EXCLUSIVE: New owner for Hinsch’s

Hinsch’s is staying open.

Just two days before his targeted closing date of March 3, Roger Desmond, who took over the beloved Fifth Avenue eatery a little over a year ago with partners Gerard Bell and Bill Gardell, sold the 64-year-old neighborhood landmark to a new owner, Mike Moudatsos, an experienced restaurateur who runs five diners in Staten Island, all dubbed Mike’s plus the original name of the eatery.

“When we take over, we keep the name and add Mike’s to it,” explained Lee Moudatsos, who will be running the restaurant (he said that his family – mother, father and five siblings — are “all involved” in the restaurants they own), and who told this paper that it will continue to serve up the homemade ice cream and chocolates for which it is famous, as well as egg creams and floats.

“All that stuff is going to stay,” Moudatsos said. “We are just going to add to it.”

In particular, Moudatsos said, the restaurant – which will be known as Mike’s Hinsch’s — will be adding Greek specialties, such as Tzatziki, Gyros and Spinach Pie.

Asked what the family’s recipe for success was, Moudatsos said, “good food, good service, a clean restaurant. We’re here 12, 15 hours a day. People like to see the owners.”

The restaurant transferred ownership as of Monday, March 4, and will not close, and Desmond said he will stay on for a while to help with the transition.

“I feel the weight of the world is off my shoulders,” Desmond said. “It’s really been some roller coaster. I lost a lot of money but I don’t have any regrets.”

Hinsch’s – which opened in 1915 as Reichert’s ice cream parlor — was closed in September, 2011, by former owner John Logue, but was reborn in November of that year after the trio of entrepreneurs took over the premises.