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Every day, the Army dispenses meals to 6,000 people from a centrally heated, 31,000-sq.-ft., $3 million installation that resembles the Superdome. Dubbed the Waterfront Cafe and built by the Environmental Protection Agency as a decontamination center, the 48-ft.-high tent can withstand winds up to 150 m.p.h. and costs $650,000 a month to operate. It features 30 showers and a warren of gym lockers, and the walls are blanketed with elementary-school artwork. Uniformed U.S. Army officers monitor the entrance. In the cavernous dining area, Salvation Army volunteers working 8-hr. shifts serve free hot meals around the clock to cops, fire fighters, OSHA inspectors, Coast Guard officials, private construction crews. To the dismay of local restaurateurs like Menschel and free-lancers like the Gumbo Krewe, the Salvation Army gave the catering contract to its longtime partner, Long Island-based Whitsons Food Service, which, according to a sign, is "pioneering to rebuild New York one meal at a time."
But workers do have other choices. Those unhappy with the bland cuisine at the Waterfront Cafe drive their golf carts, ATVs and Gators 30 blocks north to Nino's. Until Sept. 11, Nino's was a pasta shop on Canal Street. After the attacks, it became a nonprofit enterprise that feeds anyone in a uniform for free, securing more than $1.5 million in donations so far. Overnight, it went from serving 150 meals a day to 7,000, almost all to cops. Nino's has hired a public relations firm, replaced its head chef with the owner of a successful catering company, set up a fund-raising office uptown, lined the block with corporate-sponsor banners, hired a museum curator and is considering building a TV studio for celebrity-chef drop-bys, such as Emeril Lagasse. Like any other successful mogul, Antonio (Nino) Vendome, 49, has an eye for potential partners: he pays $20,000 a month to the 60 Minutes- and Good Morning America-featured ex-addicts of the Rhema Ranch Ministry in Dallas to barbecue ribs for him on the Canal Street sidewalk across from his restaurant.
Even though Nino's uses 115 volunteers a day, the waiting list to serve is three weeks long. Neighbors' gripes that the restaurant's tents and trailers are clogging Canal Street do not concern Nino's. "We don't have permits," says Paula Paige, Nino's director of operations, who until Sept. 11 was an unemployed dotcommer. "But we're feeding the cops. What are they going to say?" Yet at most times of the day, the cops are outnumbered by television crews and volunteers, whose ranks have included Dan Quayle, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Baldwin and Miss Teen U.S.A.
Boosted by the publicity, Vendome has ambitions beyond the Trade Center cleanup. An intensely manicured real estate developer in a three-piece suit who speaks in Bushisms like "make no mistake" and "evildoers," Vendome says he will never reopen the restaurant to the public. Instead, he has a committee working to transfer onto acid-free paper the 30,000 messages he has received from rescue workers and schoolkids from as far away as Japan. "This will be a memorial," he says. "This will be dismantled and disassembled by experts. It's important to show 1,000 years from now what the nation stood for and how we reacted."