An essential part of any major city’s food scene is a good casual lunch spot. While fast food offers a quick fix, more and more downtown workers and tourists want a place with fresh, local ingredients, affordable prices, and excellent food quality served by friendly faces.

Rosina's turkey pesto brie sandwich and famous pesto pasta salad

For more than two decades, downtown Baltimore’s Rosina Gourmet  has been doing just that. With their diverse menu of salads and soups to their sandwiches on freshly baked bread, the popular lunch spot has continued to feed generations of Baltimoreans.

And it’s no surprise why Rosina Gourmet has remained a staple in the downtown area for so long.

Owner Jim Lancaster is a self-proclaimed foodie who grew up around the local restaurant and food industry. In the late 1990s, Jim attended culinary school at Baltimore International College and soaked up the business marketing program at Towson University. And in 1999, following in the footsteps of his mother and family, he made the decision to enter the Baltimore food scene.

After mastering the skills of flavor layering and culinary art, Jim wanted to give back to the Baltimore community and cater to the working crowd. That’s when Rosina Gourmet’s first location opened its doors in the popular Canton neighborhood of Baltimore City.

“As a Baltimore native, I’ve come to love Baltimore City and all it has to offer,” Jim said. “Canton seemed like the ideal location for our first brick and mortar, and it had the right mixture of community and culture to serve our ideal customer: the hungry Baltimorean.”

Today, the cafe and catering company has grown far beyond its original location. This includes a bustling Downtown Baltimore location, tucked just a stone’s throw from the Inner Harbor, and countless catering partnership opportunities. The team of 14 employees is small but fierce, serving up coffee, tea, sandwiches and, of course, Rosina Gourmet’s famous pesto pasta salad to each worker, tourist, or passerby that walks through its doors.

In addition to maintaining ongoing catering contracts with some of Baltimore’s top employers, like Johns Hopkins and Morgan Stanley, the team also caters a wide range of events for global companies like Yahoo. Even with “mainstream” partnerships, the cafe doesn’t forget its main priority: the people and workers of Baltimore. Over the last two decades, Rosina Gourmet has seen Baltimore City through a lot of ups and downs, the most recent being fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Like many Baltimore businesses, we were forced to temporarily close during the pandemic. The effects of these closures can still be seen throughout the downtown Baltimore area today,” recalls Jim. “Thanks to Maryland Department of Commerce’s COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund we were able to get back on our feet, and in turn, help others get back on their feet. Part of our mission here at Rosina is to help bring workers and businesses back to Baltimore.”