On Friday afternoons, while most NYU students head to club meetings or grab a late lunch, Steinhardt sophomore Anya Brenner rides the No. 6 train uptown, changes into chef whites and steps into JoJo, a farm-to-table fine dining restaurant in the Upper East Side — transforming from student to line cook. Founded in 1991 by French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, JoJo was the first restaurant he created which laid the path down to his success as a businessman and chef with 60 restaurants worldwide.
Brenner lifts heavy in her NYU education, double-majoring in nutrition and food studies and international relations, while double-minoring in Spanish and public policy. Her days are a mix of classes, study sessions and long shifts in a high-stakes kitchen — including eight to nine-hour shifts during weekend services when her adrenaline starts pumping the moment she enters the building.
“I never have as much energy as I do when I go into work,” Brenner said. “Cooking is my entire life.”
At her station as a garde manger, or a line cook for cold dishes, Brenner prepares chilled dishes during Friday night service, including lettuce cups filled with spicy tuna tartare, beet salads with lemon coconut yogurt and Friday specials like salmon crispy rice. On weekends, she works the hot line for brunch, firing off plates ranging from eggs Benedict to lobster. As you might expect for a fine dining restaurant featured in the Michelin Guide, precision is law at JoJo.
“If there’s a single brown spot on an avocado, absolutely not — we can’t do that,” Brenner said.
But nothing goes to waste either. Like at many upscale restaurants, the JoJo team gathers for “family meal” twice a day between meal services — a ritual in which one or two cooks use leftover ingredients to scrap together a meal for the rest of the team — just like they do in FX’s “The Bear.” But as a surprise to no one, the family meals at JoJo are “absolutely delicious,” Brenner says.
Despite the rigorous environment, Brenner’s joy for working in the kitchen is palpable. After completing a three-month intensive at London’s Le Cordon Bleu this past summer — a prestigious French culinary and hospitality school, where Brenner trained for nine hours a day — she appreciates what she got out of it.
The program prepared her for the type of cooking that takes 50 attempts just to impress the head chef. Her experience at Le Cordon Bleu demanded resilience and the humility to start over and over again to get one step closer to mastery.
“You don’t have a lot of chefs today that go to culinary school just because it’s very expensive, and when you enter into the restaurant world, a lot of the knowledge that you’ve learned from culinary school is kind of thrown out the window because each kitchen does everything so differently, and that’s not a bad thing,” Brenner said. “But because of that, a lot of chefs have just not necessarily found value in going to culinary school. But I do think that going to culinary school kind of gave me that upper hand and I love to learn. I think being willing to learn and being really willing to handle intense situations under pressure definitely helped me with that as well.”
Brenner’s love of food is also rooted in her home life. With an Italian mother and a father who loves to barbecue, she grew up making pizzas and stuffed artichokes — experiences that doubled as lessons in culture and care. Being surrounded by constant cooking, Brenner said, shaped her into someone who loved being in the kitchen, drawn to it simply for the joy of creating.
As a result of her parents’ work, Brenner has also lived around the world — including Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany and Panama — expanding her flavor lexicon and curiosity. She recalled a statement from an early art mentor in Panama who pushed her to experiment: “Anyone can be something in this world, but not everyone can do it creatively” — a sentiment she now carries with her to push her boundaries, in and out of the kitchen.
Brenner’s role at JoJo began with the simple act of betting on herself. She fired off applications to a variety of establishments after her summer at Le Cordon Bleu, from New York City pizza shops to upscale restaurants. When she received a call back from JoJo’s head chef — one of the jobs she says she applied to for “shits and giggles” — her jaw dropped.
“Just try — the worst someone can say is no,” she said. “You’ll get a thousand no’s in your life, but the no’s make you better — and get you to the yes.”
At work, the stakes remain high for Brenner, as celebrities like Jennifer Lopez casually stop in for brunch. But excellence is the standard for every guest that enters JoJo, so Brenner and the rest of the staff work to ensure that everyone who eats at JoJo receives this level of attention.
“There’s this level of perfection you have to achieve with every single thing you present to anyone, no matter if it’s a celebrity,” Brenner said.
Brenner expects to stay at JoJo for another year — long enough to learn deeply before rotating to a new kitchen, a common practice for most line cooks. Her motivation to keep going, even when exhausted, comes from the team beside her and the many new chefs she hopes to meet across the industry, she said.
But that momentum will be tested as she prepares to step away from the kitchen to fulfill her study abroad requirement for her International Relations major. It’s a move that she acknowledges will be very difficult, especially after building such deep roots at the restaurant.
If Brenner’s life sounds like a sprint, it’s one that fills her with a deep sense of purpose. Even after six months of working at JoJo, she still gets butterflies on her way to work.
“Genuinely every time I am on the train to go to my job, I get so excited,” Brenner said. “I’m listening to pump-up music — we’re ready to go.”
Contact Rhea Kohli at [email protected].
Dining and Cooking