These Baltimore Restaurateurs Are Changing Up Charm City’s Dining Scene
From classic to cutting-edge, meet the innovators who are transforming Baltimore's culinary landscape one meal at a time.
In terms of dining, Baltimore is often thought of for Maryland blue crab. Yet restaurant owners and culinary businesses have been seasoning Charm City through family recipes and global influences. Here are three standout restauranteurs who have developed their recipes for success in Baltimore.
Jasmine Norton, The Urban Oyster
Jasmine Norton
Chef and Founder of The Urban Oyster
Chef Jasmine Norton is the founder of The Urban Oyster, the first Black female-owned oyster bar in the U.S.
The Baltimore native’s love for oysters was instilled by her dad when she was seven years old. Her father always dared her to try new things, especially with food, and he would add certain flavor toppings to oysters to make them more approachable.
Norton saw that her friends didn’t have the opportunity to broaden their palates as she did, so she found a similar way for them to try oysters.
“I took a page from my dad’s book and brought together things that were familiar, such as bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce, with the unfamiliarity of oysters, and loved seeing my friends try my food,” said Norton.
Originally, Norton had a corporate job in New York but helped out with cooking at Smorgasburg, an outdoor food market. A medical emergency brought Norton back to Baltimore and gave her time to reflect on what she wanted to work toward. She decided to follow her dream, leading to the launch of The Urban Oyster online.
“I would develop recipes and have my parents prepare them, and then I would take pictures and post it online.”
From there, Norton opened a brick-and-mortar location that ceased amid the pandemic but continued through pop-ups at farmers markets. “When I announced that my previous location was closing, I felt like I had failed, but the amount of people that offered support and came to me with solutions illustrated how impactful my work really was.”
In February 2024, The Urban Oyster opened its permanent home in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood. The 2,200-plus square foot coastal tavern has a curated menu that features seafood-forward favorites and imaginative revivals of classic dishes.
Elisa Milan, The Empanada Lady
Elisa Milan
The Empanada Lady
As a little girl, Elisa Milan would help her grandmother make empanadas. As an adult, she won a bet against a friend over if she could sell them at his art gallery event. It would be more than this success that led Milan to start a full-time culinary entrepreneurship and create The Empanada Lady.
Milan worked in healthcare but learned in 2019 that her employment contract wouldn’t be renewed. “I called my mother, devastated, and she was like ‘you’re going to made empanadas and figure out the rest later,’” she said.
Building up her customer base through word of mouth, Milan landed a space at Motor House, a nonprofit arts hub. When the pandemic hit, Milan pivoted to making and delivering frozen empanadas.
As businesses re-opened, Milan returned to Motor House and got an incredible sales boost. She was out of town when a Baltimore Sun article on her coquito, made from her grandmother’s recipe, came out around Thanksgiving 2021. By phone, she learned that the on-hand amount sold out fast.
After that, Milan hired her first employee and opened her Puerto Rican restaurant in 2023 in downtown Baltimore. The California-born and New York-raised Milan added decorative touches reflecting her family history and heritage. A mini-bodega is for NYC, while a ceiling display of colorful umbrellas is inspired by an Old San Juan tourist attraction.
Milan’s business was initially called “Elisa’s Empanadas,” but everyone kept referring to her as “the empanada lady.” So, she changed the name.
Milan, a single mom, credits herself for running a restaurant without formal training. She adjusted her family’s empanada recipes to fit with her restaurant kitchen equipment and trained her staff on preparation. The empanadas’ foundational spices remain traditional, but flavor experimentation is encouraged. One result produced a shrimp and pineapple filling.
“I give my cooks some creative freedom with introducing a new flavor,” Milan said. “I don’t know how I ended up with a team full of creatives, but everybody has ideas and we definitely encourage it.”
Irena Stein, Alma Cocina Latina
Irena Stein
Alma Cocina Latina
Irena Stein moved to the U.S. from Venezuela in 1980 on a Fulbright scholarship and obtained a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Stanford University. She also has many personal interests, including cooking.
Having lived in San Francisco for 18 years, Stein moved to Baltimore. A jewelry designer, the 2001 recession financially impacted her work, so she began helping a friend in a restaurant.
Stein opened Café Azafrán at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University a year later. She then started another on-campus cafe called Alkimia. Along with standard café orders, Stein would feature international foods such as arepas; they became so popular that she decided to open an arepa bar.
The space Stein ended up getting was too big for such a bar, so she established a Venezuelan fine-dining restaurant with arepas. Alma Cocina Latina opened in 2015 in Canton but later moved to the Station North Arts and Entertainment District.
Along with running Alma, Stein will open an arepa bar called Candela. In 2023, she released a cookbook on arepas.
Recently, Alma welcomed a new executive chef, Hector Romero. The Venezuelan-born Romero revised Alma’s menu with a more story-telling approach. It incorporates Venezuela’s regional foods and cultural influences, from Indigenous peoples to the Spanish to other arrivals, including Lebanese, Portuguese and Italians.
“There’s always a story behind every single one of the menu items that you’ll find at Alma right now,” said Stein. “And then I happily share the stories as much as I can with our guests, because it’s a way to spread the culture of our country.”