The Dish: He started a Canton bake shop. Now he wants to give it away.

David Korrie never wanted to be a baker.

When he purchased a building on Fleet Street in 2023, he thought the former attorney’s office on the ground floor — a 1,200-square-foot space with large windows and a small apartment in the back — would be the perfect spot for a bakery. Just not one he’d ever run.

He hoped to pass the business to a worthy successor.

“I really thought hard, ‘OK, is it going to be some guy down the street?’” he said of potential owners. “And I decided, ‘No way in hell.’”

But now the 72-year-old former government contractor is liquidating retirement funds to keep his Little Hungarian Bake Shoppe running.

It’s not because he had a change of heart or is making a considerable profit off the business; it’s because Ukrainian refugees, the people he wants to run the eatery, are no longer granted a clear pathway into the country.

When Korrie took over the 2110 Fleet St. location, millions were fleeing the escalating war in Ukraine. The crisis felt close to home: In 1994, Korrie lived in Hungary, which shares a border with Ukraine. He married his ex-wife in Hungary and raised his kids in Hungarian culture. Thousands of Ukrainians have immigrated to the Central European country, and even more came to the United States through a humanitarian parole program.

“I could sponsor them and they’d run this bakery,” Korrie thought.

But as Korrie prepared to open the bake shop in Baltimore last summer, he didn’t realize a Unite For Ukraine program allowing displaced Ukrainians into the country was stripped of funding. The decision followed promises by the Trump administration to pause and review federal programs allowing temporary entry to people for humanitarian reasons. It’s left Korrie in limbo as he tries to keep the business above water until the program resumes.

Since the Little Hungarian Bake Shoppe opened in late August, Korrie has written to Maryland representatives asking them to reopen the Department of Homeland Security program. He’s also enlisted the help of the local Ukrainian community.

Ukrainian pastor Yuriy Pylypchak, who leads Baltimore’s St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church, met with Korrie about his plans. “I explained the whole thing to him, my vision and all that, and he just said, ‘Things look pretty bad,’” Korrie said.

Pylypchak admitted he didn’t think it would be possible to bring someone in since the program is no longer active, or even to find someone in Baltimore’s already small Ukrainian community willing to take over. But the pastor believes any attempt to show kindness to people in crisis is worth it.

“I’m very grateful for him, his effort and to put his small business through all of this,” he said.

Korrie says he’ll consider this shop a “total failure” if he can’t get someone Ukrainian to take it over. Yet he refuses to let doubt win. He has shared his story with nearby storefronts and employees of the Ukrainian credit union next to Pylypchak’s church. He also stays in touch with Church World Services’ Neighbor Network, which helped local groups privately sponsor Ukrainian refugees and support their relocation, though they haven’t had any new ones enter — let alone any who have expressed interest in running a bakery.

“It would be a real shame if I sponsored someone and they didn’t want to run this place,” he said.

So why doesn’t Korrie just give the eatery to someone else?

“I mean, yes, I don’t want to run it much longer, but I’m not going to give up on a Ukrainian refugee family that’s abroad and is in need,” he said. He feels the U.S. has already turned its back on the Ukrainian people.

“I can’t feel good about myself if I turn my back and listen to what’s convenient for me,” he added.

Though keeping the place going financially is another issue.

The shop is struggling. Korrie said more than two customers is a successful day, as the lunch and morning crowds he expected to draw have yet to materialize.

Weekends are busier. Korrie hopes to build on that with new menu items and a possible dinner service to make the shop more profitable. Hungarian community members on Facebook told him they wanted more options for chicken paprikash, a comfort food of meat braised in a rich paprika sauce, which Korrie will add in the form of a turnover, or Hungarian kifli. He’s also rented kitchen space with the Creative Alliance, which manages commissary kitchens in the Fells Point area, to further experiment.

One employee brings in her homemade soups for Korrie to freeze and sell. Crepes are also on the menu, though they aren’t nearly as popular as the chimney cakes, a delicate Hungarian pastry used as bread for sandwiches. The towers of dough, coated with sweet flavors like almond and cinnamon or the savory cheese and jalapeño, require a special oven with cylinder-shaped rollers.

He splits his time between the one-bedroom apartment he outfitted with shiny appliances and kitchenware for the potential refugees, and preparing dough in the shop. His operations manual detailing day-to-day activities and baking formulas has become somewhat of a letter to the missing successors.

“Some of my notes are more or less prose, so it’s like I’m talking to them,” he said.

Korrie’s deep commitment is nothing new to his daughter, Sabrina, 28, who describes her father as a community-wide handyman always looking for a project or problem to fix.

“It’s surprising at this stage of life to take on such a big project, but it also makes sense,” she said.

This latest adventure is “the most alive” she has seen him. So much of Korrie’s life was dedicated to his job, Sabrina said, and not his passions.

“Ultimately, he wants to find a way to make a meaningful change in the community,” she said. “I can’t imagine doing it, but if anyone’s going to find a way, it’s him.”