Shauna Lyon: Michael Lomonaco's Center Bar, in the Time Warner Center: The New Yorker At 8:46 on the morning of 9/11, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Michael Lomonaco, the executive chef of Windows on the World, was in the building's below-ground concourse, where he had stopped to get his glasses fixed. Seventy-nine of the restaurant's employees were already at work; they were all lost. Lomonaco has since helped raise $22 million for their families. Last year, adjacent to his steak emporium Porter House, Lomonaco opened Center Bar - with chrome finishes to resemble a yacht, and a spectacular view down Fifty-ninth Street. "The great cocktail, the small plate of food - Joe Baum did this at Windows with the Hors d'Oeuvrerie," Lomonaco said. There is a tribute aspect to Center Bar. The menu has a post-Rainbow Room retro eye and a modern sensibility: there are six champagne cocktails, and a soulful King's Old-Fashioned is rounded out with a wet walnut. Sophisticated small plates include charred Kobe beef and prosciutto arancini. Some evenings, there's a piano man on the Baldwin baby grand. According to Lomonaco, "You might hear some American Songbook, some jazz. You might hear a little bit of Billy Joel in there, but it's O.K. It's interpretively done." ♦