At Alexandra Holt’s utterly singular restaurant, save room for a thoughtfully composed cheeseburger—on the dessert menu
Alexandra Holt is known for doing things her way. After burning out on toxic masculinity in the Michelin-starred and fine dining kitchens where she started her career, Holt opened her 24-seat restaurant, Roxanne, in Philadelphia’s Italian Market in 2022. Except for a single server, she was the only person on staff, executing ambitious, unexpected, and acclaimed tasting menus entirely on her own.
Last year, Holt closed that location and reopened in a larger space, this time with a bar and a team of four servers. But she’s still the only cook in the kitchen; Roxanne 2.0 remains an undiluted, unfiltered expression of Holt’s personality and hospitality approach, from the art on the pale purple walls—a grid of plastic lemons, a skateboard emblazoned with the McDonald’s logo, a canvas she painted with the words “Enjoy Your Fucking Dinner”—to the slate of all-Pennsylvania wines to the à la carte menu, which features dishes such as the raw cheesesteak, a layer of tender beef tartare on toast cloaked in cheese sauce.
Naturally, a burger on Holt’s menu could never be just a burger—and like many of the chef’s most exciting dishes, it highlights her love of cheese. “I’ve always been really attracted to cheese and cheese plates because I find them to be really romantic,” Holt says. “I have to hold myself back from putting it on the menu too much.” Cheese shows up steadily throughout Roxanne’s rotation: duck breast served with steamed Oishii strawberries and Murray’s Stilton, a salad of savory ramps and translucent dino melon dotted with clouds of whipped Meredith Dairy cheese, fresh Peconic escargot baked with herb butter into a wheel of Jasper Hill Farm Harbison.
From a distance, the burger—which Holt describes as her favorite of all time—is deceptively simple: a shiny brown bun topped with sesame seeds, a slab of white onion, two slices of cheese, and a thick, medium-rare patty. But Holt executes even simple, familiar dishes with deep consideration, thoughtful sourcing, and honed technique.
Those sesame seeds were grown in Maryland, and the tender bun develops a subtle crispness thanks to an egg white wash in the last 10 minutes of baking. Each hearty cross section of onion is sliced to order to better preserve the allium’s bite. The beef is ground cold for Holt by purveyor Happy Valley Meats Co. to keep it from shrinking while cooking and to create a finer, juicier texture. A swipe of house-made aioli adds moisture.
Then there’s the cheese. Her choice of Red Rock, Roelli Cheese Haus’ vivid natural-rind cheddar shot through with a few judiciously placed veins of blue mold, was a compromise—a way to sneak a bit of blue onto the burger in an approachable way. But Holt found that melting the cheese just before serving flattened the flavor and made it taste like just another cheddar.
Her burger breakthrough came when she realized that those slices of Red Rock should be served at room temperature to preserve their flavor. It’s right there in the menu description: “room temp Red Rock cheese, onion, house sesame bun.”
“People see unmelted cheese on a burger and they don’t get it,” Holt says. “Someone posted a video about how much they loved the burger, and a couple of comments were, ‘You lost me at the unmelted cheese.’ And I’m like, ‘Stay lost.’”
Roxanne’s cheeseburger also stands out because it’s only available on the dessert and bar menus—a nod to Holt’s preference for finishing a meal with something familiar, and to the economics of running an independent restaurant.
“If I’m out at dinner, I like to try a bunch of new stuff and then finish with something familiar, and I always wanted to have a Happy Meal on the dessert menu,” she says. “If I were to put it on the regular menu, it would get ordered more than I can handle … We just can’t sustain that.”
Whether you agree with Holt’s approach or not, it’s hard to argue with the results: a juicy, flavorful burger that satisfies a craving for comfort while honoring each ingredient, including an American artisan cheese that’s just as unique and unexpected as her cooking.
Plus, another key element of the dish might just seal the deal for skeptics: rather than fries, Roxanne’s burger comes with an ice cream sundae, topped with a rich fudge sauce made from house-ground cacao beans. That’s just the way Holt likes it.
“People are so used to being in restaurants that don’t have personality,” she says. “I never opened a restaurant and made it weird or creative. I just put out the food I wanted to make.”
Alexandra Jones
Alexandra Jones is a writer and recovering cheesemonger based in Philadelphia. Her work on food, agriculture, social justice, and sustainability has appeared in outlets like USA Today, Food & Wine, Atlas Obscura, Civil Eats, The Counter, Audubon, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Modern Farmer. She’s the author of Stuff Every Cheese Lover Should Know, a pocket guide to cheese from Quirk Books.
