By Carol Brock
Joe Baum had done it again.
The great impresario of fine dining (La Fonda del Sol, Forum of the Twelve Caesars and the Four Seasons) had contracted to design and operate a restaurant atop the new World Trade Center.
Roger Martin, director of marketing, named it “Windows on the World.” It opened on the 108th floor in May 1976. It was a staggering place. I relished every visit to this, the most spectacular restaurant in the world.
It’s where you took visiting relatives. It wasn’t only the sensational view — the hors doeuvres from all over the world prepared by native chefs as you watched, was worth the trip at any location. A crepe station. Sushi. Moroccan, Greek and Italian antipasto.
And there was music, a guitarist. They served brunch on Sunday — something I wanted to try but never got to do.
But my favorite dining at Windows was not seated at a table with incredible views from floor to ceiling windows (which Joe Baum had insisted upon and Yamaguchi, the architect, acquiesced), but the Cellar in the Sky. And it didn’t have even one window on the world. The room was intimate, only 36 seats, and walled in by rack after rack of wine bottles. The concept was original: You had a seven-course dinner accompanied by five wines especially selected by Cellarmaster Kevin, all for one price — $45.
Kevin Zraly made his reputation at Windows as cellarmaster and still teaches — now I must say taught — a wine course there. (I ran into him at the Delhi state College fund raiser for an endowment set up in his name to disseminate wine information to their hospitality students. “Yours is the only face I recognize,” said he.)
As a member of the press, I was privy to press lunches and private parties in Windows’ private dining rooms in the Hudson River Suites. The view was New Jersey from a quarter of a mile up and it, too, was impressive. Somehow it seems it was almost always cloud-free. Les Dames d'Escoffier, an organization I founded 25 years ago, held its third black-tie dinner investiture of new members in one of the ballrooms which could entertain up to 800.
And then it happened. The car bomb. Windows on the World was closed.
When the enormous structural damage was repaired, bids went out. Who would run Windows on the World now? What would the new concept be? The Joseph Baum Michael Whiteman company submitted their latest rendition. The competition was fierce.
To everyone’s surprise, Joe did it again. Now, in lieu of Cellar in the Sky, there would be the Greatest Bar on Earth and Wild Blue, a restaurant within a restaurant, an upscale steak house, the pet of Chef Lamonico.
One of the first 1995 events of the reincarnated Windows, was another black-tie dinner on the 107th ballroom floor for Dames. Roseane Whiteman, who once lived in Forest Hills where her mother still resides, was a Dames member and involved with Windows. Later I dined and danced there when her husband Michael and Roseane were honored as the “Hospitality Couple of the Year.”
On my most recent visit I came as culinary arts director of Great Neck’s Adult Program. A bus load of “adult eds” dined at the private luncheon club that Windows became at noon weekdays. It was the best ever food I’d had at Windows. Dessert was served in a private room and Roseane, Michael and Chef Lamonico “lectured.”
It was a rainy day with terrible traffic and the bus was an hour late returning, but no one complained. They had dined at Windows and viewed the majesty of the New York world from there.
Then it happened — again. This time it was utter destruction.
The first person I worried about was Andrea, a charming, extremely vine-knowledgeable, young woman who, pregnant, had given a talk at a meeting of the International Hospitality Committee of National Council of Women comprised of counselor wives and wives of UN delegates. The announcement came. She was not there when.
Chef Lamonico (Lamonico the Lucky) was elsewhere in the complex being fitted for glasses. (And I’m sure there will be another version of Wild Blue at another time, in another place.)
Then I thought of Joe Baum. Joe was in the hospital when the contract for the Rainbow Room (another Joseph Baum-Michael Whiteman production) was not renewed at Rockefeller Center. He lost his will to fight and died shortly thereafter. What if.
I had been given a leather-bound 1984 Executive Desk Diary from Windows.
Not too long ago, I ran across it and started jotting down messages from my phone tape. Three pages remain blank. I will not fill them.
Windows on the World is no more.
Carol Brock is Qguide’s restaurant reviewer.
