I admire people who take risks. I speak not of those who like to jump out of airplanes high in the sky, or those who challenge us to look, or avert our eyes from their daring cleavage. Rather, I like risk takers, who dare to dream up something they’ve never done before and take the plunge.

Legendary restaurateur Joe Baum (right) with Alan Lewis & Chef Andre Renee

The person’s risk taking may be as simple as highlighting a Five Ingredient Fix, then elegantly presenting it in an original and charming manner. The risk taking could involve a variation, a new interpretation on a very good idea. It is also why I so admired and often speak of my friend and mentor, Joe Baum.

(He has been in my thoughts since my recent sentimental journey of Windows on the World.)

Few have taken risks and demonstrated such powers of original thinking as Joe. We would be astonished to learn that Charlie Trotter had opened a hot dog stand or that Alice Waters was presiding over a steak house. Yet this is just the sort of thing Joe did, over and over again. He produced one extraordinary stretch of the imagination after another.

Among the 167 restaurant concepts he created were Zum  Zum (a hot dog restaurant), Charley Brown’s (a steak house), Charley O’s (an Irish Pub), John Peele’s (with the menu written in olde English and beer served from yard-long hunting horns), The Hawaiian Room, The Forum of the Twelve Caesars, The Four Seasons and the Brasserie, La Fonda del Sol, Aurora, The Tower Suite, Trattoria, Paul Revere’s Tavern and Chop House, The Fountain Café and Tavern on the Green in Central Park, Spats (a twenties-style speakeasy), The Newarker at Newark Airport, The American Restaurant at Crown Center in Kansas City, and The Heartland Market (the forerunner of the now-ubiquitous food court).

Joe was also responsible for the menu at the International House of Pancakes, the restoration of The Rainbow Room, and two incarnations of Windows on the World. Each site had a distinctive regional or historic flavor and covered territory extending from the Pacific Islands to France, Italy, Latin America, Germany, England, Ireland, and Colonial America.  He targeted his places to every taste and all sizes of purses.

One of Joe’s few regrets was that he never created his own version of a genuine Jewish deli.

At first all of these restaurants may seem wildly different, but conceptually they were built from the same DNA. Just as a successful mystery writer writes the same book, with the same characters, over and over again, Joe Baum created one plot and made 166 variations on the theme.

He created his own language for restaurants and wrote it in many different dialects. All good restaurateurs, of course, share the same basic grammar. What differentiated Joe from others was the boldness and clarity of his concepts, the design of his physical spaces, the wording on his menus, his care for his guests and respect for his staff.

Joe was the kind of risk taker we should all aspire to be like–even if we must do so with both hands firmly holstering our money bags.

Windows on the World iconic logo

The Windows on the World collection of restaurants and bars – WOW – sitting aloft 107 stories in the sky took a virtual village to create and maintain. Developed under the visionary leadership of restaurateur Joe Baum and his partners, here are a few facts that made “Windows” hum.

• Windows sat 1,314 feet high in the sky; 1,274 feet above mean sea level.
• Over 2,450 food items were ordered every week.
• 2,000 bottles of beer were on hand at any give time in the Greatest Bar on Earth.
• There were over 20,000 bottles of wine in the cellar. (If you laid their corks end to end, the corks would measure 3,333 feet.)
• 700 wines from around the world made it to Windows’ wine list.
• The Greatest Bar on Earth featured 16 different kinds of vodka.
• Over 27,000 bottles of champagne would be sold in one year (imbibed with 51 lbs. of caviar per week!)
• 1,000 calls or more were made to the Reservations office every day.
• There was always a seat in the house — in one of the 2,500 chairs.
• 3,600 eggs were bought every week (that’s a lot of chickens).
• 700 lbs. of shrimp were consumed every week.
• It took a lot of cooks to cook up all of that shrimp and caviar — 52, to be exact.
• A rose by any other name would smell as sweet — 3,000 flowers were ordered every week!
• The dishwashers would clean 3,000 forks a day.
• Windows’ panorama of color included 145 different shades of paint, 19 fabric wall coverings and 11 custom carpets.
• The oldest member of the staff was born in 1921; the youngest in 1978.
• Windows had the Manhattan’s youngest sommelier — 25 years old.
• There were more than 500 people employed at Windows on the World, speaking 25 different languages.
• The beaded glass curtain on the 107th floor contained 430,000 imported glass beads on 1,178 strands of steel cable.
• On a clear day, you could see 90 miles in every direction from the 107th floor.
• In high winds, the tower could sway 11 inches.

View on Manhattan from legendary icon Windows on the World

I can still remember.* In 1976, Gael Greene, then, the Insatiable Restaurant Critic of  NY Magazine, described Windows on the World in its first incarnation, as “the most spectacular restaurant in the world–a place where guests could woo and con each other in tax deductible splendor.”

Windows on the World first opened in 1976, under the direction of restaurant impresario Joe Baum, and in many ways represented New York City’s proud rebirth. “Windows” as it was affectionately called, quickly became New York’s most dazzling and desirable place to be. Simultaneous with its launch was the much-heralded arrival of the Tall Ships in New York harbor, bringing a new spirit of optimism.

Tall Ships passing NY's Twin Towers in 1976, courtesy of Victor Parker Photography

When Joe (and his team) again was invited to remake Windows as that singularly magical dining in the sky experience, he accepted the challenge without hesitation–and with almost total disregard to cost. An official at Port Authority was overheard muttering, “If Joe had an unlimited budget he would find a way to exceed it.” And to no one’s surprise, Joe did.

Joe was fascinated with great urban spaces where people gathered. He viewed them as marketplaces of ideas that served a function similar to the Forum in ancient Rome. From the beginning, his idea was to create Windows on the World as an urban refuge, satisfying the many appetites of body and soul. And he succeeded beyond imagination.

And, my role in all this? Recently I was asked this very question, and I found myself unable to answer simply. In ancient times, I suppose, I would have been considered a scribe. I was Joe’s speechwriter and designated composer of menus, press materials, and scripts for everything from the correct response to a telephone call to the reservations desk, to the required wording for directions to the men’s room.

After one typically infuriating planning meeting in 1995 to discuss the re-opening of Windows in 1996, a meeting where Joe had changed the agenda to his own, he made a list of what needed to be done. The last, the 13th item, is now painful to share.

It read: “Reassure guests there are no mad bombers within 500 square miles.”

* This remembrance is excerpted from Joe Baum: An Exaltation of Larks, published in Gastronomica magazine. For a complete copy of this article, please contact me.