The interior of Alder & Oak at the Hub in Brooklyn, one of two locations of the Mediterranean-style restaurant opened in Jacksonville in 2026. | Hanna Raskin
Published on October 27, 2026 at 11:58 am
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On my first visit to Alder & Oak at The Hub Brooklyn, curiosity and hunger pangs guided our ordering strategy, which meant my dining companion and I ended up with about twice as many dishes as the typical two-top at the determinedly stylish Mediterranean restaurant. When a server arrived with our selections from the menu’s “Earth” and “Sea” sections—more prosaically known as “entrees”—she became visibly apprehensive. While she could find space on the fog gray wooden table for all the Greek-motif dinnerware she was carrying, the arrangement struck her as uncomfortably crowded.
“Do you just want to move?” she asked.
I’ve been reassigned tables at restaurants when sunny patios were overtaken by storm clouds, or when I insisted there must be a seat available more than three feet from the bathroom door. Best as I can recall, though, I’ve never relocated because a staffer recognized an opportunity for expansion.
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Corporate culture at Alder & Oak must be as strong as a kanonaki of ouzo.
Owned by Mark Janasik’s Restaurant & Hospitality Investment Group, the firm behind Southern Grounds and Oaxaca Club, Alder & Oak opened at The Hub in January. Coverage of its grand opening touched on customers’ initial enthusiasm for the restaurant’s energy and design but focused on the fact that it wouldn’t be the newest Alder & Oak for long. Another Alder & Oak opened in July on the Jacksonville Beach corner previously occupied by Jekyll Brewing.
I’m better versed in feta than Fibonacci, so my math could be off here, but back-of-the-napkin figuring suggests that if Alder & Oak keeps doubling at this clip, greater Jacksonville will be home to roughly 2,000 locations of the restaurant within the decade. Having dined at both locations, I can imagine worse scenarios for the region. While there’s nothing revelatory emerging from its kitchen, Alder & Oak is admirably intent on entertaining its patrons: The “Why not another?” mindset that informed our server’s offer to march us and our food across the room is on constant display in the restaurant’s handsome dining areas and at its lively bars.
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In keeping with Alder & Oak’s high spirits, its beverage program is perhaps the most impressive element of the operation. The mocktail list alone runs five drinks long, including homemade lemonade seasoned with cucumber and dill, and a sipping version of tahini cut with non-alcoholic rum. On the boozy side, Alder & Oak’s thoughtful contribution to the dirty martini discourse is a compound of feta-washed gin and olive brine.
Better still is the wine list, which amounts to a master class in cultivating wine appreciation. Instead of pouring the Chards and Cabs that so many restaurant goers order reflexively — not out of deep devotion to those grapes, but rather out of anxiety over butchering the names of unfamiliar varietals or paying $14 for something they don’t like — Alder & Oak serves what’s listed on the menu as “Marini (mah-REE-nee)”, “Plavac Mali (plah-VAHTS MAH-lee)”, and “Savatiano (sah-VAH-tee-AH-noh)”, among other smart selections from Lebanon, Croatia and Greece. The tasting notes are equally accessible: I’d wager that someone who’s never asked for Sangiovese has asked a server to explain how a wine can taste like “rusty bike chain.”
In other words, the wine list reads as though it was written by a real person who cares about wine.
The food portion of the menu appears to have a different origin story.
One of the oddest aspects of Alder & Oak is its staunch opposition to seed oil. “Nothing in Our Kitchen Touches Seed Oil,” the restaurant proclaims on its website, echoing the claims of countless YouTubers and TikTokers. “It’s so odd that the internet has gone wild demonizing these things,” a Stanford University professor is quoted as saying in an American Heart Association release correcting misconceptions about seed oils’ properties. Seeds are enormously healthful, even after pressing, and integral to Mediterranean foodways. All over Turkey, streets are littered with spent sunflower seeds.
Junk science aside, though, the repudiation of seed oil feels of a piece with a menu primed for social media algorithms. While I was initially inclined to chalk up my concerns about derivative dishes to cynicism, I couldn’t help but overhear when a customer seated at The Hub location waved his hand over his menu and said, “I had all this at Zahav,” the groundbreaking Philadelphia restaurant that’s been interpreting Israeli flavors since 2008.
I can’t know if the man was referring to the muhammara, a traditional red pepper dip sweetened by pomegranate molasses; the tuna crudo; the eggplant hummus; the roasted beets, or the chicken skewers. Let’s say he had his eye on the roasted cauliflower. (I sure hope it wasn’t the beets, since Alder & Oak’s $18 salad is a pathetic jumble of three beet slices and four apple slices, each a few centimeters thick.)
At Alder & Oak, the cauliflower is glazed with date molasses and seated in yogurt. The problem with the one I tried at Jacksonville Beach was it tasted as though the cauliflower had already endured plenty before it was prepared. Roasting can help revive old cauliflower, but it can’t fully restore the firmness and crispness that are part of the vegetable’s portfolio. Other dishes suffered from similar timing issues: Head-on shrimp simmered in tomato sauce were overcooked; a lamb shank probably could have kept on braising.
Admittedly, I didn’t come close to sampling everything at Alder & Oak: Between “Earth” and “Sky,” there are 14 full-sized plates. But among the best items I encountered was grilled octopus — even if the sweetness of its accompanying romesco blotted out any traces of smoke — and the pizza.
As its name suggests, Alder & Oak is proud of its wood-fired oven, and the pizza demonstrates why. Its excellent crust has the deep flavor and light texture that pizzaiolos chase. Interestingly, none of the restaurant’s four pies gesture toward the Levant: These pizzas hail directly from the portion of the Mediterranean familiar to southern Italians.
Possibly not innovative, but totally fine, most of the food at Alder & Oak functions as the edible equivalent of background music in a festive space with highly attentive staff. Go get a pizza and have a good time — or wait until a location opens closer to you.
Alder & Oak | Brooklyn | 904-559-2831
Alder & Oak | Jacksonville Beach | 904-746-7882
