Tom Lo stays busy healing the body by day and feeding the soul by night - two passions he felt compelled to follow after September 11th.
Lo says his first passion was food and his dad was an incredible cook. Despite that love of cooking, he followed the path many expected: pre-med at Yale and getting into medical school.
He explained that he grew up in traditional Chinese family that valued education and working hard, encouraging him to be a doctor.
But at 22, he put his dreams on hold for a shot to make it on Wall Street.
"My 23rd birthday was September 11, 2001, this was my second week of work down in the World Trade Center," Lo explained. "I was in the South Tower. I'm on the 73rd floor, and it sounded like someone had just slammed a desk and I looked back and I can see out the windows, and it's raining paper."
He had no idea he was about to experience one of the darkest days in American history.
"So we walked from 73 down to 44, and there's announcement too that says, 'oh, if you want, you can head back up,'" Lo said. "And I remember his voice was quivering, and all of a sudden, I don't remember hearing it. What I do remember is hearing the creaking of steel bending. My building started to shake and sway. In my heart, I'm like, I don't know what's happening, but I don't want to be here."
When Lo made it out, he was trying to piece everything together.
"I'm looking at my tower that I was just standing in, and it just crumbles down," he said.
He said he finally got on a landline and there was silence.
"And then I heard my mom, she was sobbing, she was crying, and she told my dad, she goes, 'that's Dada,'" Lo said. "That's my Chinese name, Dada, and I heard my dad cry. I've never seen my dad ever cry ever."
His mother's words would change everything.
"It's funny as my mom, she said, that was my birthday, and I had turned 23 that day and she said, you know, that day it wasn't your time," Lo said. "You had 23 angels escorting you down to safety. I feel blessed. I mean, to this day, every day that I'm alive is an extra day."
Surviving 9/11 left him with an unshakable truth that life is too short for regrets, so he pursued all his passions. He went back to medical school but never stopped cooking.
So he works as an anesthesiologist by day and a restaurateur by night.
"Welcome to the kitchen at Chi, this is my dream, it's always been a dream of mine to open a restaurant in New York," Lo said. "We just have a lot of fun. This is our lobster and golden noodle sauce. If you come here, you have you have to get this."
He said the parallels between his two worlds are uncanny.
"As an anesthesiologist, I deliver, we call it a balanced anesthetics," Lo said. "In the kitchen, it's gotta be balanced. If there's too much spice, you can't eat it. If it's too much sugar, too sweet."
Chi is located on Ninth Avenue between 37th and 38th streets.
RELATED | Complete Eyewitness News coverage of 9/11
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