Drew Nieporent, the owner of Tribeca Grill, has photos and scrapbooks of news clippings that bring him twenty years back to the recovery following the September 11 attacks. 

Nieporent was one of the key players in feeding rescue workers. He used boats on the Hudson River to get food to the workers.

What You Need To Know

  • Drew Nieporent played a key part in feeding first responders following the 9/11 attacks

  • He used boats on the Hudson River to bring the food to the World Trade Center site

  • He says customers were extremely supportive when his restaurant was only open to pedestrian traffic
  • He says his outlook has kept him resilient through the difficult times

"Chefs in New York would come with their food, put it on the cruise ship and they would circumvent all of the traffic,” Nieporent explained, adding, “They were not allowing traffic below 14th Street.”

Tribeca Grill was closed at the time of the attacks, so he and his workers were not in the city when the towers fell. Starting the next day he was dedicated to help the first responders.

"I think it was more of a knee jerk reaction — let's do something, food's going to go to waste. We made sandwiches and soup," Nieporent said.

While working tirelessly to feed the first responders, he also suffered a huge financial loss being closed for two weeks. Traffic was shut down to cars as well. For a period of time he could only serve pedestrians.

"Mayor Rudy Giuliani decided, OK, you can only have pedestrian traffic,” Nieporent recalled. “People could walk to your restaurants. It was still a hard task, but guess what? People saw that we were working hard and we have been out of business for two full weeks and people came down in droves.” 

He compares post 9/11 to his latest challenge, operating through the pandemic. Currently, the restaurant is only open for dinner.

"The loss of revenue was significant, but it pales with what we are going through now with COVID because for a year and a half we have really been shut down,"Nieporent said.

Tribeca Grill also survived Hurricane Sandy.

"Sandy put us out of business for a while and that was during November so that is a prime time for restaurants. I think we got flooded to the tune of six feet in the basement," Nieporent said.

He credits his outlook on life for the way he and his businesses have stayed resilient for more than three decades.

"You have to have a little bit of a vision that the future is going to be a lot brighter than the present and that served us well through the whole tragedy and it's sort of a cornerstone from which I work every day,"  Nieporent said.

That optimism keeps him going through the pandemic.

"We stood the test of time and we are going to make it through COVID,” Nieporent said.