Flour and Wood, the new Neapolitan pizza restaurant tucked inside La Maison café on North Howard Street in Remington, was fully booked on its very first day of business Wednesday. By the time most Baltimoreans heard about it, OpenTable already showed no availability until Sept. 9.
The restaurant comes from Min Kim and Cheolsoo “Charles” Lee, the Culinary Institute of America graduates behind the wildly popular Café Dear Leon bakery in Canton, whose team is now a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery with a viral social media following, as reported by The Baltimore Banner. Flour and Wood occupies the same 5,000-square-foot building as La Maison, the pair's daytime café hangout, effectively turning the space into a bakery by day and a pizza-centric date-night restaurant by night.
Kim and Lee spent months having their staff master Neapolitan pizza-making before opening, according to the Banner's reporting, and the resulting menu leans classic: margherita pizza for $18, alongside traditional Neapolitan toppings. The most expensive dish on the menu tops out at $32, and negronis run $9 — pricing the paper describes as straightforward and down-to-earth despite the buzz surrounding the opening.
A Building With Deep Baltimore Food Roots
The North Howard Street address has quite a culinary history. Before La Maison and Flour and Wood moved in, the space was a wood-fired pizzeria run by JBGB's, which closed in early 2024 per the Banner's account. Before that, the building housed James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde's butcher shop Parts & Labor, which closed in 2018, according to The Washington Post, and before even that it was an auto repair garage, as detailed by BmoreArt.
When Kim and Lee built out La Maison last October, they didn't start from scratch. BmoreArt reported that the team repurposed a massive walk-in cold room, originally installed in 2014 for Gjerde's whole-animal butchery program, converting it into a temperature-controlled pastry lamination room outfitted with stainless steel tables. Flour and Wood, in turn, is making use of the custom wood-fired oven JBGB's left behind, giving new life to infrastructure that has already passed through several kitchens.
Family-Style Plates and a Few Seats for Walk-Ins
The Flour and Wood menu extends beyond pizza. Diners can order a katsu bone-in pork chop served with herby sauce, apple and fennel salad, and curry remoulade, along with tempura-battered oyster mushrooms finished with a fermented jalapeño garnish. There's also a panzanella built with pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, mangoes, olives, sesame dressing and sourdough croutons, plus a gamberone al forno featuring tiger prawns in garlic butter, according to the Banner. Ranch, ricotta and tomato are all offered as dipping sauces, and dishes are generously portioned for family-style sharing.
Despite the reservation crunch, the restaurant has reserved a few tables for walk-in customers, the paper noted, giving hopeful diners without a booking at least a shot at a seat.
Following a Cult Bakery's Winning Formula
Flour and Wood is the latest expansion for Kim and Lee, who launched Café Dear Leon in Canton in July 2020 alongside fellow CIA graduate Sungae “Sunny” Lee, building a four-release daily bake schedule that starts at 6 a.m., according to Baltimore Beat. The bakery runs on a zero-tipping model, paying counter staff fixed base wages rather than relying on digital tip prompts, the outlet reported.
The bakery's crab dip bagel became an unlikely social media phenomenon last year, when a food reviewer's video racked up more than 52 million views on TikTok and reportedly prompted pop star SZA to message the bakery asking them to keep the item on their rotating monthly menu, per Baltimore Magazine. In April 2024, the duo also opened Love, Pomelo, a 28-seat Roman-inspired aperitivo bar two doors down from the original Canton bakeshop, complete with a custom bar counter built four inches lower than standard height.
Even the names carry personal meaning: Baltimore Magazine reported that “Leon” refers to Min Kim's son, while “Pomelo” is Charles Lee's wife's nickname for him, drawn from the citrus fruit. The pair isn't slowing down, either — Kim and Lee, joined by new business partner Byung Kang, are planning to open Little Ian's Bagels in Patterson Park this fall, taking over the former Pie Time storefront.
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