Neopol Savory Smokery, Culinary Architecture expanding in Hollins Market

Two Baltimore eateries are moving into the Lion Brothers Building in Hollins Market.

Culinary Architecture, a market in Pigtown, and Neopol Savory Smokery, which has locations in Belvedere Square and Union Market, joined the lineup at the building at 875 Hollins St.

Culinary Architecture moved into the space in December and officially opened last week. Owners Sylva Lin and Piper Booher are neighbors in the Hollins Market neighborhood, and Lin said they wanted to open a shop close to home. She hopes opening businesses in the area will attract others to the neighborhood, she said.

“I’m invested in building businesses in our community,” Lin said. “This side of MLK has been really, really neglected.”

While the original shop in Pigtown is a full-service market offering catering, specialty items and prepared foods, the new location functions as a coffee shop serving breakfast pastries, sandwiches, flatbreads, English muffins, hot coffee, and cold-brew coffee and kombucha on tap. The Culinary Architecture Cafe is located within the Grid, a space for startups at the University of Maryland BioPark.

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“It fits in that startup kind of environment,” Lin said.

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Meanwhile, Neopol Savory Smokery is preparing to move in to a 4,000-square-foot space in the building. The shop, based in Belvedere Square Market, also has a location at Union Market in Washington and is planning a fourth retail location in Georgetown, said Dorian Brown, who owns the shop with his mother, Barbara Lahnstein. The larger space in Hollins Market will provide a production kitchen for Neopol’s shops, and eventually it will include its own retail component. Currently, all of the smokery’s production takes place at the 700-square-foot stall at Belvedere Square.

“We’re just kind of busting at the seams,” Brown said.

They searched the city for another space before settling on Hollins Market.

“We like where it is, we like that it’s downtown,” Brown said. “This is like a good place for us to go and be part of a growing neighborhood and offer something different.”