Deciding between different restaurants can be a hassle, especially when dining with a group. This is part of why multi-concept restaurants have been gaining popularity over the past few years. Once tucked away in cities, restaurants that offer multiple kinds of food and dining experiences have been expanding into the suburbs, with food halls among the most common.
Yorktowne Social in Cockeysville is an especially interesting take on multi-concept dining. Depending on where diners enter the restaurant, they could be stepping into a rowdy sports bar, a clean and modern tapas restaurant, a quiet and elegant Mediterranean dining venue or a classy bourbon lounge. These disparate concepts are all under the same roof, so two parties at the restaurant could have completely different dining experiences.
The restaurant is the project of husband-and-wife duo Jim and Ellen Trujillo, who first met when he was in the restaurant industry and she was in the bar and nightclub business. The couple combined their expertise and opened nightclubs across the country.
The idea of a multi-concept restaurant came to the Trujillos after Jim started working with Baltimore-based real estate development company The Cordish Companies, well-known for founding entertainment districts like Power Plant Live! and its equivalents across the U.S. These districts typically feature entertainment venues and a variety of different restaurants. The Trujillos combined several restaurant concepts they were interested in pursuing into one large location in the Yorktowne Plaza shopping center.
“When I was younger, we only had two radio stations. You either liked rock and roll or dance music, because it was how you were raised,” Jim Trujillo says of the multi-concept restaurant craze. “Today, everyone has a lot more options with technology. There’s so much to choose from, it’s so diverse and people buy into the spaces they like.”
Yorktowne Social’s concepts were influenced by the tastes of the extended Trujillo family, whom Jim notes as having fairly mainstream tastes. Sports bar and barcade The Game Room was inspired by Jim’s brother, trendy tapas restaurant The Social Kitchen was designed as a space Jim and Ellen’s daughter and her friends would enjoy and the elevated casual Oak & Olive Mediterranean restaurant was meant to appeal to people like Jim’s parents, who enjoy more formal dining experiences.
Each space has a distinctly different vibe, though some areas bleed into each other. A trellis of purple flowers marks the entryway from Oak & Olive into The Social Kitchen, while the other side of the threshold features the awning one might expect from a classy restaurant. Sliding dividers keep each restaurant separate, so the quiet atmosphere of the trendier restaurants is not overtaken by the casual chatter of people watching football in The Game Room.
“When people settle in, they’ll find the vibe they like most,” Jim Trujillo notes. “[The spaces] are competing against each other. It ebbs and flows depending on the day.”
Each component of Yorktowne Social has a distinct menu, with an overall list of dishes so large that many restaurants would consider it to be taboo. Restaurants with large menus run the risk of certain dishes being under-ordered and customers being overwhelmed. But when people choose a concept of Yorktowne Social to dine in, they’re choosing the menu that fits that setting most.
Customer favorites vary by concept. Ellen’s favorite dishes from Oak & Olive are the Chilean sea bass and the Roseda Farm ribeye, sourced from the eponymous farm that Yorktowne Social has a partnership with. Diners at The Social Kitchen enjoy the pork belly, which was nearly excised from the menu until Chef Justin Moorman advocated for its inclusion. And Game Room diners love the burgers and sandwiches on offer, as well as the vegetarian options like the barbecue brussels sprouts and the sweet & spicy cauliflower.
“It’s one thing to have a great menu and a great idea, but it’s a whole other thing to be able to execute it,” Jim Trujillo says. “[Chef] Justin has been a big influence on our menu. Between him, the rest of us and listening to feedback from our customers, we’ve been tweaking it as we go.”
While Yorktowne Social had a rocky start, facing several delays that nearly led to it missing the 2025 football season, the restaurant has been well-received by locals since its November opening. The Trujillos and the rest of Yorktowne Social’s staff have been incorporating feedback from diners. Ellen Trujillo has been planning events at the restaurant meant to bring people from nearby neighborhoods together.
Diners can also look forward to Sunday brunch parties in the summer, with different food stations placed throughout the restaurant so customers can choose the kind of atmosphere they want to dine in.
“It’s a chess game we’re always playing,” Jim Trujillo says of operating the restaurant. “It’s not easy, but that makes it fun and keeps us on our toes.”
