How The Corner Pantry Became Baltimore Restaurant Royalty

Like any business owners, Neill and Emily Howell, proprietors of The Corner Pantry, have weathered storms. In their case, the storm was a literal one—they opened for the first time in the middle of a massive nor’easter on Feb. 14, 2014, a snow-covered sign outside reading: “For the love of food.”

In a strange way, though, the snowstorm also gave them an opportunity for some free advertising. “On that first day, I was digging my car out in Rodgers Forge trying to get to the restaurant,” says Neill. “A news camera pulled up and said, ‘Hey, we’re doing something about the weather, do you want to talk to us?’ And I was like, ‘Sure’—I ended up talking about how I was trying to get out to open our new restaurant in Lake Falls Village.’”

Running a restaurant isn’t easy for anyone—unexpected events like snowstorms (or a pandemic, for that matter) can throw off your business, profit margins are slim, good labor is hard to find, sourcing ingredients is often an issue (look at the recent rise in the cost of eggs, for example)—and there’s always the threat of the short attention span of customers looking for the shiny new spot just down the road.

But for the past 11 years, the married couple of 15 years has built their business into a total success story. Even after a recent $1.6-million expansion that tripled the cafe’s footprint from 1,200 square feet to 3,600, it can still be hard to score a table.

On any given day of the week, their British-themed cafe in the Lake Falls Village shopping center, a stone’s throw from Mt. Washington, hums with hungry patrons seeking sophisticated breakfast and lunch fare that feels like something you’d find in The Big Apple.

And while they decline to discuss revenue, suffice it to say that no matter what time of day you go, there’s often a line that forms around the stanchions (there for crowd control), as people shuffle from the cold case filled with mango lassi chia seed puddings, turkey sandwiches, and Greek salads, past the pastries (scones, financiers, pasties, crumpets, carrot cake, and gluten-free treats) to the register. Not counting catering (which could be for 500 or more on a typical week), they serve roughly 7,000 customers a week, selling some 600 chocolate-chip cookies and 400 classic all-day egg and cheese sandwiches.

The Corner Pantry is busy because the elevated cafe fare, from an authentic fish and chips with mushy peas to the fantasic falafel and boffo breakfast biscuits, is made with as much care and attention as any fine-dining spot in the city. Here, no shortcuts are taken—from the “crisps” (that’s British for chips) that accompany the sandwiches to the raspberry jam, bacon, and sausage, just about everything is made from scratch in-house.

NEILL AND EMILY WANT TO BEAT THE STEREOTYPE THAT BRITISH FOOD IS BLAND, BEIGE, AND BORING.

Neill, 47, is British-born and Emily, 44, is an Anglophile, so despite the renovation, it was important for them to keep the modern British vibe intact with English touches, like the Clarke and Clarke wallpaper in the bathroom and the Chelsea Tex-tiles fabric that covers the pillows on the dining room banquettes.

“We didn’t want people to walk in and feel like they’re not in The Corner Pantry anymore,” says Emily of the dining room refresh.

But it’s the food more than the décor that speaks to The Corner Pantry’s British theme and the couple’s desire to beat the stereotype that British food is bland, beige, and boring.

“British food gets a bad rap,” says Neill, his British accent sharp as ever despite a few decades in the U.S. “It’s not just fish and chips and bangers and mash; there’s so much international influence.”

On an unusually spring-like day in February, the Howells are in a rare moment of repose in their contemporary Lutherville home, which sits on three bucolic acres and offers verdant views for as far as the eye can see. They’re always thinking about ways to continue to grow as a business, but after the months-long renovation to the cafe, including a new state-of-the-art kitchen with its top-of-the-line equipment, plus a dedicated area for baking and catering, they have finally reached a point where they can breathe a bit and take time to reflect.

“With the expansions, we’ve always been working toward the next thing, but right now there is no next thing,” says Emily. “We just want to keep the wheels turning. It’s scary being here for 11 years. We don’t want to become irrelevant or the ‘old place.’”

Relaxing at their heirloom Irish kitchen table is a rarity for the hard-working couple. When they’re not at work, they’re running their busy household, which includes daughter Annabelle, 14, son Clive, 11, and a lively Labrador, Windsor. (Their bulldog, Bessie, has passed on but is immortalized in The Corner Pantry’s logo.)

The airy foyer of their home tells more of their story. It’s filled with a mix of modern art, a round console with hefty coffee table tomes on Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana, as well as various antiques passed down from Emily’s family. Over the staircase, there’s a prominent gallery wall with black-and-white bicycle diagrams from the British Army (a nod to Neill’s love of cycling, likely passed on by his dad, who worked as an armorer in the Army and was responsible for bike repair as part of his job). It’s a total blend of their worlds, which started on different sides of the Atlantic, but collided almost two decades ago when they met while working in New York City.

Emily, who grew up in Baltimore, attended Notre Dame Preparatory and holds a degree in visual communication from the University of Delaware. Right after graduating from college in 2002, she headed to New York City, landing a job as a receptionist at the famed Soho House, a private club in the Meatpacking District known for its celebrity clients.

“I didn’t even know what Soho House was when I first started working there,” says Emily. Soon, she advanced to a manager position in the reservations department, overseeing bookings for the likes of Kevin Costner, Gordon Ramsay, and Gwen Stefani. She was very much leading the life of a single girl in the big city. (At one point, she even appeared as an extra in the episode of Sex and the City that was filmed at Soho House. It’s the episode where Kim Cattrall’s Samantha gets busted after breaking into a private club.)

Neill grew up an ocean away in Colchester, England, and was first introduced to hospitality while working as a dishwasher at Sloppy Joe’s, an American/Tex-Mex-style restaurant in his hometown. “The food was terrible,” he says, laughing. “It was all microwaved, but we made our own pizza dough—and for 10 pounds, you could get a slice of pizza, a baked potato, and coleslaw all served on one plate.”

A struggling student, Neill left his formal education at 16 to attend culinary school in his hometown. “I barely passed,” he says of both his formal schooling and his culinary education. “I struggled with sitting down and someone giving me directions—my brain doesn’t fire up that way. I’m better at touching things, feeling things, working around chaos.”

After his father’s untimely death at 53, an 18-year-old Neill moved to London to escape his small-town existence and push away the pain. “It affected me then and affects me still,” he says quietly.

His first job in London was cooking in a hotel right next to Buckingham Palace. He lasted all of three months, turned off by the lack of fresh ingredients and culinary care.

“One of the chefs called out fish and chips and the sous chef went to the freezer and pulled out a frozen piece of fish to put it in the fryer—I was like, ‘This is not what I signed up for,’” he recalls.

He quickly moved on to working at The Grove Hotel, then the famed Langan’s, an iconic brasserie in the Mayfair section of London (a see-and-be-seen spot owned by actor Michael Caine at the time). The kitchen was run by Richard Shepherd, one of the first British chefs to win a Michelin star. “The menu was handwritten every day,” he says. (In fact, a framed menu from Langan’s holds a prominent position on the Howells’ kitchen wall.)

At Langan’s, Neill finally found what he was looking for. “When I walked in, I saw all the copper pots hanging and the flat burners and flames, and I was like, ‘This is what I want,’” he recalls. “When I was in that environment, that’s when it clicked for me.”

He started as a commis chef (a junior chef) in training and proved himself to be a fast study, quickly rising through the ranks to chef de partie (a line cook). He loved the chaos of the kitchen—and the after-hours camaraderie. In the rough-and-tumble, rogue lifestyle of the kitchen, he’d found a new home.

From there, he worked at Asia de Cuba, a swanky Ian Schrager five-star hotel restaurant in stylish Convent Garden, where he learned to work with global ingredients. “It  was a very strict kitchen,” says Neill. “You had to come on time and wear clean uniforms. The chef was trying to instill standards. I learned a lot there, especially how to create different flavors with Asian and Cuban and fusion flavors, which I still like to this day.”

At 24, full of energy and enthusiasm, Neill followed another chef who was headed to the United States. In 2004, he landed a job at Soho House, where he met Emily. They worked on different floors of the hotel but soon became friends (they admit to feeling some fireworks at the time). Two years later, Soho House sent them on a fateful catering trip to California for the two weeks of Oscar season. When Emily found out that Neill had been chosen to go on the trip, too, she says, “I tried to play it cool at first.”

It was a star-studded trip, with the couple even working Tom Cruise’s after-after Oscar party at the former home of Ian Fleming, the writer of the James Bond spy series. (And it was Neill’s turn to play it cool when Paul McCartney casually stopped by the kitchen during the party to watch him make pancakes.)

But the glamour didn’t last long. In 2010 they were married, and in 2011 Annabelle made them a family of three. By then, Emily had gone back to her graphic-design roots, doing freelance advertising and design work for the likes of Vogue and Crunch Fitness.

With a baby in tow, trying to get by in New York City was wearing on them, so they uprooted and bought a house in Rogers Forge near Emily’s family. Neill became the chef at Bond Street Social in Fells Point and Emily continued to do freelance work.

“IT’S SCARY BEING HERE FOR 11 YEARS,” SAYS EMILY. “WE DON’T WANT TO BECOME IRRELEVANT OR THE ‘OLD PLACE.’”

By 2013, the couple were at a crossroads with their careers. Neill was looking for an end to working the long hours of dinner service. Emily had grown tired of the freelance life. “I don’t know exactly how it came about but I was like, ‘I don’t want to work late hours anymore, I have a family and some things have to change in my life,’” says Neill, who found sobriety that same year after years of hard partying.

They soon started joking about owning their own business, and one thing led to the next when the couple found themselves in Lake Falls Village, where Emily’s sister-in- law’s mom owned the clothing boutique L’Apparenza next to what was then Banksy’s Café. Neill thought that if they did open their own spot, something like the Banksy’s location would be ideal.

Not long after, fate intervened when Bansky’s closed almost overnight and the Howells got a tip from Emily’s sister-in-law that there was a vacancy. They got in touch with the leasing agent and soon had a great little place for a cafe of their own.

When The Corner Pantry debuted in 2014, the staff was small (six, which has grown to 40) and the vision was seemingly simple. “We wanted to use fresh, nicely sourced ingredients done properly,” says Neill. “There was [almost] nothing like that in the area at the time.”

The duo was also inspired by Union Square’s celebrated (though now-closed) City Bakery in New York City, with its chopped salads and oversized chocolate-chip cookies. “I went every single day for lunch,” says Emily, “and blew my budget.”

Some of the original offerings, from the egg and cheese on an oversized biscuit to the so-called Coronation Chicken Salad (which was a dish at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953) remain on the menu to this day. And many of the cafe’s original customers are now regulars.

Interior designer Henry Johnson was there that first day during the heavy snowstorm. As he and a group of seven friends dug into plates of duck confit, and snow coated their cars, he was wowed. “At the time, I thought the very thing that I’ve been thinking non-stop ever since,” says Johnson, who eats at the cafe several times a week and sometimes even twice a day. “This is probably the best food in Baltimore.”

WHEN THE CORNER PANTRY DEBUTED IN 2014, THE STAFF WAS SMALL AND THE VISION WAS SEEMINGLY SIMPLE.

Of course, Neill and Emily are quick to point out that it’s all about their talented team. Neill recently hired a former Magdalena chef, Angel Sisounong, as executive sous chef. There’s also MICA grad Lisa Hillring overseeing the pastry program in the sparkling new show kitchen, where patrons can watch from an observation window as Hillring makes cream-cheese frosting for gorgeous coils of cinnamon buns and paints egg wash on apple-cinnamon pop-tarts, part of a rotating series of flavors.

“I appreciate that Emily and Neill are always supportive of us being really creative and coming up with new and cool things all the time,” gushes Hillring. “That’s definitely not true everywhere.”

As they enter their second decade of cafe ownership, the business continues to evolve. The recent renovation, with its large to-go case of prepared foods like chicken tikka and deviled eggs, gave them the chance to get back to their original idea of being a place where patrons can order from an all-day menu (turkey sandwiches at 9 a.m. or eggs at lunchtime) or get grab-and-go.

“It is now what it was going to be when we first opened,” says Emily. “It has developed into what our original vision was, of having a corner pantry where you could sit down and eat—or get things to take home with you.”

The construction dust has finally settled, but that hasn’t kept Emily from dreaming up new business ideas or Neill from striving in the kitchen.

“Never having worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant will always be one of my regrets,” he says, “so I want to try my best to use the techniques they use in those place —it’s all about attention to detail. I’ve never been successful at anything in my life, so to now own a business that’s thriving is so incredibly gratifying.”

Emily likens the business to raising a family. “It’s kind of like having children,” she says. “The days are long but the years go fast. It seems so hard in the moment, but my God, having these humans who turned out the way you hoped they would is just amazing.”