuated everyone from the shopping concourse underground. Just over an hour later, both towers had collapsed.
Michael Lomonaco sensed that his survival of the attacks was a calling to provide a financial life raft for the families of his murdered coworkers. Many of them were immigrants and people of color and often the main breadwinners in their households. Along with chefs Waldy Malouf and Tom Valenti and restaurateur David Emil, Lomonaco started the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund to assist with rent, mortgage payments, medical insurance, and education for the bereaved families.
And yet, just like their colleagues nearly 20 years earlier, restaurant owners and chefs stepped in to provide aid. World Central Kitchen, founded by José Andrés, deployed text-to-order software that enabled 21 New York restaurants to deliver more than 110,000 free meals for those most in need. There were also ad hoc responses from local restaurants. In March 2020 chef JJ Johnson, owner of Harlem restaurant FieldTrip, tweeted, “Looking for contact at Harlem Hospital.
Other restaurateurs have used a variety of strategies to stay afloat. Through a combination of government assistance, rejiggered leases, delivery apps, expanded sidewalk dining , and contracts to provide low-cost or no-cost meals to those in need, many restaurants in the city scraped by with skeleton crews.
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