There is a brilliantly researched article on The Ladies Who Lunched in the February 2012 Vanity Fair magazine. It reminded me so much of the early days at The Four Seasons restaurant in New York City.

While capturing our  imagination, Joe Baum elevated the act of dining into a fine art. Long before it became fashionable to embrace farm to table concepts, this legendary restaurateur extraordinare, changed the way America eats.

• He was the first restaurateur to commission farmers to grow vegetables and fruits specifically for his restaurants
• The first to have salt water and fresh water fish tanks in his restaurant
• The first to introduce fine art in the form of paintings, sculptures, carved wood and blown glass into restaurants
• His table top designs are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art
• He was the first to undertake scholarly research to authenticate the details of his restaurants
• The first to engage professional theatrical designers to produce custom-fitted staff uniforms
• The first to create restaurants as entertainments
• The first to offer a formalized seasonal menu and create a distinctively American menu — written in English
• The first to launch major advertising and public relations campaigns for restaurants

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.