Mad hatter restaurant6/15/2023 On the radio, Juice Newton is singing “Angel of the Morning,” and Lauren steps up to the pass. For now, in this moment, there is just this.Īnd if you ask her, Alexandra will tell you: It is so, so worth it. She is willing to throw her whole body into it and make this - this nightly Mad Hatter’s tea party dressed up as a full-on multi-course dinner party for strangers - the entirety of herself for however long is required. Because, really, there’s no other way for Alexandra to work. With service under way, she’s quick, graceful, grinning, existing entirely in the moment, living and breathing for the next plate, the next course. Her movements have been deliberate, heavy, controlled.ĭuring dinner, though, she’s at the ballet. The whole time I’ve been with her in the kitchen, she’s barely spoken except to mutter to herself or repeat cook times under her breath. She’s been prepping for nearly 12 hours straight. In practice, it’s a revolutionary experiment in fine dining being attempted four nights a week behind a bright purple door on Christian Street.Īlexandra has been up since 5:30 a.m. In conception, it was a furious middle finger to a sexist, classist, exploitative industry in desperate need of change. It’s an expression of joy and dread in equal measure. It is decidedly unserious and yet deeply personal. Because to her, Roxanne is more than just a restaurant. On the restaurant’s Instagram, she calls the place “Not a restaurant,” which is half a joke and half not. A table here remains one of the hardest-to-get reservations in the city right now. It immediately exploded, won awards ( Esquire named it one of the best new restaurants in America), and changed Alexandra’s life. Roxanne opened quietly in the fall of 2022. “I’ve actually never done this before,” she says. Her work, she says, can speak for her: “I don’t feel like I need to sell all of myself to you.” In an industry obsessed with image, she has gone to a lot of trouble to protect hers, keeping photos of herself out of the public eye. Holt didn’t want her face photographed for this profile. She runs into the prep kitchen and starts pulling bowls out of the steamer rack, stripping off plastic wrap bowed and shrunk by the heat, testing each bowl, then dashing - high-top sneakers pounding the uneven floor and cracked red tiles - back to the hot line.Īlexandra Holt preparing chawanmushi. Lauren Salvo, Roxanne’s only other employee, talks to the crowd while Alexandra graffities homemade hot sauce onto the lozenges of foie-stuffed pastry, then spins to turn her attention to the first load of chawanmushi (second course) steaming on the stovetop behind her. The first course - a foie gras mille-feuille with preserved sea buckthorn and pistachio cream - is already plated, sitting half-done on a sheet tray balanced on a cooler. The dinner is expansive, luxurious, goofy, and it represents something like 200 individual plates, every one of which will be prepared by Alexandra. Two and a half hours of chili crisp and tater tots, leek culurgiones and escargots. Tonight’s menu is nine courses, prix-fixe. She smiles, says hey, says thank-you, asks about allergies, says thanks again, points out where the bathrooms are, then bolts back to the prep kitchen to pull the Texas toast out of a temporary Emergency Oven that’s only big enough to hold a single half-sheet tray. I just wanna die in a restaurant.” One Night on Christian StreetĪlexandra steps out in front of the dining room. “And I’m like, retirement? Fucking RETIREMENT? No, man. “A few days ago, someone asked me if I had plans for retirement,” the 29-year-old tells me, her voice sounding mystified.
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