Chef Alexandra Holt is a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and will open a new restaurant called Roxanne in 2022. The restaurant is named after her mother. Chef Holt has worked in several different cities in the United States and countries in Europe.
Holt has worked in kitchens in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, and the District of Columbia, and, most notably was the executive pastry chef of a Michelin starred restaurant in Stuttgart, Germany before the pandemic hit. Pastry is her specialty.
When the restaurant and hospitality industry cratered during the lockdowns, Holt came to Philadelphia and, seeing how grim the situation was, she started training to master the other areas of cooking. She established her own catering, wholesale, and pop-up business called Pastry Slut. But she clearly had the desire to do more. Many chefs have the same ambition, namely, to open their own restaurant and do it their way.
Holt has already secured a storefront, part of the former Sabrina’s Cafe space, at 912 Christian Street, per The Philadelphia Inquirer. Holt has begun research and development posts on Roxanne‘s Instagram. Many of the posts show ingenious and delicious-looking pastries and the Instagram notes that Roxanne will serve pastry all day and serve dinner from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Not much is known about the full menu as yet, but a quick scroll through the Instagram page shows spring pea, goat chèvre, and morel sfogliatelle, pork “roll rolls”, preserved spruce, grapefruit brûlée, and sabayon, tamarind creme pie and spicy boiled peanut and mandarin curd donuts. It looks like Holt is letting her creativity run wild and she is coming up with intriguing dishes, so it seems like Roxanne will be a place where you will want to stop by.
