Excerpts below, but the Full interview can heard on the podcast, LISTEN HERE, and available anywhere podcasts are found “Let Me Tell You Why…with Jeremy Jacobowitz”! In the full interview we dive deeper into Alex’s background and years of success with Flex Mussels and Hoexters, what is next for the two restaurants, new menu items, and her most iconic NYC Restaurant.

How did you get into restaurants?

I'm born and raised in the restaurant business, so was my dad, so was my grandpa, he owned grocery stores. My dad got into the grocery store business when he graduated high school.

I guess in the 70s, they had Hoexter's, which was a meat market. And someone said, let's make it a restaurant. And so they opened Hoexter's, and that's how he kind of pivoted from grocer to restaurateur. And he did it my whole life. And I loved it, always! And my parents begged me, mostly my mother, like, “please become a lawyer. Please, please go to law school.” And I just really loved it. And so I started working for my parents from when I was young. And after college and a few years living in Chicago, I moved back to the city and was working for them at their Mexican restaurant on the Upper East Side that was called Zocalo, a long, old Upper East Side favorite.

So much success with Flex Mussels and Hoexter’s tell me about those spots?

We opened Flex in November of 2008. And honestly, we opened with a line out the door. It was just like a tremendous success. We got incredible opening press and people loved it. It was different. I think Flex Mussels opened at a time where the consumer was shifting towards caring about what they were putting in their body. Self-conscious patterns were starting to really grow in popularity, and sustainability was also a big buzzword. And these were kind of all boxes that flex-checked big time, right? Mussels are one of, if not the most sustainable proteins imaginable.

I think Hoexter’s really hit the nail on the head with being mindful of the full dining experience, ambiance, the team we have, the level of service, really being mindful of what we wanted to contribute to the neighborhood. And a neighborhood, again, that I'm one, very familiar with. I'm born and raised four blocks from here, so super familiar with the neighborhood. So, we've been very, very lucky with being really busy and successful and really well received by the neighborhood.

Where did the idea for Il Totano come from?

I was reintroduced to Harold Dieterle and he was looking to get back into the game. And I was obviously beyond excited at the opportunity to do something with Harold. That was super cool. And so again, like the pivot we made from Zocalo to Flex, we said, let's change it up. Like, this has been Flex for 15 years. Let's try something new. So that's how we wound up switching to Il Totano.

Everything seemed to be right, your background, high profile chef, great food, great reviews, when did you start to think something was going wrong?

You know, it's so interesting and the restaurant business in general is to me in a really evolutionary place. And I think that the way we consume everything, from TV shows to, clothing, to food, there is such an unhealthy obsession with the new, the hot, what's popular. So I think that's like a really scary odd thing to grapple with as a business owner right now. I think like you said, we kind of had the makings for a pretty huge success there. And I could certainly guess why it didn't work, we've had millions of hours of conversations about what went wrong and ultimately it just didn't stick. It just didn't stick and it was pretty apparent pretty quickly that it just was not right.

Looking at the restaurant industry in NYC, is there something there that needs a drastic improvement? Harold was quoted saying “The mom and pop model is very difficult in the changing economics of NYC…great neighborhood restaurants become forgotten at times when everyone’s racing to the new hot spot.”

Yeah, you know, it's funny, last night I was driving through a neighborhood I really rarely drive through and I passed this Korean restaurant that I remember I went to probably 12 years ago and I said, man, remember that place? And it was so critically well-received. It was one of those restaurants that was everywhere and I haven't thought about it since. And those are the kind of stories that you hear, or you start to think about, and you start to think about how our business model is not built on the diner being transient. You know, we need bodies in seats. And so when people are always chasing the next thing, which, you know, even if you look at the way rating and reviewing restaurants has evolved, from going on city search or whatever it was called, to Yelp, and now no one uses Yelp anymore. Now it's all Google reviews and and now it's belli .and it's like something like TikTok. You're just scrolling through TikToks of endless places you can go, and it's top 10 places for this, and people don't go out to eat seven days a week.

There are so many new places opening, again because of just the cycle of media. And you know, also it's not New York Magazine comes out every Thursday anymore, and like, are you in it? It's constant streams of content always and pages have to be filled. And so you need new content, you need new exciting places. And so I think those things while opening amazing press, can certainly make or break a place. I think that the way that we as a culture consume information makes it hard too, you you're always onto the next.

How are the tariffs and rising costs affecting the industry?

So not only are tariffs going to affect things that ultimately will impact pricing on menus, but then there's things like gloves that we use in the kitchen, and we use hundreds of plastic gloves a day. Even if those go up $2 a case, it's huge and they won't go up $2 a case. They'll go up much more. It's the paper towel, it's the to-go containers, it's all of those little things that are going to make a big difference. And then again, there's of course like perception of value for the guests. You don't want to always just go to a neighborhood spot and have to spend a fortune. But I think, yeah, we're all being forced to really think about how much things are gonna cost soon.

It's global warming, it's tariffs, it's all of these things definitely impact what we serve. But it also gives us an opportunity to pivot and focus on foods that maybe we wouldn't have given the time of, not the time of day, but that we wouldn't have focused on. We just brought back one of our beloved old dishes, which were fried clam strips. They're so good. But we took them off for a while, but it's something that we can put on the menu at a good reasonable price that are delicious. We know people love them and I'm very, very concerned about making sure that I'm giving great value to the guests.

BOOKS

I just finished reading Cellar Rat by Hannah Selinger, and I highly recommend it!. The book is a candid memoir of Selinger’s decade in the NYC restaurant world, where she worked her way up from server to sommelier at some of the city’s most renowned establishments. She doesn’t shy away from exposing the industry’s toxic culture as she details the misogyny, exploitation, and psychological toll that often goes unseen, especially for women in the business. The writing is fast paced and super easy to get through. If you want a raw, eye-opening look at the restaurant life, this book is both fascinating and thought provoking.

TV

Season 2 of The Rehearsal with Nathan Fielder is back and its only been three episodes OMG it’s even more insane and bonkers that season 1. I don’t want to spoil too much, but nobody does a better job of twisting and blending reality and fiction, to create a true masterpiece that is not only thought provoking, but so funny that I cant breathe!