Andrea Morris
Intersect by Lexus | New York
October 2019
A pescatarian gymnast walks into a restaurant and emerges as a sommelier. No, not the beginnings of a culinary one-liner. It’s the unexpected path of Andrea Morris, the beverage director at Intersect by Lexus.
Morris has always been competitive by nature—remember, former gymnast here. It also didn’t hurt that she got into food at 16, landing a butchery job at Oakland’s Bay Wolf. While she wasn’t sure what position she’d ultimately take in the industry, the Northern California native knew exactly what direction she was headed: East to the Culinary Institute of America. It was there that she fell in love with wine.
Morris didn’t take long to accelerate, she became a sommelier at 22 years old and passed her advanced wine exam just two years later. Starting as a server at Eleven Madison Park, she moved on to sommelier gigs at Oceana and Jean Georges, where she stayed for three years. Not one to shy away from a challenge, she ran the beverage program for John Fraser’s vegetarian-only Nix. She left Nix in 2018 to become the beverage director at Intersect by Lexus, a luxury multi-concept restaurant with an ever changing wine list. Morris has been recognized as one of Zagat’s “30 Under 30 Rock Stars Redefining the Industry” and as a 2016 StarChefs Rising Star Sommelier.
2019 StarChefs Chefs Congress Presenter
2017 StarChefs Rising Stars Award Winner
