People of The Institute       Alumni Profiles           Jennifer Kohns Culinary Arts '00     ICE® alum Jennifer Kohns may have a grounding in high-end eateries, but that hasn’t stopped her from making a success of a different sort of venture. Kohns and her partner, Laurence Rudolph, opened Lunchbox Food Company in 2002 and have received both critical and popular success. Located in a original 1950 Kullman dining car that sits along the West Side Highway between Clarkson and Leroy streets, the restaurant seats 50, with outside tables for 75 more in good weather. “ We wanted a white tablecloth mentality, but we wanted it to be more fun, more downtown,” says Kohns of Lunchbox. “It’s where we saw the market going, and we wanted to appeal to a style-conscious crowd with out being pretentious.” Kohns graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in history and wound up working at House and Garden magazine as an assistant in the art department and writing about design. She became interested in food as a component of history and decided to attend ICE® with the idea of becoming a food writer. But an externship at Savoy---pushed partly by celeb chef Sara Moulton, who Kohns met volunteering at an event---was a transforming experience. “I fell in love with the kitchen my first day,” remembers Kohns. “The energy, the personalities… it just really spoke to me.” Kohns stayed on at Savoy for over a year, during which time she worked every station. She moved on to celebrated midtown hotspot JUdson Grill to do pastry, then headed to top-rated Le Bernardin. It was there she met her future partner Laurence Rudolph, and the two eventually started a catering business together and begin looking for a restaurant site in 2001. Kohns describes the food at Lunchbox as modern, sometimes lighter interpretations of classic dishes, like a cassoulet of roast chicken and white beans that gets its kick form homemade turkey sausage instead of duck. Not surprisingly considering it’s classic-diner setting, Kohns and Rudolph also pay serve updated versions of diner classics as well. They’ve already garnered a number of strong reviews, most notably form New York Magazine and Eric Asimov at The New York Times; more can be seen at www.lunchboxnyc.com. April, 2004