Even before the crab dip bagel made its way onto the lineup at Café Dear Leon, the Canton bakery had legions of fans who needed no extra encouragement. Since its opening in the summer of 2020, the micro-sized Canton cafe has consistently drawn a line along O’Donnell Street, with customers willing to wait for its Japanese-style tamago egg sandwiches, marvelous muffins, pain au chocolat, and various Japanese-Korean-French fusion pastries.

But thanks to local food influencer Giovanna Poscé, who made a video praising the bagel’s “creamy crabby goodness” and named it one of the best things she’s eaten in Baltimore, the item—stuffed with crab dip mixed with sweet corn, Cajun butter, and Old Bay went viral and has since been featured in Bon Appétit and People.

It’s also tipped the bakery’s scales from popular to off the charts. To date, Poscé’s post on Feb. 1, 2025, has garnered more than 52 million views, solidifying it as a must-eat item in Charm City.

It’s even on the radar of superstar artist SZA, who DMed the bakery to ask them to keep the bagel on the ever-changing monthly menu until the next time she’s in town.

Poscé says she never meant to create a social media storm—she was simply sharing her love of food.

“I have fun eating and I have even more fun sharing my feedback on food, so I’m always tickled when anyone is listening,” she says. “Whether it’s one person or a million people, I am still surprised when anyone goes out of their way to try a spot just because I said so.”

In an age of social media, food influencers chasing the next viral post—and users perpetually hungry for food content—can propel an unsuspecting eatery to overnight fame. Charm City boasts countless examples of items that have become phenoms thanks to exposure from Instagram videos, TikTok reels, and national press.

There’s Frank’s Pizza & Pasta in Hamilton, which got a major bump in business when Barstool reviewer Dave Portnoy stopped by for a cheese pie. There’s the double-fried haddock fish sandwiches at the small, family-run restaurant The Gift in Northeast Baltimore, which went viral thanks to a TikTok video. And the shrimp and corn patties—named by The New York Times as one of the “Best Dishes Across the United States”—at Hampden’s The Duchess, which led to an uptick in sales.

Ironically, the crab dip bagel was created as a one-off specialty item and was never meant to be part of the regular rotation of offerings. Dear Leon co-owner Min Kim was getting ready to take the bagel off the menu permanently when lightning struck.

“It was our manager’s birthday and they asked us to make crab pretzels,” says Kim, explaining the bagel’s origin story. “We don’t make pretzels, so we put the crab dip on top of our new bagels and combined the idea with this cheese garlic bread they make in Korean bakeries—all of these things met in a perfect place and became the crap dip bagel.”

While a viral moment might feel like a dream come true, sudden fame can be something of a double-edged sword. At Dear Leon, the lines ballooned from 20 minutes to a whopping hour and a half after the video blew up on social media.

“Some people were getting in line without even knowing what it was for,” says Kim, laughing. “When Saturday Night Live came out with their song, ‘Big Dumb Line,’ it felt very personal. It was very challenging—we have limited baked goods, and we follow a baking schedule to keep everything as fresh as possible, so once we’re out of an item, we can’t make more.”

Even so, says Kim, the need was so pressing that he and his staff decided to meet demand. “At the end of the day, we are in a hospitality business,” says Kim. “Everyone, including our chefs and front-of-the-house managers, understood—we wanted to deliver to our guests what they want. If there’s a clear need for our guests, we’re going to do everything in our power without sacrificing quality, so that’s what we did.”

“SOME PEOPLE WERE GETTING IN LINE WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHAT IT WAS FOR.”

To ramp up production from some 100 to 1,000 bagels a week meant more work for the entire staff. “All the chefs spent extra hours and extra days to up the production,” says Kim. “And all the front-of-the-house staff went above and beyond to communicate when the bagels would be available. We have them at 6 a.m. now because the line for them would start even before that.”

In fact, the crab dip bagel was largely the catalyst for the bakery’s expansion to Remington with sister spot La Maison. (Call it the House that Bagels Built.) And while it’s hard to say for sure, the bagel might even have had something to do with their recent James Beard nomination for Outstanding Bakery, which helped get the sweets shop, and hence James Beard judges, national attention.

“We always talked about growing and expanding,” says Kim, “but that has really accelerated the process, because we needed a bigger team to produce all the crab dip bagels. We had to hire more people and more chefs to work at our tiny Canton location.”

Going viral on social media is a different experience than getting national press, notes Ekiben co-owner Steve Chu, whose Asian-fusion restaurant has had more than its share of both.

When Ekiben opened a decade ago in Fells Point, the speck of a spot, which got its start as a hot dog cart, soon became a bold-face name in Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, and Bon Appétit through word of mouth. “The press attention always gives you a small boost in business but it’s your job to keep it up and maintain,” says Chu.

But going viral is a whole different story, says Chu, whose own recent crabby creation for his Locust Point location, the Maryland Softie sandwich—an Old Bay-dusted soft-shell crab on a bao bun topped with a crab cake, melted cheddar, and remoulade—had almost 10 million views across social media.

“With magazines and newspapers, there’s a paywall, but with social media it just shows up in your feed—whether you asked for it or not,” he says. “There’s no paywall—everyone has access. It’s a million times more in your face.”

Little Donna’s owner-chef Robbie Tutlewski has also experienced what 15 minutes of fame feels like, especially for such a small operation. When The New York Times reached out to speak with him about his Fells Point restaurant in 2023, “I thought it was something bad like, ‘the worst of,’” he says now, laughing at the memory. “That’s just my personality. I always think something bad is going to happen.”

Of course, it was exactly the opposite. Only a year or so after opening, Tutlewski soon learned that the restaurant had landed on the list as one of America’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023; the following year, it was named one of the best pizza places in the country. The unassuming chef wasn’t seeking the limelight. “We didn’t want it but we needed it,” says Tutlewski.

As much as sudden celebrity can boost a business, it can also come with its own pressures and challenges, says Martha Lucius, a veteran restaurant consultant and former owner of Chesapeake Bagel Bakery and Boheme Cafe.

“As a restaurant owner, you theoretically wish for this, right? But you only have a capacity for a certain number of staff members and you can’t go beyond that size because you literally only have seven days a week and so many seats. You’re going to have to turn people away. The key is to make your place strong and good in that moment.”

That’s exactly what Tutlewski did when the first New York Times list came out. “I was like, ‘We have to do a really good job—if we work harder the next six months, it will help us in the future,’” he recalls saying at the time. “It forced me to ask myself if I wanted to expand the menu or keep it as it was. I was also like, ‘We can’t run out of pierogies.’”

When the second list came out, the pizza oven broke the day before the article was published. “People were calling to order all these pizzas and we couldn’t even serve pizza,” says Tutlewski. (The restaurant contacted patrons via email and phone calls to avoid disappointment, likely impressing them even more.)

The Wren owners Will Mester and Millie Powell had a particularly banner week last fall when they were named one of America’s Best Restaurants of 2025 by both The New York Times and Bon Appétit, all within days. After that, they were understandably inundated. It was somewhat of a mixed blessing given that the tiny Irish pub in Fells Point has some 20 barstools and just a few tables in a back dining room. Still, the couple is more than grateful for all the attention.

“If those pieces didn’t come out, we just wouldn’t have made it,” admits Mester looking back, especially since the food he serves is somewhat idiosyncratic. “It’s not for everyone,” he says of his elevated pub fare such as ox tongue, blood cake, or a whole roast pigeon. “But when The New York Times decides that it’s for everybody, suddenly it is. And people just get comfortable, because they walk in and the place is pretty busy and that gives them confidence and curiosity beyond having to navigate it entirely on their own.”

Business is now booming, necessitating the need for Mester and Powell to work longer hours. They’ve also had to pivot from their initial mission of having a humble pub that emphasized drinks over food. “We’re no longer stressing that we’re going to have to shut the door,” says Mester, so he’s not complaining. “But we had hoped that we could be a little bit more of a bar and that it wouldn’t be so food-centric.”

Having to switch gears is not uncommon, says Lucius, and finding your identity as a restaurant takes time.

“You don’t know your own brand for a while,” she says. “You think you do—you craft it a certain way, but then those sneaky customers come in and they make you realize it in a slightly different way than you thought it would be.”

Hospitality experts emphasize that getting unexpected press or going viral is not something you can plan for—and it should never be a business plan, says veteran consultant Dave Seel of Blue Fork Marketing.

“People latch onto something and get excited about it—and it goes gangbusters,” says Seel. “But you can’t be shooting for that. You’re not going to sustain your business with a viral hit. You have to be a well-rounded, all-encompassing business that has more than just one viral thing.”

“PEOPLE LATCH ONTO SOMETHING AND GET EXCITED ABOUT IT—AND IT GOES GANGBUSTERS.”

When Rooted Rotisserie’s chicken went viral, it was, in part, because owners Joe and Amanda Burton invited influencer Keith Lee to visit their restaurant in historic Hollins Market.

“I had heard about him through friends and started following him on TikTok,” says Amanda. “His account aligned with the same values that our business aligned with, as far as faith, family, community, and hospitality. He seemed like a genuine connector, and it felt like he really wanted to give exposure to the businesses he visited.”

At the time, Amanda knew that Lee was visiting the D.C. area, which increased the likelihood that he just might stop by. She was also aware that a visit from Lee, which almost always leads to increased exposure, often came with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for caveat:

“He tells people, ‘You have to know what you’re getting into when you ask me to come,’” says Amanda.

Before reaching out, she made sure that her husband, Joe, who is the restaurant’s chef, was ready for the inevitable onslaught of customers who would follow. “Joe, who is a go-by-faith kind of guy, said, ‘Yes, tell him to come,’” recalls Amanda.

So, Amanda reached out to Lee to plead her case. “I said, ‘We’re a small business. We’re not backed by some venture capital. We’re not some big restaurant group—we’re completely independent. Those types of businesses are the types of businesses that deserve exposure.’”

Her pitch worked. Lee did, in fact, drop by unannounced, calling the restaurant “one of my favorite restaurants I’ve visited in a while,” in his review. He was so impressed, he left a $4,000 tip and paid for the other customers.

“He dropped his review on a day we were closed, which we were so grateful for because we watched the reservations pop up in real time—they were going up and up and up,” says Amanda. “That gave us some time to prepare for what he already said was going to happen.”

Sure enough, on the week the review was posted, the restaurant ran out of chicken two hours before closing and there were lines down the block with orders to-go, forcing them to temporarily stop doing to-go orders. “And we went from seven to 10 reservations to 25 reservations, which is pushing 75 to 80 covers a night.”

Now that business has leveled out after several months, the restaurant has started doing to-go orders again. For his part, Joe feels the exposure worked in their favor. “It was a lot of pressure to keep up with the hype, but my motto is, ‘If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.’”

Before Lee’s visit, Joe made some eight to 10 rotisserie chickens a night. “But after Keith Lee came, we had to reload our rotisserie, maybe two or three times a night, about 30 chickens, to keep up with the rush. I was really happy to receive this new influx in business because it meant product wasn’t sitting around—the faster I can move the product, the fresher the product is in the end.”

And while their business has increased, the important things have stayed the same.

“We’ve stayed true to who we put ourselves out to be when we originally opened,” says Joe, though Amanda admits that sudden success has also had its downside. “There’s this expectation from some customers that it’s going to be the food of their dreams,” she says, “but we are one restaurant that makes one type of food. It’s not going to satisfy everyone.”

While gaining surprise positive press or social media virality can be a mixed bag—both thrilling and stressful—those we interviewed say it’s worth it.

“The food and beverage world is full of rocky seas,” says Dave Seel. “You just try to set yourself up in the best way possible and rely on your skills and your community. Be grateful for those highs because the lows are definitely going to come.”

When Robbie Tutlewski and his wife, Kaleigh Schwalbe, were looking for a place to live after a move from Washington, D.C., they were instantly enchanted with Upper Fells Point.

“There were Christmas lights and people had their flowerpots out,” says Tutlewski. “We walked around the area, but I never thought anything would open up.”

But in 2021, something did. That something was the building that housed the iconic Henninger’s Tavern, including a five-room residence upstairs. Schwalbe saw potential, while Tutlewski saw a lot of work.

After all, the three-story brick building at 1812 Bank Street was built circa 1850 and tending to it seemed like a job all its own. In addition to being a family home, at one time, the historic building had housed a medicinal liquor store and sold ice cream. Tutlewski knew he wanted to open a restaurant. It just never occurred to him that he’d live over it.

“I didn’t know anything about how to get a restaurant started—how to hire staff, where to get produce, so to add on another layer of things to go into a space that had a lot of needs wasn’t what I was looking for,” says Tutlewski. “I was just looking to survive.”

But he relented. The couple moved into the home in 2021 and, by June 2022, their charming restaurant—with its menu of Polish specialties and tavern-style pizzas, and granny-chic vibe—was open for business. By September of the following year, Little Donna’s was named one of the 50 Best Restaurants in America by The New York Times.

Four years (and two babies) later, the gifted chef enjoys feeding some 140 or so patrons who arrive for dinner on a busy night.

“A lot of people coming into the restaurant say, ‘Wow, it feels like were in somebody’s house,’” says Tutlewski. “I always love to tell them, ‘You are in someone’s house—you’re in my house!’”

Did you have concerns about living and working in the same place?
One hundred percent, but I thought, if this sucks and the restaurant fails, at least we have a place to stay—we’ll figure out what to do with the downstairs.

Your commute appears to be exactly 12 steps. What’s it like to have such a short trip to the restaurant?
That’s probably the one thing I really miss—the commute. I miss that transition time just being able to space out. But if we lived somewhere else, the restaurant would not be as successful as it is. I wouldn’t have been able to make the commute and have a baby.

How do you balance being a dad with being a chef?
There’s a lot of back and forth. We start turning the lights on, firing up the stove, making the dough, and making pierogies at 7 a.m. I have to finish at five to pick up one of the kids [as the restaurant is open- ing]—and around 7 p.m., I head upstairs to help put the kids to bed.

Is it hard to have boundaries for yourself in both your personal and professional life?
It’s really challenging. The biggest one was having to step away from the focus of food since having our first son, Jesse. There are still things that I want to do here but they have to be on the backburner for now.

Does your staff come upstairs into your home?
Staff is always allowed to come upstairs and three of the people on staff help with childcare—some of them have extra jobs, so I’m only going to ask when I really need it. They will watch the baby monitor or bathe them. It’s not a card I pull often but sometimes I’ll be like, “Hey, can you watch the kids tonight?”

How do you decompress?
I try to get away. In the past, I couldn’t leave because I had to drain the boiler every day during the winter. I couldn’t put that much responsibility on everyone here. I couldn’t put on their prep task, “Cut onions, marinate fish, drain the boiler, this door fell off the hinge.” We’re slowly getting to the point of getting rid of those issues so people can just cook. Sometimes I feel like I’m spending more time working on this stuff than managing and running a restaurant, but it’s gotten better.

What does your almost-three-year-old, Jesse, think about the restaurant?
He knows what’s going on, that Daddy is at work. He comes in and says his hellos, says his holas to everyone, every single day. He has known the staff since day one. He loves looking at [patrons] and seeing what they’re eating. He walked up to somebody one time and goes, “Oh, nice pizza”—and he really meant it.

Pickled vegetables are having a moment—and local restaurants are paying attention to the culinary possibilities.

“They’re versatile,” says chef Robbie Tutlewski, owner of Little Donna’s in Upper Fells Point. “They make a showcase.”

The house pickle plate on Tutlewski’s menu is a prime example. Heaped with pickled baby carrots, watermelon rind, baby cucumbers, beets, and whatever else strikes the chef’s fancy, the dish is a satisfying palate pleaser, complete with creamy deviled eggs.

“Pickles are super [food],” says Tutlewski. “They’re good for you. I’ve been eating them from the time I was a kid.”

He’s not the only restaurateur who’s been devouring pickles since childhood.

“When I was a kid, I loved pickled beets,” says chef Jesse Sandlin. “My mom would send me to school with a jar of beets in my lunchbox.”

That food fondness stuck with the Baltimore-bred chef, who now features pickled vegetables on her menus, including “lunch-box beets” at Sally O’s in Highlandtown. At Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles in Fells Point, she fashions a container of mixed tart veggies with bell peppers, carrots, and radishes.

“It’s a nice little appetizer because it doesn’t fill you up,” Sandlin explains. “It adds acid and gets your appetite going a bit.”

Chef Jeremy Hoffman, who operates Preserve in Annapolis, taps his childhood.

“One of my earliest memories is going to the grocery store to the deli section when they used to have big barrels of dill pickles,” he says. “I remember opening the lid and loving the scent. Everything is made better with pickles.”

Hoffman carried over that idea to Preserve, where “pickling, preserving, and fermenting is a passion.” His icebox pickles showcase cucumbers, carrots, red peppers, and onions. His house giardiniera is a jumble of cauliflower, olives, pickles, and peppers in an olive brine.

“Vinegar-based pickles lend themselves to be an accent to other dishes,” Hoffman says. “People’s flavor profiles and what they’re willing to eat has really expanded.”

A New Old Flame

A love letter to Little Donna’s.

When I moved to Baltimore a decade ago, it felt like I’d arrived at the party too late. Martick’s had closed. The Cultured Pearl and Gampy’s were shuttered. That strawberry pie at Haussner’s was a distant memory.

Our city had once been dotted with dining establishments that bottled its eccentric everyman spirit—where artists, factory workers, newspapermen, and country-club types could rub elbows amidst eclectic décor, over unexpectedly delightful food and drink. And so I thanked goodness for Henninger’s Tavern, one of the last of its kind in Upper Fells Point.

Here, on the corner of Bank and Durham Streets, the clientele was local, the barkeeps surly, the walls strewn with Colts pennants and Orioles bobbleheads and JFK paintings and leopard print—a Blaze Starr headshot hanging above the bar like some patron saint. You could order a house-made TV dinner along with white-tablecloth crab cakes and a dangerously perfect dirty martini. It was a dogeared slice of Old Baltimore.

Alas, after more than three decades, Henninger’s closed in 2021, too. But when I walked into that same rowhome restaurant last summer, after it had reopened as a new spot named Little Donna’s, I let out an audible cheer.

The place was cleaned up a bit, yes—new menu, fresh coat of paint, some outdoor seating—but with a hat tip to its beloved predecessor, and the quirky yet quality hospitality that came before.

Chef-owner Robbie Tutlewski is a Midwest native who clearly gets the downhome charm of our Rust Belt cities. As used to be custom in the corner-bar business, he lives upstairs with his family and dogs. Downstairs, in the small kitchen, he turns out some of the most delicious and distinctive food in town, if not the entire East Coast.

That’s no surprise, once you hear Tutlewski’s credentials—from Chicago’s Le Cordon Bleu, Phoenix’s Pizzeria Bianco, D.C.’s Tail Up Goat—and yet, there’s not a single air in the place, besides the Pavlov’s dog-worthy smell of his tavern-style tomato and cheese pies. The dishes are a hodgepodge of influences, be it his culinary training or his newfound neighborhood or his Yugoslavian grandmother—the restaurant’s namesake—each a playful, prodigious iteration of some classic you’ve known and loved.

I could spend most nights knuckles deep in a plate of house pierogies, floating in a pool of smokey chili oil beneath the brightness of sour cream and chives (which should absolutely be ordered with the suggested side of sausage and kraut).

On every occasion, the cacophony of texture and taste that is the crispy cabbage pancake has left my fellow diners fighting for the last bite. And the pan-fried pork schnitzel—stuffed with Ostrowski’s kielbasa from down the street, then topped with pickled fennel and celery—is so decadent, it’s almost indecent, helping to earn them a nod on The New York Times “Best Restaurants” list last year.

Here’s what I know: Always, the taco pizza. Always, at least one “Dad’s Beer on Ice,” aka a michelada-ed Zadie’s lager from Union Craft. Always, a trip to see the Hindenburg mural above the urinal, left over from Henninger’s days.

Go solo, on a first date, or fiftieth, and alongside a gaggle of good friends, with Tutlewski personally looking into any last pantry stash of maraschino cherries for your toddler’s Shirley Temple. Maybe you’ll see Bud and Karin Tiffany there, too, nearby neighbors behind the cult-classic Peter’s Inn, who recommend the place to regulars on their own nights off. They must also see in it what I do.

Which is: Somehow, Little Donna’s feels like it’s always been here. Like a part of Old Baltimore that I thought was long gone had never left. Like maybe it never will. And thank goodness for that

This is one of five deeply personal Love Letters—reflections on restaurants that hold a special spot in our hearts—from our 2024 Best Restaurants list. View more of our picks, here.

While everyone loves their grandmother’s cooking, these nonnas, abuelas, and bubbes have lately been a great source of chef inspiration at local restaurants.

John Shields, chef-owner of Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen at the Baltimore Museum of Art, serves the very same crab cakes he learned to make from his grandma, Gertie. At Little Donna’s in Upper Fells, chef-owner Robbie Tutlewski’s grandmother, Donna Wranich, taught him to make the pierogies, pies, and palacinkes (Serbian pancakes) that now appear on the menu of the restaurant named after her. The granny trend is also in full force at Cosima, where chef Donna Crivello’s menu is an homage to her Sicilian grandmother, Cosima, for whom the Woodberry restaurant is named.

“We’d go to nonna’s house every Sunday for dinner,” says Crivello. “One time, I peeked inside her bedroom—and there was the bed covered with a white sheet. On that sheet were all her perfectly round ravioli dusted with flour—and that’s what we had for dinner.”

While Crivello prefers to rest her ravioli, pictured above, on sheet trays, the recipe is essentially unchanged. “I don’t know what was in her dough—likely egg and flour—which is what I do,” says Crivello, “but the filling was ricotta. I keep it simple, the way she did it. I stick to the basics, starting with flour and eggs for the dough and a filling of ricotta and egg, plus Pecorino cheese or Parm and parsley.”

Sadly, Cosima passed away long ago, so the chef can only guess what she might think of her granddaughter’s culinary shrine.

“She would be honored to know that we named the restaurant after her and are still talking about her,” says Crivello with a laugh. “But she might say, ‘That’s not the way I do it.’”

Walk by Little Donna’s, the pizzeria that opened the first week of June on Bank Street in Upper Fells, and you’d be forgiven if you kept walking.

It doesn’t look like a new restaurant, much less one of the best restaurants to open in the area lately. It’s a 120-year-old rowhouse with the kind of bistro-y décor—a painted menu between lace-curtained windows, a few cafe tables and chairs fighting for sidewalk space with pots of greenery—that looks like it’s been there for years.

In some respect, Little Donna’s has been there for years. When chef-owner Robbie Tutlewski and his wife Kaleigh Schwalbe bought the building in 2021, it had been Henninger’s Tavern for more than three decades. And rather than gutting the place, the couple decided to capitalize on that history, keeping most of the nostalgia-driven stuff on the walls—and many of the tavern’s regulars along with it.

Tutlewski isn’t a newcomer either. He spent the last five years working in D.C. restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Tail Up Goat, and before that a decade in Arizona cooking with Chris Bianco, one of the most respected pizzaiolos in the country (and this year’s James Beard Award-winner for Best Restaurateur). Walk into Little Donna’s and you wouldn’t know any of this. Tutlewski might swing by to ask how your pierogies are, before heading back into his tiny kitchen, but that’s about it.

Little Donna’s is named for the chef’s late grandmother, a small woman (hence the nickname) originally from Belgrade.

“We didn’t even know her age. She was taught to cook by a Polish family,” says Tutlewski, which explains the pierogies—deft potato dumplings topped with dollops of sour cream, some parsley, and a surprising and utterly addictive dose of chile crisp. It also explains a few other dishes: palacinka, tender pancakes rolled up with farmer’s cheese and served with flavor bombs of hot honey chicken and pepper relish; and pork schnitzel, a crisp masterwork stuffed with kielbasa sourced from Ostrowski’s, a nearly 50-year-old sausage shop conveniently located across the street. Paired with aioli and pickled celery, the schnitzel has been on the menu since the restaurant opened, and Little Donna’s grandson has pledged, thankfully, that both it and those pierogies will remain there.

TUTLEWSKI’S MENU IS DEEPLY IDIOSYNCRATIC, BUILT FROM HIS GRANDMOTHER’S ACTUAL RECIPE BOX.

Tutlewski’s menu is deeply idiosyncratic, built from his grandmother’s actual recipe box—which he’s installed on a high wall shelf amidst the Henninger’s gear, not far below the old tin ceilings—plus those years with Bianco in Arizona, and a childhood spent in the Midwest. The chef grew up in Gary, Indiana, and logged considerable time in Michigan, where his uncle ran a bar. That bar served taco pizza, which is now one of the four or five pizzas Tutlewski puts on the menu. “That pizza is what I grew up with. This is a Midwestern, thin-crust, tavern pie,” he says.

Little Donna’s doesn’t have a pizza oven, at least not yet, so the thin-crust pies, assembled with flour sourced from Lancaster, PA, and California, and just yeast, water, and salt, are made on a deck oven. Crepe-thin, with pockets of char around the edges, they’re substantial enough to hold the sausage and banana peppers of the Tavern Pie, the ricotta and lemon-marinated kale of the wonderful Bianca Pie, even the small mountain of chorizo, green-chile crema, cheese, salsa, lettuce, and crushed chips of that Taco Pizza. And be sure to leave back some of the excellent crust for the dips (tomato hot honey, icebox ranch) that Tutlewski offers to dunk them in. (If you forgot you were in a tavern, this should remind you.)

The inventive cocktail list includes strawberry-rhubarb crush; a drink called Taco Tuesday, with mezcal and charred pineapple juice; and one called Granny’s Meds, with gin, local honey, Lillet Blanc, and yuzu.

Other than the ghost of Little Donna, Tutlewski’s guiding force in the kitchen is Sacha Levine, a veteran chef and longtime friend who moved out from Arizona to help open the restaurant. Levine’s love of fresh produce and pickled things runs throughout the menu, a terrific counterpoint to the heavy bar food and hefty dishes from Eastern Europe and the Upper Midwest. It’s Levine who engineers the chopped salad, the farmers’ market-y sides to the mains, and the remarkable pickle plate, a haul of perfectly brined beets, baby carrots, watermelon rinds, jammy eggs, and whatever else Levine feels like pickling. It’s a gorgeous still life, and a perfect foil to all that pie.

Little Donna’s is still evolving: The crab dip is more like a chowder than the thick, oozy dip that Marylanders expect, the coddies need reworking, and the desserts—over-zealous, unwieldy brownie sundaes and polenta cakes—don’t match the execution of the rest of the menu.

But if you’re actually still hungry at the end of your meal, forget the desserts and order another crush and a Tomato Pie, which is maybe the best thing at the restaurant. A deceptively ordinary entry amid the more ornate pies, it’s built of just tomato sauce, garlic, oregano and olive oil, and it is stunningly, breathtakingly good.

LITTLE DONNA’S: 1812 Bank St., 443-438-3956. HOURS: Wed.-Sat., 5-10 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers: $7-15; entrees: $14-26; desserts: $9. AMBIANCE: Retro cool meets Baltimore rowhouse.