How an exchange student from Germany fell in love with Philly and opened Restaurant Aleksandar

There is an Aleksandar behind Restaurant Aleksandar, opening Thursday in the double brownstone just off Rittenhouse Square that last housed V Street and Wiz Kid.

He’s Aleksandar Stojnic, 31, who grew up in Bremen, Germany, to Serbian parents who owned restaurants, first in Bremen and then in Cologne.

His Philadelphia story began nearly 15 years ago when he was an exchange student at Northeast High School. “It turned out to be one of the best years I ever had in all my educational life. I really loved being in Philly. The Northeast was fine, but Center City was always the place I had to go. The people were so nice.”

After returning to Germany, Stojnic said, “something was drawing me back to Philly and I decided to come back” two years later. That’s when he met his wife, Monika, whose father is Marek Maj, a Polish-born developer in Philadelphia.

Stojnic went to work for his father-in-law, doing construction. Among Maj’s projects is the new Maj Hotel at 2225 Spring Garden St., which Monika oversees.

In early 2021, as Maj bought 124-126 S. 19th St., Stojnic did a walk-through. “I saw how it was a really unique space with a curved wall and a comfortable layout, and right next to Rittenhouse Square,” he said.

Stojnic offered to turn it into a 100-seat restaurant, moving the existing bar to another wall to create a lounge area. “I always wanted to try out being an owner,” he said. “I hate cooking food, but I do love eating it. And I don’t want to do construction anymore.”

With his father-in-law helping with construction and his wife advising on the setup, what followed was an education in design — there was no designer and much of everything, including the size of banquettes, was arrived through trial and error, he said.

Andrew Hueston, a chef turned operations manager (Terrain at Styer’s, Marigold Kitchen, Crow & the Pitcher, Finn McCool’s, Stateside Vodka), helped navigate city and state bureaucracy.

They hired executive chef Montana Houston, 26, a South Jersey native who was most recently at Braddock’s Tavern in Medford. Houston was friends with his executive sous chef, Ja’mir Wimberly-Cole, 22, and even worked with him while consulting with Reef, the ghost-kitchen operator.

Last week, after working together in advance of the opening, Houston and Wimberly-Cole posted info about Aleksandar on their social-media accounts. A relative reached out to both. It turns out that they are cousins.

Early on, Stojnic had planned an Eastern European menu. “Back then [in March 2021], it was just me and my construction guy. I wanted this to be a team effort. Some things are not practical if you want to do it for a high volume restaurant. If you’re not as knowledgeable and you hire knowledgeable people, things start to change. I wanted the chef to come in and take pride.”

Houston modified some dishes, such as cabbage rolls, pierogi, and potato pancakes. The cabbage rolls, ($13) for example, contain oyster and shiitake mushrooms and jasmine rice and are topped with tamari sauce. Also on the menu is a lamb shank ($27) over polenta, root vegetables, and red currants; “forest floor” gnocchi ($22) with pumpernickel “soil,” wild mushrooms, halloumi “rocks,” Brussels sprout leaves, and leek ash; and seared scallops ($25) with purple cauliflower puree, asparagus and corn couscous, and frisee salad topped with lemon miso vinaigrette.

The bar’s early list offers five beers, all but one local, on draft; five wines (three Euros and two Californians); three zero-proof cocktails; and eight cocktails ($12 to $16), including a gin and tonic, made with Bluecoat, that gets a blast of flavor from housemade rose-hips syrup.

Restaurant Aleksandar’s vaguely Mid-Century dining room, which they call “recovered industrial,” flows around the curved wall, just as it did during its V Street days. Purple wallpaper and exposed brick are set off by bold, large-scale paintings done by his mother, Svetlana Alimpijevic, who has been shuttling between Germany and the United States. “I tell her that one wall needs another painting, and she makes it overnight,” Stojnic said.

It will be open for lunch/brunch, dinner, and late night daily. Hours: 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekends. Be advised that there are several steps up to the door; the property has had an exemption to ADA rules because of the building’s age.