Colors Restaurant: Surviving Disaster, Starting Anew

March 15, 2007— -- On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Jean Pierre, an employee at the World Trade Center, was at a CVS drugstore buying baby formula for his 6-month-old son. When he returned home, he saw the horrible news on television -- the building where he worked was engulfed in flames.

"I just walk by and I look at the television and I see a plane hitting the World Trade Center," said Jean Pierre. "That's when it all hit me."

Jean Pierre wasn't a broker or an investment banker, but a sous-chef at Windows on the World, the glamorous 50,000-square-foot restaurant located on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower.

"And I just sat down, and that's when it sunk in," said Jean Pierre. "I could have been there … all my guys were there that work under me. They were all working that day. And they're all, you know …"

One hundred and sixty people died that day in the restaurant. Seventy-three were workers.

Windows had a large, diverse staff. Once they recuperated from the shock of the attack, the surviving employees pulled together.

"We used to be a family. We used to care about each other," said Fekkak Mamdouh, a former waiter and shop steward. "More than a family."

Five years later, many of these former Windows on the World employees did something unexpected -- they started their own restaurant.

"[This] other tragedy became something wonderful," said Jean Pierre. "You know, it helped us build a team, build a relationship with the community and bring back something to New York that's missing."

The restaurant is called Colors, and it opened a little over a year ago in downtown Manhattan's East Village. In addition to its remarkable ancestry, Colors is also special because of how it is run. It is owned and operated by the same 45 workers.

The restaurant, which was initially funded with money from Italian cooperative farmers and other progressive investors, is proud of the way it operates.