Village of Cross Keys Restaurants: What's New Near Roland Park
October 1, 2026
October 1, 2026
"Cece's Roland Park has been an instrumental part of making the Village of Cross Keys Baltimore's hottest dining destination," said Arsh Mirmiran, a partner at Caves Valley Partners, the firm that bought Cross Keys in 2020. He said it in a press release celebrating the restaurant's Readers' Poll recognition, and the sentence describes something that did happen. Over roughly the last two years, three new restaurants opened inside the courtyard most Roland Park residents still picture as a quiet retail strip with a bakery and a linen shop. If your mental map of Cross Keys hasn't been updated since before 2024, it's out of date.
Cece's Roland Park opened in June 2024, taking over 7,000 square feet of interior space plus a 3,500-square-foot open-air courtyard within Cross Keys. It runs a continental European menu with coastal influences, house-made pastas and pizzas, and enough room for private events up to 400 people. The Baltimore Magazine Readers' Poll named it Best Outdoor Dining Venue in 2025 and a finalist for Best New Restaurant.
Luna Oaxaca Cucina Moderna followed in April 2025, and Nine Tailed Fox, from Atlas Restaurant Group, opened that same spring. Between the three of them, Cross Keys went from a courtyard with one or two dining options to a genuine restaurant row in about ten months.
The rest of the food and beverage lineup rounds out a full day's worth of reasons to be there:
That's eight food and beverage tenants operating inside one courtyard, three of which didn't exist as recently as 2023.
Cross Keys has been there since 1965, when Baltimore developer James Rouse built it on the site of the old Baltimore Country Club golf course, a Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. design he bought sight unseen for $1.7 million. It was Rouse's first planned community, the model he'd later scale up in Columbia, Maryland. The Store Ltd, a high-end clothing boutique, opened as one of the original anchor tenants that same year and is still there.
The property changed hands in 2012, and then again in 2020, when Caves Valley Partners bought it and began announcing new tenants the following year. The restaurant openings of 2024 and 2025 are part of the property's current lineup.
Cece's is the anchor of the new lineup, and its kitchen is run by Nick Sharpe, a Maryland native who spent nearly two decades working under chefs with James Beard awards and Michelin stars, including Jeffrey Buben, Fabio Trabocchi, and Michael Mina. Before joining Cece's, Sharpe was Executive Chef at Michael Mina Bellagio, a Michelin one-star, Five Diamond Award-winning seafood restaurant built around French and Japanese technique, inside one of the most scrutinized dining rooms on the Las Vegas Strip.
That's a specific and unusual credential to find running a kitchen off Falls Road, and it's part of why Cece's has drawn regional attention rather than staying a neighborhood secret. The short rib agnolotti has become a recurring favorite on the dinner menu, and the courtyard runs a full calendar of its own: lunch and dinner service, Sunday brunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and a happy hour built around the same courtyard where Bob Jackson Landscapes designed the seasonal plantings.
The restaurant additions didn't happen in isolation. Merritt Gallery and Renaissance Fine Arts, both more than 30-year tenants of the village, continue to run exhibitions that connect the courtyard to Baltimore's gallery scene, and Cross Keys hosts fall makers markets featuring more than 50 local artisans. Yves Delorme, the French linens retailer, still anchors part of the boutique row, and a rooftop deck bar has become part of the property's own promotion for anyone looking for a spot to sit outside in the evening.
Multiple Cross Keys businesses were recognized in Baltimore Magazine's 2026 Best Readers' Choice Contest, which suggests the momentum from the 2024 and 2025 openings hasn't cooled off. For a courtyard with a long history, that's a fairly direct signal of its current appeal.
None of this replaces the piece of daily life that's been part of Roland Park longer than any of these restaurants: the Stony Run Trail. It follows an old Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad bed for close to three miles of wooded stream valley, running through 15 neighborhoods including Roland Park, Hampden, Remington, and Tuscany-Canterbury. It's maintained largely by volunteers, through a group called Friends of Stony Run working alongside the Roland Park Community Foundation and neighborhood associations in Wyndhurst and Evergreen who hold formal parks partnerships with the city. Access points run from Wyndhurst Avenue and Wilmslow Road down through Cold Spring Lane and Meadow Lane to Ridgemede Road, and the trail draws dog walkers, joggers, and the occasional glimpse of a great blue heron wading in the stream.
It's the kind of infrastructure that doesn't get a press release when it opens, because it never really opened. It's just been there, kept up by neighbors who treat it as part of the neighborhood's basic upkeep rather than an amenity to market.
Roland Park's daily texture brings together two very different parts of neighborhood life. One came from a developer with a marketing budget and a Michelin-trained chef. The other has been running quietly for years, looked after by volunteers who give their time to the stream valley. Both are worth knowing about if you already call this neighborhood home, whether that means a reservation at Cece's or a walk on Stony Run before the leaves are gone.
If you're curious what else has shifted in Roland Park lately, or want a clearer read on how changes like these tend to affect a neighborhood over time, Elise Brennan keeps a close eye on this corridor and is always glad to talk through what's actually happening on the ground.
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