8 new restaurants and bars to check out in Baltimore

If Baltimore’s food scene feels as if it’s moving faster than you can make dinner plans, that’s because it is. New restaurants, bars, cafés and food trucks are offering everything from wagyu smashburgers and Spanish-inspired tapas to matcha-horchata mashups and grilled cheese sandwiches. Whether you’re chasing a food truck in an Airstream, ducking into a subterranean bar in Mount Vernon or planning your next big dinner in Hampden, here are the new Baltimore spots worth adding to your list.

MillOh!

• Food truck

MillOh! started last June with a tent, a grill and a spot at the Reisterstown Farmers Market. The operation has rolled into its first full summer season with a silver Airstream trailer marked by a bright yellow smiley face on the door. The mission is simple: Bring high-quality, locally sourced food to the streets without making it feel too serious. The menu centers on grass-fed smashburgers, including the MillOh! Smash with American cheese on a toasted brioche bun, the Argentinian Double Burger with chimichurri and pickled red onions, and the Oklahoma Burger with onions, pickles and house sauce. The food comes packed in a Happy Meal-style container, which adds to the fun without feeling gimmicky.

For something sweet, MillOh! serves alfajores, soft cornstarch cookies filled with dulce de leche imported from Argentina. The drinks are just as interesting, from the Greenwave iced matcha latte to horchata made with rice milk, morro seeds, cocoa, peanuts and cinnamon. There’s also the Matchada, which blends that horchata with ceremonial matcha. Follow the business on Instagram for locations. I found it parked at Ministry of Brewing, which is not a bad place to chase down a burger and a cookie.

Toasty Corner

• 1001 S. Charles St.

Toasty Corner is a family-owned grilled cheese spot sitting, naturally, on a corner in Federal Hill. Just a short walk from M&T Bank Stadium and Camden Yards, it’s an easy stop before or after a game, or during a workday when lunch needs to be comforting, quick and reasonably priced. The restaurant builds on the classic grilled cheese without losing the joy of the original. There’s the Napoli Meatball Smash with mozzarella, provolone, Italian meatballs, marinara and Parmesan; the Jalapeño Popper Chicken with grilled chicken, aged cheddar, pickled jalapeños and garlic herb aioli; and the GC Stacked Club with aged cheddar, ham, grilled chicken, smoked bacon and Roma tomatoes. You can choose white bread, sourdough or ciabatta, and it serves breakfast sandwiches and platters. The sandwiches arrive deeply golden, crispy at the edges and melted in the middle. It’s the most perfectly golden grilled cheese I’ve tasted recently, which is not a sentence I use lightly.

Bar Dalí

• 909 N. Charles St.

Bar Dalí, the subterranean tapas bar from James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde in collaboration with hotelier Ash, is a space made for lingering. The bar seats, tables and cozy booths in the basement of the former Mount Vernon Stable & Saloon make it feel like an everyday neighborhood hideout.

The dishes lean into Spanish-inspired comfort while keeping the team’s longtime focus on ingredients from local, regenerative farms and Chesapeake watermen. There are crispy bravas potatoes with pepper sauce and aioli, croquetas that change direction with fillings like mushroom and spinach or salt cod and potato, and a Dalí burger served as three short rib sliders with manchego, Dalí sauce and shallot on milk buns. Seafood plays a big role, with options including fried squid or monkfish and razor clams, while heartier plates such as beef cheeks, fried chicken with fish pepper honey and grilled spareribs give the menu extra weight. This is the kind of tapas bar where “just a few plates” can quickly become the whole night.

Seppia

• 901 W. 36th St.

Seppia, from the owners of La Cuchara, has taken over the former G.C. Murphy Five and Dime building in Hampden — a space that dates to 1901 and feels grand yet surprisingly approachable. Like its sister restaurant, Seppia has a long bar that practically begs for a martini, while the sprawling first floor and additional upstairs space add even more scale.

The menu follows a seasonal path through regional Italian cooking, moving from southern dishes in the summer to northern ones in the winter, with seafood playing a major role. You can start with focaccia, prosciutto di Parma with gnocco fritto, or burrata served with roasted garlic, fennel agrodolce, anchovies, olive tapenade, pesto and confit tomato, so that every bite is a choose-your-own adventure. Pastas are a major draw, including bucatini with pistachio pesto and stracciatella, squid ink Mafalda with mussels and clams, and rabbit agnolotti. Larger plates keep the seafood theme going with whole roasted branzino, though the 40-ounce bone-in ribeye is there for anyone who believes dinner is better when the whole table gets involved.

The Barn & Lodge at the Rotunda

• 729 W. 40th St.

The Barn & Lodge may be one of the most beautiful additions to Baltimore’s restaurant scene. It sits inside Hampden’s historic Power House, built in 1921 to generate energy for the Maryland Casualty Insurance Co.’s campus, and now the building is generating a very different kind of buzz. The look is rustic-chic and grandiose, with a large covered patio, fireplace and tables that match the hearty, polished dishes. The Flaming Crab Dip makes an entrance: Sweet claw crabmeat, cheddar and cream cheeses and garlic-crab seasoning are flambéed tableside with brandy. There’s also Million Dollar Bacon with bourbon maple syrup, and bigger plates such as Red Brick Chicken with Old Bay dry rub, butter-whipped potatoes and roasted farmers market vegetables. For something richer, the house-made Chesapeake pasta folds shrimp, jumbo lump crab, asparagus and heirloom cherry tomatoes into lobster cream sauce and fresh tagliatelle.

Wanna Smash

• 3500 O’Donnell St.

Straight out of Los Angeles and into Canton, Wanna Smash will have you breaking out a stack of napkins to handle its messy burgers. The new bar and grill gives the classic smashburger the wagyu treatment, with patties smashed hot on the grill then stacked with big, saucy toppings. The food items fit the restaurant name, though you may feel a little awkward ordering. The Quickie keeps it classic with grilled onions, pickles and smash sauce, while the Hot and Heavy turns up the heat with jalapeños, bacon and spicy yum yum sauce. For anyone who wants to try the full lineup, The Foursome serves sliders of all four signature burgers over fries. The milkshakes keep the same over-the-top energy, with cereal-inspired flavors including Oreo, Fruity Pebbles and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Wonderland

• 1603 Aliceanna St.

The door to Wonderland gives you two options: Turn one way for Oleum, one of Baltimore’s favorite vegan restaurants, or head the other way into a micro club. Honestly, why not both? The owners of the Rockwell, Soundgarden and the former nightclub the Get Down bring a trippy, ’60s- and ’70s-inspired look to Fells Point with a modern twist. There’s a lighted staircase (lined with bubble mirrors) that changes colors, monitors with shifting visuals, mirrored ceilings and a glass dance floor in the bar. The team plans to open an expansive second floor in the next couple of months. The drink menu keeps the same colorful energy, leaning playfully tropical with cocktails centered around blackberries, kumquat, coconut rum, passion fruit, tequila, bourbon and bright pops of citrus. Even the mocktails stay in the dream sequence, with coconut, blackberry and citrus showing up in drinks that feel just as fun without the booze. It’s part bar, part club, part visual trip and very much designed for people who want their night out to sparkle a little extra.

Carpet Cafe

• 1901 St. Paul St.

Carpet Cafe by Good Neighbor brings coffee, food, retail and skate culture together inside a restored 1929 landmark in Station North. The collaborative café from Good Neighbor and Carpet Company, Baltimore’s internationally recognized skate brand, feels like a new chapter for North Avenue — one where you can grab a Japanese-style iced coffee, browse a few curated goods and hang out in a space that feels cool without trying too hard. Coffee drinkers can stick with the classics, while the more curious can go for matcha with sparkling coconut water, rose coco milk soda or tamarind orange soda.

On the food side, parathas are the move, with sweet, savory and plain versions that make the café feel a little more interesting than your standard coffee shop. But do not sleep on the pastries, including pistachio rose tarts, blueberry scones and chocolate chip cookies, all baked by local favorite Crust by Mack. Still, the real draw is the way Carpet Cafe blends coffee, culture and Baltimore creativity into one very good-looking room.