Colors (restaurant)

Colors is a 70-seat restaurant in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center destroyed the popular Windows on the World restaurant, and, when many of its former workers remained unemployed a non-profit started a restaurant named Colors to employ them, while upgrading their skills.[1][2]

2006-2017

Former employees of the Windows on the World restaurant opened Colors in 2006, with the support of the non-profit Restaurant Opportunities Center.[3][4] The restaurant closed its original location in 2017.[1][2] The New York Times, and other publications, reported that ROC had problems fulfilling its ideals of worker empowerment, reporting difficulties like workers quitting over not being paid on time.[5][6]

2019 reopening

Celebrated Cordon Bleu chef Sicily Sewell was hired to oversee the kitchen in a re-opened Colors in the fall of 2019.[2][7] When the newly reopened restaurant was shutdown one month later Sewell was critical of management, who had failed to inform employees that they saw the reopening as a "test run".[8]

References
  1. "Surviving workers from Windows on the World start new restaurant". ABC 7NY. Lower East Side, Manhattan. 2019-09-11. Archived from the original on 2019-09-13. Retrieved 2020-04-07. At the restaurant COLORS on the Lower East Side, they gathered Wednesday, just as they have for 18 years - a family forever connected by 9/11. The place was founded by surviving employees of the Windows on the World restaurant, which sat at the top of the World Trade Center's North Tower.
  2. Stephanie Tuder (2019-09-12). "Restaurant Founded by Twin Towers Restaurant Staff Will Reopen on the LES". Eater NY magazine. Archived from the original on 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-04-07. Colors — the rocky restaurant that opened in 2006 by surviving Windows on the World employees after the September 11 terrorist attacks — will reopen this October on the Lower East Side after closing in 2017, AMNY reports.
  3. Li Yakira Cohen (2019-09-10). "COLORS restaurant to reopen on the Lower East Side". AMNY. Archived from the original on 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-04-07.
  4. Leonard Greene (2006-01-06). "WINDOWS' BACK OPEN - 9/11 SURVIVORS LAUNCH EATERY". New York Post. Retrieved 2012-11-20. When Colors opened last night at 417 Lafayette St., in the heart of NoHo, it brought to life the aspirations of many of those who perished in the terror attacks that brought down the Twin Towers.
  5. Britta Lokting (2018-12-21). "The Misadventures of an Idealistic Restaurant in Cut-Throat New York". The New York Times. p. MB1. Archived from the original on 2019-05-29. Retrieved 2020-04-07. Increasing wages for food service workers is certainly a noble cause, one that aligned with the ideals of Colors when it first opened, in 2006. But good intentions are one thing; running a restaurant in a city as competitive as New York is quite another.
  6. "The COLOR of Hypocrisy: ROC's Failed Restaurant Model" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-24. Retrieved 2018-05-20. The flagship COLORS New York location is now closed for service, but even as COLORS was failing to turn a profit, ROC was actively hoisting COLORS as a model restaurant and attacking other restaurateurs for the way they conducted themselves.
  7. Caroline Hatchett (2019-12-11). "I Want to Make Really Good, Black-Ass Food". Eater magazine. Archived from the original on 2020-04-07. Retrieved 2020-04-07. Sewell-Johnson, who began cooking professionally after more than 15 years as an actor, ultimately wanted to create a deeply personal restaurant for the community. Her family has been in the business for generations: She owned a Berkeley restaurant with her mother, her aunt owned a restaurant in Chicago, and seven generations ago, one of her maternal forebears was the enslaved head cook on a Tennessee plantation.
  8. Chris Crowley (2020-01-21). "Colors, ROC United's Downtown Restaurant, Abruptly Closes". Grub Street. Archived from the original on 2020-04-07. Retrieved 2020-04-07. Staff found out about the news during dinner service at around 8 p.m. on Thursday, when the restaurant’s chef, Sicily Sewell-Johnson, was informed via text that the restaurant would have to close. It was a sudden ending to what Sewell-Johnson describes as a tumultuous experience. 'As far as structure, we never had that,' she tells Grub. 'It was like a constant fight.' -

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