The Dish: The chef behind some of your favorite restaurants is opening his own cafe

For a place called Hello Trouble, the menu at Andrew Weinzirl’s new cafe on Harford Road looks like a devil of a good time.

For breakfast, there’s the “Sweet Revenge,” a cheffy homage to the McDonald’s McGriddles sandwich, which combines bread pudding with sausage, eggs and Cooper sharp cheese. For lunch, tomato pie will showcase the bounty of summer in layers of cheese and Duke’s mayo. The espresso menu includes an “iced Guillermo” served with lime wedges.

When it opens in mid-August, the intimate cafe at 5414 Harford Road will mark what the veteran chef calls his “hopefully triumphant” return to Hamilton-Lauraville.

In 2015, Weinzirl said goodbye to Maggie’s Farm, a Southern-inspired restaurant he opened three years earlier just a mile down the street. Launched with Weinzirl’s then-fiancee and their friend Matthew Weaver, the place was a home for their own unique personalities and frequently drew copycats. “We were doing stuff that hadn’t been seen before and then in six months … we’d see on other people’s menus,” Weaver said.

But for all Weinzirl’s talent as a chef, he and Weaver lacked much business experience, and Maggie’s Farm struggled to break even. Worse, its back-of-house drama could rival the fights and personality clashes of TV’s “The Bear.” The restaurant was featured on a Food Network show called “Restaurant Divided.”

Ultimately, Weinzirl’s fiancee confronted him with what can feel like the central dilemma for owner-operators: He could easily make more money as an executive chef at someone else’s restaurant. So Weinzirl left the restaurant he and Weaver named for a Bob Dylan song about “refusing to work for the man,” and got to work — for the man.

It was a wrenching decision. “You feel like you’re selling your soul so you can finally make what you know what you’re worth,” Weinzirl said.

He went on to work for some of the biggest names in Baltimore’s food scene, cooking at The Brewer’s Art, for the Atlas Restaurant Group and for chef Spike Gjerde at Artifact Coffee. Most recently, he was head chef at ZaVino in Cross Keys, which in two years has built a reputation for some of the best pizza in town.

All the while, Weinzirl never let go of his dream to open a cafe of his own. Now, he’s finally doing it, putting to use the hard-earned lessons of his career as a chef and leaning on some of his friends in the industry for support. As he’s faced his doubts, including sticker shock at how much more expensive everything is today than it was a decade ago, “I’ve had a good network of support and validation and people cheering me on,” he said.

He’s also opening in a part of Baltimore he calls home, a neighborhood he fell in love with years ago when he was working as a line cook in the now-closed Chameleon Cafe. When his father died in 2009, Weinzirl felt members of the community take him in, almost against his will, he jokes. Hello Trouble, named for a childhood nickname, will see him giving some love back in Hamilton’s direction. He wants the cafe, in the former Maillard Pastries location, to become a local gathering space — the kind of place that’s so good it makes visitors from elsewhere in the city start scouring Zillow for houses close by.

It’s the kind of third space Hamilton is currently lacking, Weinzirl said. The beloved Hamilton Tavern closed during the pandemic, the building gutted beyond recognition by a new owner. Neighborhood hangout Micky’s Joint shut down late last year after a fire.

But now the area looks to be on an upswing. Less than a block north of Hello Trouble on Harford Road, Silver Queen Cafe owners Nicole Evanshaw and Jason Daniloski are preparing to launch The Market at Hamilton, a cheese and sandwich shop in the former Emma’s Tea Spot space.

The shop, which opens Wednesday, will sell a mix of pantry goods like artisanal grits and tinned fish, as well as charcuterie. “I’m tired of having to leave the neighborhood when I just want a really nice piece of cheese,” Evanshaw said. And she’s betting that others in the area feel the same way.

Is this town big enough for the both of them? Weinzirl admits he “definitely got a little scared” when he heard about Evanshaw and Daniloski’s plans to open a shop selling sandwiches so close to his own. But “they want to see this strip succeed” as he does, he said. (He notes that with Animal Boy just down the street, this part of town could become Baltimore’s sandwich corridor.)

For their part, boosters for the area are thrilled. The intersection of Harford Road and Hamilton Avenue is “the gateway” to the area’s Main Street, says Daniel Doty, executive director of Hamilton-Lauraville Main Street.

Weinzirl said he’s planning to hire Hello Trouble’s previous tenant, Maillard owner Caitlin Kiehl, to help him make the most of the massive kitchen. Hello Trouble will bake all its own focaccia, English muffins and other breads.

Coffee is more than an afterthought: Weinzirl says his years at Artifact taught him the importance of a beverage program to a restaurant’s bottom line. Any eatery will typically make more money selling drinks like coffee and tea than from, say, an egg sandwich, which costs more to produce and takes more labor. Beans will be roasted at Sophomore in Old Goucher.

For outsiders, perhaps the biggest surprise at Hello Trouble is the involvement of Weaver, Weinzirl’s former business partner at Maggie’s Farm, who’s leaving his job as general manager at Pitango to help. Weinzirl and Weaver have learned so much since their days on “Restaurant Divided,” both about how to do business and, particularly, how to treat people. After selling Maggie’s Farm, Weaver said, “I made a pact to myself that I would never raise my voice ever again.”

Plus, Weaver said, “I’d pretty much follow Andrew anywhere.” He’s sure Baltimore diners will feel the same way.