TWENTY-ONE
More Than Food Alone
Like the rest of New York City, I’d been paralyzed on the morning of September 11, numbed by hours spent in front of the television watching the two planes stab our city straight through its heart over and over in the worst-ever instant replay. I’d overslept, so instead of hearing the news while working in my basement pastry kitchen, I was home, unable to believe my eyes. Twenty-four hours after the crashes, I returned to work at the restaurant with the rest of the kitchen staff. We were unable to get back to our routine and not just because of logistical difficulties (problems with deliveries and reservation cancellations); we were all stunned, our normal motivation paralyzed by the feeling that we should be doing something, anything, to help stitch up the city. There was no point in prepping for lunch or dinner service; few, if any, people would be dining with us that day. Instead, we began to think about the hundreds of people working nonstop downtown who would need to eat. Whatever food they already had would probably be prepackaged, neither fresh nor appetizing. We knew that, even with minimal ingredients, we had the know-how, experience, and, most important of all, the time and resources at that moment to prepare good food. We went through all our walk-in boxes and pulled out anything that could be made into a tasty and easily transportable meal. We made as many sandwiches as we could, trying to imagine what the rescue workers would like. We rolled the dough I had proofing in the refrigerator (meant for dinner rolls) into thin discs and then baked them into pitastyle rounds that we used for sandwich wraps. We grilled chicken and hanger steak, sliced tomatoes and red onions, mixed mustard sauces and mayonnaises. I baked all the chocolate chip cookie and coconut macaroon batter I had left, hoping it wouldn’t seem silly to bring cookies. We loaded everything, along with cases of water, into our restaurant’s Jeep.
Our friends and former colleagues at Tribeca Grill, who had been forced to close (since no regular traffic was allowed below Fourteenth Street), had had the same idea. They set up a temporary resting place for relief workers in their dining room, which became a general stopping-off point below Fourteenth Street. A police captain from the neighborhood came out of retirement temporarily to help out his old precinct. When I worked in the neighborhood years earlier, this same captain had been notorious for showing up at restaurants and expecting special attention or service (a burger, even though there wasn’t one on the menu, things like that), but with his precinct in need, he shed his air of entitlement. In the days to come, he provided us with the police escort we needed to get past the many protective blockades that surrounded lower Manhattan, and I was reminded of what my father had always said about disasters and wars: Despite their horror, they bring out the best in people.
South of Franklin Street, nonmilitary vehicles were banned altogether, so the only way to get around was on foot. The four of us who had piled into the Jeep loaded up our arms with as much as we could manage and started walking. Instinctively, we each walked alone; to have the safety or comfort of a coworker by our sides seemed an unfair luxury, or maybe we just wanted, or needed, to be alone in the exodus downtown.
I walked first to Stuyvesant High School, where a Red Cross worker told me that the streets farther south would be blocked off and guarded by military. Try to get past them, she’d said. Nothing’s getting down that far, and they’re desperate. So I followed her directions and continued south on Greenwich Street, my arms full of food and bottled water, until I reached the line of military trucks and personnel dressed in full camouflage who were protecting the disaster site from any unauthorized or unnecessary visitors. I was not officially authorized; I was just a pastry chef who, along with some coworkers, had acted on a primal need to do something, anything, to help the relief effort going on in the financial district. I approached a man thick with muscles who seemed to be controlling the flow of traffic, lowered my protective mask, and repeated what the Red Cross had told me. He looked me over silently before giving me his answer.
“Walk directly there,” he said sternly and clearly, his steely eyes barely visible beneath the brim of his camouflaged army cap. “You drop off the food and you come right back. Don’t waste time staring, don’t get in anyone’s way, and watch where you’re going.”
I nodded, trying not to fixate on the large firearm that hung across his chest, an automatic weapon, I guessed, not that I had any experience whatsoever with those sorts of things. I’d never seen so many guns in one place, let alone been around so many people ready and willing to use them.
“And you report to me, Colonel DePalma, on your way back. Understand?” he demanded.
“Yes,” I told him. I understood. “Thank you.”
And so I continued through the throng of military, firefighters, and other rescue workers and replaced the protective white felt mask over my mouth. They were larger than life, with their thick protective gear, hard hats, and aptly named fatigues. Looking down at my own uniform of red-and-white-checked, chocolate-stained pants, baggy white chef’s coat, and the pink kitchen clogs that Joey had given me for my birthday, I felt absolutely powerless.
Past the military blockade and with a good six blocks still to walk, I stopped to readjust the case of bottled water, boxes of wrapped sandwiches, and freshly baked cookies in my arms. Good, the Red Cross woman had told me, when I showed her the cookies, they need sugar. My arms were beginning to ache from the load. I kept going, scolding myself for even allowing the indulgence of even the slightest complaint.
I kept walking, through the dust- and debris-filled air, over the ash-covered streets, past the squashed fire trucks and blown-out windows that grew in number with every step as I got closer to the site. I pinched the thin, metal band of my face mask more tightly around my nose so that it would stay put around my mouth, which was quickly becoming wet with sweat beneath its white felt. It didn’t protect my eyes, which were forced into a tighter squint with every step. The fallout seeped in through every sense.
I tried not to look anyone in the eyes, not wanting to get in their way, not wanting to see the horror and sadness reflected there. I was just a small woman bringing some food. I felt embarrassed to be sharing the space with people who were risking so much and had lost so much. I just wanted to relieve them of one tiny worry, make their efforts the tiniest bit more bearable.
“You don’t have any hot coffee in there, do you?” asked a fire-man leaning against a truck on the side of the road, barely nodding in my direction.
I shook my head no, feeling useless again for not anticipating such an obvious need and being unable to provide the one thing he asked for.
“Sandwiches and cookies,” I answered, offering my armload.
He took some cookies and said thank you. I should have been thanking him.
I kept walking.
I reached an enormous hole in the sky that was anchored to the ground by a massive tangle of what had been the towers. I followed a partially cleared path to the right while letting the view take me in, amazed at how a complete void in the skyline could make me feel so small. Don’t waste time staring, I remembered Colonel DePalma say. I pulled myself away from the view and turned instead into the former lobby of a cracked building that had been set up as a makeshift headquarters for medical treatment and other support. Its large, slanted window frames were empty, their shattered panes sharing the floor with exhausted firemen trying to catch a few moments of rest. I crossed the space crowded with IVs, eyewash stations, blank-eyed rescue workers, and Red Cross volunteers, finally reaching a table piled with prepackaged food. A woman took the weight off my arms with authority, asked what business I was from, and thanked me.
“Anything we can do?” I asked.
“What these guys really need is hot food,” she said. “Real food.”
“Okay,” I answered. And she was gone, tending to those others who needed her.
I turned back north, keeping my head down, watching where I was going, and trying not to get in anyone’s way.
Three days later what began as an instinctual urge by a few cooks had turned into a citywide effort to provide as much food and drink as necessary. The restaurant world and soon after the larger food world came together to offer help in the best way they knew how. Tonic became a headquarters and a coordination center for donation drop-offs above Fourteenth Street, and we were overwhelmed by the generous contributions. Supermarket chains called to ask us for shopping lists and delivered food by the pallet. Within hours of making a single phone call, hundreds of pounds of coffee were delivered, along with a flatbed truck and huge plastic urns in which to deliver the brewed coffee and keep it hot. Promises were made that the flow would continue as long as necessary. Cooks from all over, some temporarily out of work because their restaurants had been forced to close as a result of the tragedy, others simply with a day off, heard about our efforts and turned up to show support for the rescue workers and also to pay tribute to our lost colleagues from Windows on the World, the restaurant that was at the top of the World Trade Center. Our kitchen was full with the energy of peeling, chopping, blanching, and seasoning, and with the camaraderie born of a common cause. We were no longer cooking for privileged customers or vying for the attention of critics; our craft was reduced to its most basic definition.
Ruth Reichl, former New York Times restaurant critic and now editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, joined in, delivering buckets of beef stew that she and her staff made at Gourmet’s test kitchen. The tables were turned, and for the first time chefs had an opportunity to be on an even playing field with the woman whose words they had for many years feared would make or break them. As soon as she pulled away, someone was opening the lid and taking a sniff.
“Hey!” he called everyone over. “Let’s taste her stew.”
The cooks and chefs followed, happy for the role reversal.
“Hmmm, I don’t know,” said one, smiling, chewing on a piece of meat. “It’s a bit tough!”
“Yeah,” said another gleefully, though unconvincingly, “and it needs a bit more seasoning, don’t you think?”
“One star!” announced another, closing the lid, as they all looked at each other with satisfaction.
My heart ached when an elderly woman who had heard about our efforts rolled her cart up to the restaurant and handed me dozens of individually wrapped peanut butter sandwiches she’d made.
Disappointment came, too, when one high-profile chef began showing up to help only when the news cameras were rolling, taking much of the credit and using the situation to his own public relations advantage. When the very same chef requested that he be sent only “fresh meat and produce” with which to prepare donated food, the restaurant world rolled its collective eyes. He was certainly not the only opportunist during that time. Other chefs and owners became more generous when national television became interested in what we had started. Even sadder were the stories of those who abused Red Cross subsidies, monies that were meant to compensate restaurants near the site for their efforts to continue feeding the relief workers.
We stopped laughing and gossiping when the Red Cross called, advising us to avoid preparing food that contained bones, because it might too closely resemble parts found on site. They said to avoid red sauces, too, because the workers had seen too much blood already. We were reminded that our own priorities should remain focused on getting the necessary food down where it was needed. After more than a few urgent late-night requests for ice, which was needed to keep body parts cold, we loaded our truck with as many ice-filled trash bags as would fit, and drove quietly downtown again.
After those first couple of days, the modest relief effort we began at Tonic grew into a massive tristate endeavor that was centralized downtown, closer to where help was needed. A barge on the Hudson River became the new headquarters, solving the problem of both traffic and space. Restaurants reopened, though some never recovered from the extended forced closings and the loss of foot traffic. We at Tonic, along with the rest of the city, tried to get back to normal.