Tables were packed last September at Le Comptoir du Vin, a Station North restaurant, and owner Rosemary Liss didn’t know why. Was it all the good press for Le Comptoir’s sister pub, The Wren in Fells Point, recently named a top restaurant in the country by The New York Times and Bon Appétit?

“I realized, actually,” Liss said, “it was more busy that month because ‘Baltimorons’ was at The Charles.”

Diners were suddenly flooding the neighborhood for pre- or post-screening meals. Nearby Tapas Teatro hadn’t seen so many customers since before COVID, its owner told Liss.

The story illustrates a crucial point about the dining world: It’s always changing, and always unpredictable. “People think that restaurants ... you just open them up and you either make money or you don’t, but it’s a constant roller coaster,” said Peter Serpico, a Baltimore-based restaurant and hotel consultant. He compares it to running a Broadway show. “Every single night you have to perform.”

A star journey

And, for the past year, Liss has been going on her own surprising star journey with Le Comptoir du Vin, the foodie hot spot she opened in 2018 with then-boyfriend Will Mester. Liss, who started out waiting tables and managing the front of the house while Mester was head chef, has migrated into the kitchen, where she now leads a small staff.

And she’s thriving, especially when things are busy and fun to the point of being borderline chaotic, as they were so often in September. Staff have started an inside joke when it gets like that: “It’s bistro, baby,” they’ll tell one another. Translation: “It’s, like, really fun tonight.”

In the past year, the intimate restaurant has “taken on a new look,” says line cook DeVaughn Woods, a recent Culinary Institute of America grad who joined the kitchen staff over the summer. He jokingly calls it “Comptoir 2.0.” Liss has added some cozy little touches: a custom hand-painted canvas backdrop in the basement, and blankets to help out when the heaters aren’t quite doing the trick.

Regulars can expect to see more events, whether music on Monday nights during the warmer months, workshops, or special dinners revolving around a given theme. This month, Woods will host a Black History Month dinner, incorporating flavors from Africa and the diaspora like Nigerian egusi soup with fufu. Le Comptoir du Vin’s customers are adventurous eaters, yet fufu, a doughlike starch, is probably new to many of them, Woods said. He’s looking forward to seeing how they react to the dish, which is eaten with your hands.

“I know some people don’t prefer to eat with their hands,” he said, “but it’s the only way to eat it.”

The recent evolution, though, is hardly the first for the restaurant.

“Comptoir has changed many times over the course of its life,” Mester said.

During the pandemic, Le Comptoir, which had only months earlier been named to Bon Appétit’s ”Hot 10″ list, shifted to a carryout model, selling bottles of natural wine as well as ham and butter sandwiches to go. (Customers still dream about those sandwiches.)

Like many couples who reevaluated their relationships during lockdown, Liss and Mester eventually broke up, but they decided to remain in business together.

“We are good friends and great business partners, and we were able to make that transition pretty easily,” she said.

The restaurant eventually added more seating in a heated patio downstairs, which required Mester and Liss to streamline the menu to make things work with their tiny kitchen. Amid an industrywide labor crunch, Liss began cooking more and more, learning from Mester while building off her own culinary training that included an internship at Copenhagen’s Nordic Food Lab.

More recently, Mester, who was spending time in Ireland as he courted his now-wife, began incorporating hearty Irish and British gastropub fare that pairs better with a pint of Guinness than a glass of pét-nat. “I was like, ‘Will, I think we need to get you a pub.’”

Mester and Liss opened The Wren in 2025. The business has gone on to receive the kinds of attention young restaurateurs dream of — including love from the Times and Bon Appétit in the same week.

But its success wasn’t always a given.

During a painfully slow August, “We were so close to having no money” that Liss and Mester considered closing down. The accolades came just in time, though, leading to long lines outside the bar and several months of solid business that they’re only now recovering from.

Balancing act

Back at Le Comptoir du Vin, Woods and the restaurant’s other cooks are navigating a balancing act: incorporating their own fresh perspectives while still offering the mainstays that longtime customers have come to expect from the bistro.

Sous-chef Sydney Moran said she often consults Mester when working with unusual cuts of meat like beef cheeks, sweetbreads or tongue.

“Tongue was crazy,” she said.

Moran, who has spent more than a decade working as a professional oyster shucker, said she relishes the freedom and opportunities that she’s found working with Liss. With the support of the team, she said, “I feel like my best version as cook in the world.”

Liss has offered staff plenty of room for experimentation, and they add their personal riffs to the restaurant’s greatest hits, or recipes “from the vault,” as Liss refers to them.

A recent innovation was monkfish liver pâté. Staff cured the fish livers in a salt and sugar mix before soaking them in a marinade of rice wine vinegar and sake. The dish, which Woods compared to “foie gras of the sea,” was presented with smoked tomato butter. “It was honestly so amazing,” he said.

Serpico thinks Le Comptoir du Vin is helped by the fact that its menu, written on a blackboard, was changing all the time even before Mester’s departure.

“They have a good grasp on their business, and they understand that no one’s coming there for Will’s tomato tartlet,” the Baltimore-based consultant said. “It feels like their hook isn’t based off of just a signature dish.”

Despite all the improvisation, Liss said the restaurant operates more like a true business than ever before. Back in 2018, there were just four people working at Le Comptoir du Vin. “It kind of felt like we were playing house. You know, we’re playing restaurant,” Liss said. As the new team takes shape, she said, “It’s not just a bunch of friends getting together cooking you dinner every night.”

Even if it might feel that way to customers.