Marisela Cruz has just finished a round of castings for the day when she heads into The Pump Energy Food’s new Madison Avenue location and perches herself onto a plush, red leather seat with a custom-made, weight-training bench bottom, a nod to The Pump’s fitness past. The Pump opened in 1997, during the wave of restaurants that served fast food for work-out fanatics who wanted low-fat, high-protein fuel. “This place looks so different from the one on 21st Street," she observes. "I remember going in there once for a smoothie and noticing all the pictures of bodybuilders on the walls and thinking, this place is too hard core for me!"

The Pump’s new look was inspired by a Soho loft kitchen, and Marisela takes note of the design gazing at a wall of mirrors framed by rescued steel and copper, and pointing out things she’d like to incorporate into the new West Village apartment she has just moved into with her longtime boyfriend. In 2006, the now 27-year-old Adam Eskin, a fanatic himself, saw the company’s potential to grow and shed its hole-in-the-wall image. He gathered investors to buy the chain. The new location is the company’s first attempt to re-brand while keeping the food that gamered them such big initial success.

A Tucson, Arizona native, Marisela is half Mexican, part German, and part Native American. She is a tall, tan beauty with a strong, elegant face and full lips. She heads over to the counter and orders a Pump classic, The Popeye, along with a side of baked falafel, a small carrot juice, and a slice of apple pie made with designer protein. She can't be bothered to eat the meal in sequence. The pie is calling her and she digs in. Maybe it's a guilty feeling, but she starts to explain that summers can be slow for models because the 16-year-olds are out of school. “The young girls that are still in high school come to New York in the summer, so getting editorials becomes really competitive because people would rather use the younger girls. You would think age wouldn’t matter, especially if you still look super young, but somehow it does. I know so many girls who are already lying about their age." Marisela may not have reason to worry- she has been a model for J. Crew the last few seasons and is working towards a degree in Art History at Fordham University.

With her dessert plate clean, she cuts into a hearty entrée of grilled chicken breast with baked tahini sauce served over a gleaming bed of steamed spinach and brown rice. A steady flow of customers head in and do their best not to stare and sheepishly check to see what she’s eating. Her appetite seems to have no end– maybe because the place makes you feel you can order anything off the menu, guilt-free. Or that just by being here, you’re doing good for your health. The rules are this: no butter, salt or fat. Nothing is fried including the falafel. Yet somehow it all tastes good. “I love this food. It’s really comforting and filling, despite being healthy. A lot of healthy food doesn’t really fill me up, and this did the trick!” says Marisela. Finishing up with a fluorescent carrot juice, she smiles at her BlackBerry. Nick is asking when they can meet up and go pick out paint for their apartment. “We’ve been pretend-living- together for the last five months in my old apartment. But this is the real thing and I love it!”

~Sarah Ivory