Chef Michael Lomonaco on Life After September 11

Michael Lomonaco in the kitchen

	Porter House New York, Michael Lomonaco’s steakhouse at the Time Warner Center
	The bar at Porter House New York

If Michael Lomonaco hadn’t stopped to get his reading glasses repaired at the optical shop on the concourse level of the World Trade Center a little after 8 o’clock in the morning on September 11, 2001, he would have been on the 106th floor, at Windows on the World, where he was the chef and director. “I was very tuned into my glasses being not quite right,” Lomonaco said, reflecting for what must be the millionth time on the smallest details of that terrible day. “It saved my life.”

This September, of course, marks the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It also marks the fifth anniversary of the opening of Porter House New York, Lomonaco’s steakhouse at the Time Warner Center, where he employs a handful of staff from Windows on the World who, like him, were not at work that day. For the chef, this current venture represents a way to keep what’s left of his Windows on the World team together and to reassert the resilience of the city he loves.

“I’ve spent all my career in New York,” Lomonaco said. “These days, I’m able to do what I do because it’s an honor and tribute to my friends lost on 9/11, because that’s what they were doing on that day.”

The Brooklyn-born Lomonaco spent the first eight years of his professional life in the theater, as an actor and a backstage technician. Like many in his profession, he ended up in the food service industry, though not as a waiter (he did have a brief stint as a bartender). He signed up for a restaurant and hospitality management course at City Tech, a branch of the CUNY system.

He grew up in a family where cooking and homegrown, homemade ingredients were valued. Preparing food felt like a natural outlet for his creativity as well as a way to reach out and connect to people. “I cook with a great deal of happiness and joy,” he says. “It’s a way of giving of myself to others, not only in the restaurant, but as part of being in a community.” It’s something that’s helped Lomonaco work through the grief and loss he felt after September 11.

Looking Back
He recounts his memories of that day 10 years ago with an efficiency and precision that hints at countless internal replays of the events. “There were 100 people in a private party,” he says. “There were 20 or 30 members at breakfast in the World Trade Center Club, plus 72 restaurant workers, one security guard and six men building a new wine cellar.”

Lomonaco’s Windows on the World was one of the top five highestgrossing restaurants in the world; its kitchens cooked day and night, and the elevators ferried guests and staff through miles of shafts that snaked through the center of the tower but still shuddered in the gusts of wind that blew off the Hudson. When the first plane hit Tower One, the North Tower, a few floors below Windows on the World, Lomonaco was underground in the concourse, but his thoughts were immediately with his staff more than a hundred stories above.