Original subtitles

Nathalie Tolentino: We're in tower one

of the World Trade Center,

the Twin Towers.

And here's my grandmother.

My grandmother visited New York.

She's from Peru.

So, I told her, "You know what, Grandma?

Let's go to my job before I get to work there."

My grandma said, "Wow. I never saw anything so big."

She was mesmerized.

♪♪

♪♪

Michael Lomonaco: Everybody knew what Windows on the World was.

Right there at the top of the World Trade Center.

♪♪

♪♪

Were the highest grossing restaurant in America.

It was glamorous.

Kevin Zraly: The people, the atmosphere, the lighting,

the rugs, Milton Glaser design.

Tolentino: The guests who were coming for special occasions,

you could see it in their faces,

their eyes opened differently.

Ruth Reichl: I mean, you just wanted to go

and press yourself up against that view.

You really felt like you were leaving Earth.

Lomonaco: With 450 employees,

the cooks, the porters, the wait staff,

there was a lot of camaraderie,

and Windows was like the UN of the restaurant world.

Sekou Siby: People from Australia, Russia, Bangladesh,

India, Pakistan, Morocco.

I came from the Ivory Coast.

Tolentino: I was from Peru.

It's New York City. It's a melting pot.

I think the idea that you can even be in the US

was a big, big dream.

Lomonaco: We're all children of immigrants,

whether it's this century or two centuries ago.

The immigrants who worked at Windows,

I mean, they came from all over the world,

and they found a job in the most glamorous,

glorious place in New York City.

[ Train rattling ]

Broken-down trains, filthy sidewalks...

Reporter: New York, within a matter of weeks,

may be bankrupt.

Five days of knee-deep, and in some places,

hip-deep garbage...

Carol Jenkins: Every day, we were covering stories

about people who were losing their homes,

people who didn't have food,

people who were dying in freezing buildings.

Carol Jenkins, News Center 4.

Lomonaco: The imminent collapse of New York in the '70s,

the subways, the crime rate,

it was the Big Apple, rotten to the core.

Everyone gave up on New York, in a way.

Reporter 2: The World Trade Center

in New York City.

It will become the world's tallest building,

rising over 1,300 feet into the sky.

Zraly: The World Trade Center,

it's being built during this financial crisis.

It was a very big expense.

♪♪

Announcer: The World Trade Center,

a working landmark for building international commerce.

Lomonaco: But people just didn't like these two buildings.

They're gigantic monoliths that were sitting in lower Manhattan.

And so, the marketing idea was open a restaurant

at the top of the World Trade Center

to draw people to the building,

humanize it.

So, the operator of the Twin Towers

went to Joe Baum,

the preeminent restaurateur.

Reichl: When I heard that Joe Baum

was opening this restaurant

that was over 100 stories up in the air,

it was "Well, of course, he would do that."

He was a man who understood

that people didn't just go out to eat.

You went out because you wanted an experience.

♪♪

Joe started out by opening a restaurant

in the Newark airport called The Newarker.

He did Mama Leone, the Four Seasons,

Tavern on the Green.

If someone is going to do something really spectacular

in New York in the '70s, it's going to be Joe Baum.

In 1976, I had a job as a salesman.

I was trying to sell wine.

Somebody said to me one day,

"They're opening a restaurant at the World Trade Center."

Okay, I got nothing else to do.

So, I went there.

I said, "My name is Kevin Zraly, and I'm here to sell wine."

So, I get to meet Joe Baum.

He said, "What do you like about wine?"

And I said, "I like to drink it."

"You're hired."

I said, "What do you want me to do?"

He says, "I want you to create the biggest

and the best wine list that New York has ever seen,

and don't worry about how much it costs."

Narrator: The World Trade Center.

From these towers can be seen

the most impressive view of New York City --

reason enough to build a superb restaurant at the very top.

Zraly: Joe Baum put together the team.

All of the best people in New York City.

Reichl: Michael Whiteman was Joe's business partner.

Michael was the businessman, the moderating force.

Zraly: The architect, Warren Platner,

did all the design for the restaurant.

Milton Glaser designed all of our menus.

Barbara Kafka picked all of the glassware, silverware,

all of the pots and pans.

Jacques Pépin was doing all the soup stocks.

And there's James Beard, he created the menu.

Joe created a number of restaurants

in the World Trade Center.

Zraly: The central kitchen, or commissary,

was downstairs on the B1 level.

Up on the 107th floor,

you went to Windows on the World for a full meal,

and there was a glass-enclosed restaurant

called The Cellar in the Sky,

and later on, The Greatest Bar on Earth.

Joe was such a big personality.

Everybody I've ever met who worked for him

said he was hard to work for.

Zraly: "Here comes Joe Baum. Everybody on their toes."

He was a little demanding.

Joe Baum: I'm not an easy boss.

He went nuts when a vendor told him

he couldn't get the wild mushrooms he needed.

Zraly: Remember, you got a 60-second ride

going up the elevator.

You're met by pages.

This is a show every night.

Don't call them uniforms. Don't ever call them uniforms.

They're costumes. The restaurant is theater.

We're not opening the door.

Curtain's going up, everybody, get ready.

♪♪

♪♪

Jenkins: If you were in New York Magazine,

that's wonderful.

If you were on the cover,

you were a smash hit.

At a quarter of a mile up,

New York City is downright tantalizing.

It's decidedly a place to come when the sky is the limit.

I think this is New York's greatest attraction.

You couldn't get into Windows. Don't even think about it.

I mean, unless you knew somebody.

♪♪

Innovative.

Splendid.

Grandiose.

Very swanky.

Magical.

Fabulous.

Zraly: The restaurant had a lot to do

with getting people to say,

"Okay, maybe the World Trade Center

is not that bad."

♪♪

Then, in the '80s, the city came back.

Money is rolling in, suddenly.

Windows on the World was like a metaphor

for what was happening to New York.

You had the very wealthy and you had the very poor.

I could do a story and go to a posh place

like Windows on the World on one day,

and the next day,

I'm covering people sleeping on the streets.

If you were in the corporate world,

you went to Windows on the World

just to show your credibility

and the fact that you're a player.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

Jenkins: Windows was for people with access.

It was over the top.

Reichl: The food was fine, but it wasn't the main event.

You went there to look at the view.

You did sort of feel like...

"I have conquered the world.

The city is at my feet."

Good evening. The stock market today crashed,

the Dow Jones Industrials, every other major index,

breaking records in its plummet downward.

Zraly: When the stock market crashed,

Windows on the World did hit a bump in the road.

We weren't doing a good job and we weren't getting business.

Welcome to the top of the world,

looking down on creation and parts of new Jersey.

"Tourist trap."

We were getting a little old, which happens to restaurants.

In the meantime, you're losing money.

Good evening. I'm Carol Jenkins with Ralph Penza.

There's almost no doubt, tonight, it was a bomb.

Reporter: Pandemonium at New York's World Trade Center

after a powerful explosion.

Rescuers are evacuating thousands of people

from the 110-story Twin Towers.

Reporter 2: A massive explosion ripped through a parking garage

beneath the complex.

Zraly: It could have actually brought down the towers.

I saw the hole that was there.

Six people died.

The terrorist bombing did close down the World Trade Center,

and of course, shook New Yorkers and anybody around.

We were in Windows on the World.

We left everything up there, that's it.

Zraly: And Windows on the World was closed from '93 to '96.

Lomonaco: The reopening of Windows was a big discussion.

What were they going to do?

How would they get people to go back to this building?

Reichl: Joe Baum was back.

I can't say I thought he did as great a job

with the reopening as he did with the original.

And it did feel like a kind of old-fashioned French menu to me.

It was disappointing.

The rolls were cold, the soup was cool,

and the sea bass was overcooked.

♪♪

This is what happens, though, in restaurants.

You try something and it didn't work,

so you're going to have to redo it.

That's a very good idea,

so they don't go all over the floor.

Michael Lomonaco was a star.

He was a chef at 21,

one of the real glamour restaurants of New York.

Tom Snyder: What did your mom, your dad give you

in terms of knowledge of food?

You know, how to cook, how to enjoy food?

Well, you know, growing up in an Italian-American home,

food and the table was the central part of our society.

So, I mean, food was sharing and giving.

We always had homemade meals every night.

Cooking was a passion for me, even as a kid.

Hospitality, welcoming people, cooking for them.

Joe Baum invited me to lunch

to say, "Hey, kid, you know,

you don't know what you're missing.

Baum: We would love to have you join us.

Joe romanced me.

And I felt like this is a huge challenge,

but I'm up for it.

Joe Baum was a guy of immediacy.

He wanted answers to his questions

when he asked them.

Baum: When are you gonna have your menu?

I need time.

Baum: Every day, I'm nervous.

A week later, he was like, "Okay,

what are we gonna do now?"

Baum: I get a little edgy, I guess.

Is your menu ready?"

Fricassee cooked without any stock.

It took three months before I came up with my menu.

...and then, sauteed with olive oil.

I was getting to know the staff,

working with the chefs, pastry chefs, the cooks.

It was a huge operation.

Oh, my God!

Hey!

Sole mio.

How are you?

It's been years.

Oh, come on, don't be so formal.

Lomonaco: The staff at Windows on the World

were really an amazing group of professionals.

Narrator: At Windows on the World,

excellence is demanded in every detail,

from the decor to the desserts.

Oh, my gosh.

That's your stomping grounds.

That's my bar right there.

The oyster bar was my bar.

Oh, that's my restaurant!

Aww.

Ours.

Table 40.

The northern table.

Oh, my gosh.

That's 106, right?

Yes. It is 107.

107, the kitchen.

Yeah, that's 107.

Carmen Bissell: Amazing. I was 20 years old when I started.

And I had never worked with so many people

from so many different countries,

languages, accents.

Sol Policar: Not only were the guests coming in,

many international,

but the people who are taking care of them

were equally international.

Tolentino: So, for me, coming from Peru,

I was just learning from the best.

Living in Lima was chaos.

[ Siren wailing ]

Especially during the worst era of terrorism in Peru.

In college, I studied hotel management.

At one of the internships I had, I arrived to work on Monday,

and the previous night, there had been an explosion

and there was a huge hole on the ground,

and it was a car bomb.

So, I thought, wow,

if I move to New York with my family,

that'd be a safer place.

And it was.

New York, to me, was so grand in the sense of dreams.

One day, I opened the New York Times.

Looking for servers, workers, hostesses...

Windows on the World restaurant.

So, do you want to be a hostess?

Yes.

It felt like a good environment.

I've always been open to learning

from different cultures.

So, one time, the waiters came over and they said,

"Nathalie, we cannot eat."

"Alright. Why?"

"We have to fast because it's Ramadan."

"What is that?" He explained it to me.

So, that was something I learned,

while at work, about their traditions.

So, to me, it felt like I was in the right place,

not only from the advancement of my career,

but the camaraderie.

I mean, I want to say a thousand times.

It just felt good.

Saludos desde Windows on the World.

[ All laugh ]

[ All chattering excitedly ]

Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

Wow.

Siby: There are two who say

they were part of the people who trained me

because when I came, I'd never worked in a kitchen before.

I came to the U.S. in '96.

I was 31 years old.

The Ivory Coast is a French-speaking country

in the west coast of Africa.

I was a French teacher back there,

and I didn't think it was fulfilling

everything that I wanted to do in life.

I thought America is really the country of freedom.

When I came to New York, it was overwhelming.

I didn't know anyone. My English was poor.

I'm Roma Torre with the New York 1 Minute.

I remember listening to New York 1.

Investors say trading could get volatile.

Siby: I didn't know what they were saying.

How to succeed in business without really trying.

Siby: The pace was too fast.

...the MTA, New Jersey transit, and the Port Authority.

Siby: I was a delivery boy in a supermarket.

♪♪

All day long.

Imagine your eyes. It is burning!

Nothing you can do except move, move, move, move.

Can get a little...

What's the word? Crazy.

You get fired if you sit.

♪♪

Sekou was a unifying figure among the staff.

He was one of those people who brought people together.

Siby: Michael Lomonaco was always in the kitchen.

always coming to our station,

tasting the food that we're making.

Snyder: When you go to shop, what are you looking for?

I look for freshness. I look for...

I mean, do you squeeze the fruit?

I do.

Squeeze fruit, smell vegetables.

I created a menu that I thought made sense,

that was fresh,

that was cooked in the moment for the guest.

My feeling was Windows on the World

had to reflect the food of our region.

All the places that we could see

from the windows of the restaurant --

New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, Connecticut.

Within 100 miles of here, we can get three quarters

of all of the ingredients we need

to cook great food --

vegetables and fruits,

flounder fresh from Montauk,

lobster and oysters that are harvested

right here off of Long Island.

Reichl: I went back to Windows.

So much had changed.

I like the skillet-roasted bluepoint oysters

in their rich, caviar-embellished cream.

Delicious.

Lomonaco: We were making braised short ribs

and it was cooked in a very slow method,

so it was so tender and braised in red wine.

Reichl: A very American version of a gutsy pâté.

The rich meat cooked until it is soft enough to spread on toast

and then topped with pungent crumbles

of American blue cheese.

Very satisfying.

Tez Termulo: All of the chops were so fresh

and beautifully prepared.

I was a vegetarian, and I was no longer vegetarian

after working at Windows on the World.

Reichl: Management has finally fixed the food.

Hiring Michael Lomonaco was a brilliant touch.

The food at last, is competition for the view.

Look at that. Yeah. Look how sleek it is.

Oh, man.

I love that.

Interviewer: Did the view get old?

Together: No.

Never.

A little disorienting.

Swayed 6 feet in either direction at the top.

Very slowly, 6 feet, like this.

Bissell: We've experienced it.

Water would swish, sometimes,

out of the toilet because of the sway.

At the podium of Windows on the World,

drawers opened.

So, I had to close them.

At the bar, the glasses would clink.

And then, we would know that the building was swaying

because it would go "clink, clink, clink, clink."

It's like, "Oh, okay."

There's Joe.

Is that Joe Baum?

Yeah.

Is it Joe Baum?

Termulo: He noticed everything.

He noticed when a glass was off.

He knew when his ashtray wasn't on the right angle.

Baum: My intent was to make it

the best-known restaurant in the world.

I think that was accomplished.

Reichl: Joe Baum died in 1998,

but at that point,

the restaurant was on such solid footing.

It was really thriving.

Chew: I think our last year,

we were the highest grossing restaurant...

is it in the United States?

Privately owned.

We were all in sync,

and we were mainly the same people

moving ahead in the company.

David Emil was the owner of Windows.

So, David comes to the front desk one day and he's like,

"Nathalie, are you interested in being a manager?"

Yes.

I felt appreciated.

That was the first opportunity that I was given

to move ahead in my career.

In 2001, I think, for me, it was a first moment of stability.

I decided to bring my wife to America.

I was working a little harder at getting the promotion

and also improving significantly my English proficiency.

For me, it was going in the right direction.

My wife got pregnant and she was due in October 2001.

2001 was the 25th anniversary of Windows on the World.

We were planning a series of parties.

We had it planned for October.

Veuve Clicquot Champagne printed a special label for us.

It was a 25th anniversary label.

25 years for any restaurant is a celebration,

and for us, it was momentous.

The best in the whole fucking building.

Man: That's it. The best in the West.

An inch and a quarter of rain --

Woman: Inch and a quarter?

Inch and a quarter. That was the rainfall total for the park.

Walk over to the wall, we'll show you what it looks like.

This shot, showing you lower Manhattan,

and everything is actually in pretty good shape now

as we work into clear...

The night before...

...so, onSeptember 10th, 2001,

we were planning our 25th anniversary event.

Everything was quiet because Mondays were usually

very quiet at Windows.

I had to be there until the end of the shift,

until everybody left.

I was scheduled to work

on Tuesday, September 11th at 4:00 p.m.

[ Breathes deeply ]

♪♪

Reporter: It's Tuesday, September 11th.

Here's what's happening. It's primary day,

and the polls are open in New York City.

Voters are deciding among...

Lomonaco: I parked my car in the garage.

There was an event that morning, the breakfast meeting.

There were about 100 people coming.

I could have easily gone up to my office,

but instead, I went into the eyeglass shop

to get my glasses adjusted.

You know, there was an ophthalmologist right there

in the building on the lower level.

I was sitting in the office,

he had just examined my eyes,

and I felt the building shake.

And I thought, "That can't be the subway.

That's impossible."

Man: Whoa, what is that?

Man 2: It's the trade center.

Man: It's the World Trade Center.

Reporter: This just in, we have unconfirmed reports

that a plane has crashed into one of the towers

of the World Trade Center.

Lomonaco: First, the lights flickered,

and then they went out.

And within 90 seconds, they were evacuating us.

They came in and said, "You have to get out of here."

Tolentino: I lived in the Bronx with my parents.

My dad knocks on my door and he tells me,

"Something's happening at your job."

So, I turned on the TV in my bedroom.

[ Reporter speaking Spanish ]

Reporter 2: Just before 9:00 this morning in New York,

a passenger jet which had taken off from Boston

slammed into the World Trade Center.

There was paper -- paper --

like confetti,

floating to the ground.

The sky was full of paper.

Fire engines, ambulances, police cars.

I started to do a roll call of who's at work right now.

Who's up there?

Who's in the kitchen? Who's in the dining room?

I thought, "We have the greatest fire department in the world.

They're going to get everybody out of there.

They're going to get everybody out of there."

Then, I heard the roar of the second plane.

So, I looked up at the noise

and I saw the impact of the second plane.

Woman: Oh, my God, another plane has just hit.

Lomonaco: It was at that moment that I understood...

...as, I guess, we all did...

...that this was no accident.

Siby: What do you mean?

She said, "Your World Trade Center building is burning.

And I'm trying to call my husband.

Can you help me?"

We had two phone lines up in the kitchen.

I called both numbers.

It was ringing,

but nobody picked up.

I keep calling the numbers.

Nobody picked up.

Tolentino: I needed to see it with my own eyes.

We lived, at the time, on the seventh floor,

so I went to the rooftop.

You could see, far away, the smoke.

Zraly: I was upstate. We didn't know who was there.

Was any of my team there?

I didn't know. I didn't know if Michael Lomonaco was there.

You're hearing things.

"No, he wasn't there." "He was there."

Standing on the street and looking up,

I was shattered because what I could see

were people waving tablecloths out the window.

[ Sirens wailing ]

Man: The entire building has just collapsed.

It folded down on itself and it is not there anymore.

I'm just watching it.

And all of a sudden, the other tower just collapsed.

And I just said, "My tower is not there anymore."

You know? Like...

Reporter: Good Lord.

There are no words.

And wanted to know, what do you think happened?

So, I was like,

I believe deep in my heart that he left the building.

♪♪

♪♪

A day passed, second day passed,

and nothing.

♪♪

Tolentino: The management team at Windows

created headquarters at the Beacon Restaurant.

Lomonaco: We gathered as a group

to identify our friends and colleagues that we lost.

We shared the pain that we were experiencing with this tragedy

and realizing the magnitude of it.

Lomonaco: More than 150 people showed up,

family members who were missing their loved ones,

their husband or their wife or their father hadn't come home.

Good afternoon, Beacon Restaurant

Windows on the World hotline.

Tolentino: There were a lot of phone calls

that were coming from all over the world,

and a lot of calls in Spanish.

They wanted to know about their relatives.

♪♪

So, I volunteered to answer those phone calls.

It was just very hard.

They were all gone.

Why them? Why not me?

♪♪

♪♪

We created something called Windows of Hope.

September 11th changed our world.

Zraly: ...to raise money for anybody who died

at Windows on the World for their children,

to make sure that they could get health care

until they're 21 years old

and pay for all their college.

I felt the usefulness of being there for those people

than crying on myself

and thinking that I am the most miserable person on Earth.

That was three weeks after 9/11.

Taking care of the baby helped me occupy my mind

and give me a reason why God saved my life.

We had this for the anniversary of Windows on the World,

the 10th anniversary, the 15th anniversary,

the 20th anniversary.

This is for the 25th year that never happened.

♪♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

The most spectacular restaurant in the world.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Termulo: People say, "Oh, but they were just co-workers."

We weren't just co-workers. It was a family.

♪♪

Chew: Have any of you been up in the new Freedom Tower?

Yes.

I haven't.

I haven't, either.

I've only been down there again,

really, in the area, about once in the last 25 years.

Wow.

I haven't gone yet.

It was very hard.

It's gonna take a while.

Yeah.

Siby: Yeah, I've been there several times.

It has a lot of memories.

Most people, for them, it is a symbol

of something that happened.

And for me, uh, knowing...

seeing those names, putting a picture on them,

and knowing what you've done together...

♪♪

Enrique and Jose Gomez,

they're two brothers working in a prep cook station.

And Isidro, too, was just a new citizen.

He got his citizenship. He was very happy.

This was supposed to be my name.

...his name was Abdoul Karim Traore.

I can see his name.

And I can see his wife calling me that morning

and telling me, "Your building is burning."

After, I can remember his kids

being scared of any plane in the sky.

They didn't want to go out anymore

because they feel like a plane will kill them.

So, it has a lot,

a bundle of memories associating with each of the names.

♪♪

Hi, Michael.

Siby! Sekou Siby!

Oh, my God!

I'm so happy to see you.

I'm so happy to see you.

Yeah.

I got myself an MBA,

and doctoral degree in business administration.

So, what I do now is supporting nonprofit organizations.

That's so great.

You caught me in a new kitchen.

That's wonderful.

Now, I'm working with new partners,

and we're opening this French-American brasserie.

It's exciting to be in a kitchen again after 25 years.

That, I like hearing!

[ Both laugh ]

You'll come and see us?

You'll come and see us when we're open?

Absolutely, I will.

Siby: This will be my wife and my two daughters.

Lomonaco: Beautiful.

She's the one who was born 3 weeks after 9/11.

Now, she finished college.

You know, I think that the...

our people that we lost on 9/11,

I think that's not something that ever goes away.

Yeah, exactly.

You lose all those people in one day,

that's not the kind of experience that, you know,

normal, you know, regular people can experience in their life.

But we are still here

and we retain the memory of them.

Yeah.

All those memories of the people,

these are the kind of stories that you remember.

Yeah.

♪♪

♪♪

Zraly: There was nothing ever like Windows on the World.

There will never be anything like Windows on the World.

♪♪

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