When Jeffrey Epstein Needed Favors, This Restaurant Mogul Was There

When Jeffrey Epstein wanted his favorite Zweigle’s Pop Open hot dogs ferried from his town house in New York to his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, he did what any exceedingly rich person might.

He had his staff reach out to a close friend with a private jet. Stephen Hanson, then head of a New York restaurant empire that at its peak served more than 20,000 people a day at 25 theatrical, high-volume restaurants like Blue Water Grill, Dos Caminos and Ruby Foo’s, was happy to make the delivery himself.

“In the white freezer in downstairs kitchen of 71st street there are packages of frozen hot dogs,” Epstein’s private chef emailed an assistant. “JE would like to have hot dogs for lunch tmrw and these are the new dogs he likes.”

There was one other favor Epstein wanted on that August weekend in 2012. He asked Hanson to make room for a woman who would be bringing a wallet he’d left behind, according to documents the Department of Justice collected as it investigated Epstein. She was later paid settlements from funds established for Epstein’s victims.

The Justice Department files attest to Epstein’s transactional relationships with many powerful men. Billionaires like Victoria’s Secret magnate Les Wexner and private equity investor Leon Black helped build his fortune. Boldfaced names like Woody Allen and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British prince, provided cachet and social access.

What Hanson offered, a review of the thousands of emails and texts the two men exchanged over a decade shows, was access to the world of food and hospitality — as well as a wingman who enjoyed the company of attractive women, and had the means to help manage and entertain them.

Hanson got the young women tables in his dining rooms. He arranged cooking classes for them. When Epstein asked him to help women land visas or find jobs in his restaurants, the answer was almost always yes.

During their long friendship, Hanson became one of the most powerful people in the restaurant business. In 2003, Bon Appétit magazine named him restaurateur of the year, and he expanded his reach to Las Vegas. By 2007, his company, BR Guest Hospitality, was valued at $300 million.

Hanson still found time, the files show, to aid his friend in all kinds of ways. He recruited people to manage Epstein’s private Caribbean island compound and set up tastings to help him hire the perfect private chef. No errand was too small. When the beef jerky that fueled one of Epstein’s odd dietary binges didn’t taste quite right, Hanson worked on the recipe. He even had his executive assistant send a sample to a laboratory to test its nutritional value.

Nothing in the files or other public records indicates that Hanson had sex with minors, as Epstein did. In a video interview in 2021, a victim of Epstein’s told the FBI that a decade earlier, when she was in her early 20s, Epstein had sent the restaurateur to her New York City apartment, where Hanson paid her for oral sex at least a dozen times.

The woman’s name was redacted in the files, and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, declined to comment. A Justice Department spokesperson would not say whether the agency had investigated further, but Hanson has never been charged with a crime.

In response to questions for this article, Hanson did not address the woman’s allegations but issued a brief statement through his lawyer, Gerald B. Lefcourt, a former attorney for Epstein. “Mr. Epstein knew and relied upon Mr. Hanson for advice on certain matters given Mr. Hanson’s hospitality industry experience,” it read in part. “Mr. Epstein was adept at deception and manipulation. He pulled the wool over the eyes of leading academics, scientists, and titans of business. The suggestion, assumption, or insinuation that there was anything untoward about, in relation to, or concerning, any connection between Mr. Hanson and Mr. Epstein is untrue.”

The files make clear that the two were tight, both before and after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a child for prostitution and spent 13 months in a Palm Beach, Florida, jail. Hanson, whose hospitality empire is now little more than a single, recently opened restaurant in Palm Beach, was once designated as a backup executor in Epstein’s will. His name appears on more than 7,000 pages in the Epstein files, about as often as Allen’s and the former Prince Andrew’s.

It’s unclear how Hanson met Epstein, but by the late 1990s, their friendship had blossomed. Both had climbed high enough in their respective fields to play in a world of wealth where being surrounded by models, or aspiring models, provided social currency and potential dates.

The recently released files, which include photographs, show that they shared pedicures, holiday dinners and movies, and spent time together in Palm Beach, where both owned homes. Starting at least as early as 2012, Hanson visited Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. Several of Epstein’s victims have testified, in court and in depositions, that they were held captive and sexually abused on the island, some as minors, though there is no indication that Hanson was on the island then.

There were vacations, too. In 2013, Hanson was part of a group Epstein hoped would join him for a weekend in Las Vegas. When Epstein asked if he was indeed coming, Hanson texted back. “Do u like women. Silly question for both. HELL YES… I want to share a suite with you. Bunk mates like the old days.”

Also on the trip was Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling agency owner who hanged himself in his Paris prison cell in 2022, while facing charges, related to the Epstein case, that included the rape and trafficking of minors.

Epstein, who told some victims he needed sex three times a day, used his money and contacts to assure a steady supply of women to satisfy him. Many were from Russia and Eastern Europe, and had come to the United States hoping to find modeling work.

Hanson was no stranger to the world of modeling. He and Epstein shared a long-term friendship with Faith Kates, who started the powerhouse Next Management modeling and talent agency in the 1980s, when businesspeople like Donald Trump began to regularly mix with models at clubs and parties. (Trump has said he knew nothing about Epstein’s abuse of girls.)

Hanson had hired models for work events, and invited them to his restaurants. He dated several of them, too, former business associates and a longtime family friend said.

When women in Epstein’s entourage needed a visa or a job, Hanson sometimes employed them as hosts, servers or, in one case, a chef. It didn’t always go well.

In 2009, shortly after Epstein had finished his jail sentence in Florida, a woman who would become part of a group who were paid settlements after his death wrote to him, saying she was broke and needed money. Epstein replied: “my friend steve hanson, owns a buch of restaruants ,, he will be helpful,, call him directly.”

Hanson got her a job as a host at Isabella’s, which for 30 years was a mainstay of Upper West Side dining before closing in 2017. Within three months, she was fired. Epstein asked what had happened. “Between us,” Hanson wrote, “the girl was a nervous wreck and just couldn’t handle it.”

He offered to try to find her secretarial work. “No problem,” Epstein replied. “We tried.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Kim Severson/US DOJ
c. 2026 The New York Times Company

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