Chef Malcolm Mitchell, however, took a completely different approach when preparing to debut his new Gough Street gastropub last May.

“We literally just opened up the doors,” Mitchell says. “At that point we didn’t even have a Facebook page. People in the neighborhood started coming in and saying, ‘Are you guys open? Can I get a beer?’ and we said, ‘Yeah, and we have food too!’”

Mitchell, a Columbia native who has previously appeared on Food Network’s Beat Bobby Flay and Food Network Star, opened Ryder’s in the former home of Cockey’s in Upper Fells Point on May 18. He explains the reasoning behind the quiet opening by saying that he didn’t want the community to be intimidated by a celebrity chef concept taking root in the neighborhood.

“The focus is the food,” he says. “We wanted to see what the reaction was like without the residents knowing anything about me.”

Mitchell realized his love for cooking after spending four years travelling the world in the Navy. He received an Advanced Culinary Arts degree from Stratford University in 2002, and has since bounced around the country, providing personal chef services and heading up kitchens everywhere from Los Angeles to Richmond, Virginia.

He started to become more involved in the local food scene last year—hosting pop-ups at Federal Hill spots Liv2Eat and Blue Agave—and jumped at the opportunity to revamp the former Cockey’s space when he heard about it through the grapevine earlier this year.

In a swift, two-week turnaround, Mitchell enhanced the old Cockey’s interior by soundproofing the ceiling, renovating the bathrooms, replacing furniture and kitchen appliances, and adding a fresh coat of paint. Though the restaurant seats upwards of 50 people, the kitchen is a tight squeeze.

“It’s the smallest kitchen in Baltimore,” Mitchell says with a laugh. “House kitchens are bigger than this. But it’s still got some really great food coming out of it.”

The menu at Ryder’s showcases Mitchell’s fun take on gastropub fare, highlighting dishes such as tequila-braised short rib tacos, macaroni and cheese topped with Cheetos, peach glazed jerk chicken skewers, roasted beet salad with spiced pecans and a sherry maple vinaigrette, and bison burgers cooked in duck fat and topped with smoked gouda.

The beverage program features an array of beer and wine, and a cocktail menu with riffs on an Orange Crush and a classic whiskey smash.

“Food and beverage go hand in hand. You have to hit both marks,” Mitchell says. “You can still be the corner bar and sling the Natty Bohs, but also have great food.”

Mitchell says that opening the new spot has been an exciting homecoming experience for him, and that he hopes Ryder’s (named after his landlord’s dog) becomes a destination for Fells Point locals and visitors alike.

“We want it to appeal to the neighborhood first and foremost,” he says. “But when people come to Baltimore and say, ‘I don’t want to go where the tourists go,’ I want Ryder’s to be that low-key neighborhood spot that comes to mind.”

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The entrepreneur got his start in the economic world of crusts and fillings—his pumpkin pie was recently picked as one of the top Thanksgiving pies by Food & Wine magazine’s website—by turning out pies that were sold at the Daily Grind in Fells Point in the late ’90s. At the time, he was also moonlighting as a waiter and bartender at Peter’s Inn, not coincidentally, one of his favorite restaurants (along with Sticky Rice).

“He’s a jack-of-all-trades,” says Bud Tiffany, who owns Peter’s with his chef/wife Karin. They both have one thing to say about Henry, who, even now, occasionally helps out at the former biker bar: “Best. Employee. Ever.”

By 2003, Henry took over an old Herman’s Bakery at South Montford Avenue and Fleet Street with financial support from his parents and brother-in-law. Today, he has a mini-chain of pie shops with the Canton location, three in D.C., and another in Detroit—plus food trucks. And the empire is growing. He’s negotiating to open a Dangerously Delicious Pies in Austin, TX, and is considering a spot in Napa Valley, CA, where he envisions a “farm-to-table” theme in keeping with the area’s all-year growing season. “I’m like a pie bastard,” he admits.

The name for his business just came to him one day while he was driving his car, he says. He liked the sound of Dangerously Delicious Pies and envisioned the cross-bones logo that distinguishes his brand.

But these days, Henry isn’t usually doing the day-to-day dough making. He has other partners involved.

“Rodney doesn’t like the word ‘franchise,’” says Mary Martian Wortman, who owns the Canton Dangerously Delicious shop with her husband, John. “Rodney doesn’t want the shops to be cookie cutters.”

Mary, a longtime believer in the pies and Henry, left a teaching job at a private elementary school in Dundalk to follow the master, who trained the married couple in all aspects of the business. “I believe in his product—his pies are like no one else’s—and his marketing ability,” she says. “And it freed him up to do what he does best.”

Henry is still very hands-on at the shops when he has time, even getting behind the counter. “I keep it so it’s personal. I have a vested interest,” he says. “I get a cut of the action.” He doesn’t talk exact amounts of money, but he says, “It will help with the kids down the line.”

The diversity of his shops—which all use the same recipes for the pies, quiches, and side dishes and have similar color schemes of red, black, and gun-metal blue—is particularly evident in Detroit. The pie enterprise is in a tavern—the Third Street Bar near Wayne State University. Musician “Doop” Duprie—who played at Bertha’s—runs the place.

Henry met Duprie, a songwriter and singer/guitarist with the Michigan alternative-country group Doop and the Inside Outlaws, at South by Southwest, a film-and-music festival in Austin, while he was playing music and slinging pies. Duprie heard Henry sing there. “I was blown away,” he says. The men became friends, and Henry went to Detroit, where the two recorded music and hung out.

While Henry was there, the bleak employment outlook in the Motor City wasn’t lost on him. “I love Detroit,” he says. “There are no jobs, so I said, ‘Let’s open a pie shop.’”

He put Duprie, a laid-off firefighter, in charge of the new business, bringing him to Baltimore for a month to train and learn how to bake pies. Duprie, who cooked for the firefighters at his former station, was a quick study. And he is grateful for the job opportunity, especially since the two-year-old operation is already showing a profit. “He’s a good man with a big heart,” he says of Henry. “He does a lot of stuff for other people. He’s this guy who comes in and creates jobs.”

Henry accepts his role matter-of-factly: “I’m spreading the word of pies.”

Duprie isn’t the only musician to benefit from Henry’s largesse. Lee, Canton’s head baker, also received a helping hand. The Baltimore singer/guitarist, who frequented a former Dangerously Delicious shop in Federal Hill and met Henry there, was on the verge of being laid off from his job working on electric cars in an industrial park near Camden Yards. Henry heard about Lee’s plight, called him, and invited him to come to work. Lee, who learned to bake as a child from his mother, fit right in.

A number of Henry’s employees are musicians. The open kitchen in Canton allows easy viewing of the baking action, whomever is patting the dough into a pan or cutting up fruit and vegetables. The savory pies—especially the plump steak, Gruyère, and mushroom and the pulled-pork barbecue—are as popular as the sweet pies of apple, blueberry, lemon chess, and—one of Henry’s favorites—the “white-trash crème brûlée.”

The pies aren’t cheap: A whole pie is $28 for a sweet one ($6 a slice) and $35 for savory ($7 a slice). But Wortman, who took over the Canton location on O’Donnell Street a year ago, says that she and her husband are “taking it slow and sinking the revenue back into the shop.”

They also have an entertainment license now and book music acts on occasion, which certainly fits into Henry’s concept.

“He started his pie shop to extend his music career,” says Lee, whose band Lazlo Lee and the Motherless Children performs locally and around the
country. “He’s all about ‘pie style.’”

Ah, “pie style,” the phrase Henry made famous on last summer’s Food Network Star, where he was one of 12 contestants vying for a chance to have his own TV show. What exactly does it mean?

Essentially, it’s a way of life, a work ethic, a loyalty to those of similar interests. As Henry explains it vaguely, “It’s a laid-back attitude.”

While Henry was a fan favorite on the show, he came in second to Southern cooking-school instructor Damaris Phillips. His followers rallied around him, as Elizabeth Smith posted on Facebook: “Rodney should have won . . . hands down . . . but he will always be the pie guy. Nobody can beat that!”

The worst part about the show, Henry says, was not being able to talk about the results. “I’m a loudmouth,” he shares. “It had to be a secret.”

He had a good time, though, enjoying the repartee with celebrity mentors Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, and especially Alton Brown. “Me and Alton are totally cool. In the morning, we’d hang out and talk about rock-and-roll,” Henry says. “He was the most personable of all the judges.”

He would like to catch up with Brown when the TV celebrity brings his Edible Inevitable Tour—featuring stand-up comedy, live music, food talk, and more—to Baltimore on February 22 at the Lyric. “If I’m here, I’ll see him somewhere on his tour,” Henry says. “I’m going to stalk him.”

The recent TV stint wasn’t Henry’s first shot at national fame. He has also appeared on the Food Network shows Chopped and Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

But there’s still hope for Henry on the small screen. While he can’t talk about the specifics, discussions are in the works for his own program,
which he describes as a lifestyle show involving music, food, and bars.

“Sort of like Anthony Bourdain, but not so highbrow,” he suggests with a laugh.

His friends envision a starry-eyed future for him. “I can see him teaching bands how to bake pie or going mobile and teaching a band like U2 to make pies,” Lee says.

“I think with his positive attitude—and he’s sure driven—he’s bound to have something happening,” Bud Tiffany agrees.

For the next several months, Henry will be spending time in Los Angeles, working on the mystery TV possibility, and traipsing around the country in his usual fashion. “My life is killer,” he says. “I’ve got nothing to complain about. I’ve been ‘pie style’ since day one.”

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