Tastemaker’s Note → Twenty-five years ago, New York stopped and with it, the entire world. What followed was one of the greatest acts of collective rebuilding any city has ever attempted. While there is no playbook for what New York went through, there is only what it did afterward, our resilient city. Tonight is for the 2,977. The weeks ahead are for everyone else.

Tonight, look up. The lights beams are shining into the sky 🌟

It’s exactly twenty-five years since the night before the world changed forever. For most of us New Yorkers, we remember the second to second recount of 9/11 like it was yesterday.

That night before, people did what they usually do….

They planned their outfits for work, tucked their kids into bed, kissed and hugged loved ones without knowing what awaited them the next day.

The night before for me carried a different indescribable weight.

I had just buried my grandmother and would be missing my second week of high school as a senior. My mind was grief stricken from losing the person who helped raise and shape me as a person, a woman of both substance and wisdom.

On the morning of September 11, we received a call we’d never forget. It was my father. He said to turn on the tv, that there was a huge accident in Manhattan, and that his business’s storefront was covered in an eerie dust….

I still remember the fear that followed after seeing the World Trade Center covered in smoke. I still remember the disbelief of the nightmare we were living.

That moment, I realized my reality was actually a blessing in disguise. Goosebumps covered my arms and tears streamed my face….

You see, my mother, aunts and uncles all worked in the World Trade Center area, downtown and Empire State Building. But we were all home mourning my grandmother.

So, its twenty-five years of losing a mother-figure and gaining an angel in return.

It lived beautifully in my childhood and adolescence.

Borders Bookstore on the lower level, was such a fascinating place. Even as a child, I thought it was designed in the smartest way. Two floors. Special nooks to hide in while discovering fun things.

When my mother took me to work, we’d visit Borders where I’d sit on the floor covered in books that fueled my imagination.

Oh, and Windows on The World…..a restaurant at the top of the world, literally. My mother’s holiday parties and work fundraisers were always there.

It was an experience that, for a time, essentially had no equivalent. It occupied an extraordinary position: roughly 1,350 feet above Manhattan, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering 360-degree views of New York Harbor, the skyline, the bridges, rivers and beyond.

Going to Windows on The World gave you a chance to look down on Manhattan. It helped define the “sky-high-dining” category and blur the lines of restaurant, observation experience, cocktail destination, event venue and symbol of New York.

That combination was unusual. You could take someone there for a business dinner, a celebration, a romantic evening, a major event, or simply because you wanted to be at the top of the world. And, you know…we even considered this magical place for our high school’s prom.

While the WTC was symbol of global finance and commerce, Windows on The World represented aspiration, New York, hospitality, internationalism, and endless possibility.

It was literally a place where people went to look outward.

Isn’t it funny how our memories of places are often attached to completely mundane things?

Borders bookstore, the restaurant atop, a subway ride there, the feeling of being small beneath those enormous buildings. The memory of looking up and seeing the skyscrapers as something impossibly tall. Too tall, I thought back then.

The beautiful irony is that today, we are still building beautiful things there.

Since then, billions of dollars have flowed into rebuilding Lower Manhattan.
We talk about billions of dollars as though they are abstract. But sometimes capital is simply another word for commitment. Someone has to believe that there will be a tomorrow before they spend billions building for it.

→ $3.22 billion. That was the value of the 99-year World Trade Center lease signed by Larry Silverstein and his partners just six weeks before September 11.

→ $4.6 billion. The approximate maximum insurance recovery ultimately at stake in the long legal battle over the destroyed properties.

→ $20 billion. The scale of public and private investment that has since gone into rebuilding and transforming Lower Manhattan.

Twenty-five years later, New York is still building.
We have a newfound energy that flows across towers, restaurants, hotels, homes and completely new businesses.

We are building where something was destroyed, yes. And it’s not because we have forgotten the disaster. It’s because we chose not to.

Perhaps, building is itself a therapeutic form of remembering.

Today, the Memorial pools occupy the footprints of those who perished and One World Trade Center rises beside them as a grounding force.

→ Although the towers are gone, their footprints still remain. Water falls into the spaces they once occupied, turning absence into something we can see, hear and remember forever.

→ The Memorial remembers the people we lost and The Museum remembers who they were.

→ The new Freedom tower chose to rise in its own direction, standing 1,776 feet toward the future.

→ Even the light was given a memory. Every September 11, it traces the hours of that morning through the Oculus, before continuing on.

Nothing at the World Trade Center exists to erase what happened there. Everything was carefully thought of and planned to perfection.

The Memorial remembers the loss.
The trees show life.
The Oculus keeps people moving.
The towers rise.
The theater creates.
The church prays.
And the city keeps coming back day after day.

People eat, work, visit, shop, commute, stay in hotels and go to performances around the site.

Life returned. Not the same exact life.
But life and that’s the most important thing of all.

Caviar has always tasted like home to me, because it began with my upbringing….

Twenty-five years later reminds me that moving forward and remembering can exist on the same table.

P.S. Like my style (and taste)? Work with me.