It’s getting too expensive to run a full-service restaurant. Just ask the owners of Silver Queen Cafe.

Higher prices on food, wine and even the reservation system that the restaurant uses to book tables. A BGE bill that shot up over $800 a few months ago.

It all took a toll on the Silver Queen Cafe that it could no longer manage.

“Some of our costs have tripled, and that’s just within the last year,” said Nicole Evanshaw, co-owner of the restaurant. “With everyone squeezed out, we’re just not bringing in what we need to be bringing in to support all these rising costs.”

After spending the past few years trying to keep her 11-year-old restaurant afloat amid rising costs, Evanshaw and her husband, Jason Daniloski, finally decided it was too much. They’re closing the doors of their Harford Road eatery on Nov. 25, the night before Thanksgiving. Moving forward, they’ll focus their energies on running the Market at Hamilton, their sandwich shop and gourmet store across the street. The couple opened the business over the summer inside the former Emma’s Tea Spot, which relocated to 4337 Harford Road.

The new shop is a better fit for the current economic climate, said Evanshaw. “Sandwiches have a lower price point. It’s more accessible for people,” she said. And as many customers dine at home to save money, they can stop by the Market to pick up some cheese and other snacks to accentuate their meal.

Evanshaw said shoppers at the couple’s market may eventually be able to find a few items from Silver Queen’s menu, like its pate and crab dip. “The market itself is cheaper to run,” she said. “We don’t have a hood, we don’t have any open flame. We don’t have anything that would require those high BGE bills.”

Soaring gas and electric bills have become an existential crisis for many restaurants in Baltimore, with Terra Cafe announcing this week that it was permanently closing after failing to raise enough money to pay off an outstanding bill.

“It’s not like were using any more [energy] than we were before,” said Evanshaw. “We’ve been using the same stuff for 11 years.”

But rising utilities are far from the only pressure eateries are facing. Many restaurant owners say they’re more stressed about costs like high food and labor than ever before.

For Evanshaw, the end of the Silver Queen Cafe is a bittersweet moment. They opened in 2015 after Daniloski left his job as a chef at nearby Clementine, which shut down to focus on catering. The couple named the restaurant for their favorite variety of Eastern Shore corn, a signal of their locally sourced ethos.

“It was just a hit right off the bat,” Evanshaw said.

Their daughter was 5 at the time, so they set up a children’s play area to welcome the many young kids from the neighborhood. “People were going out more. It was just busy every single night,” she said. In addition to their pate and crab dip, top sellers included disco duck fries and lamb meatball pizza.

But the restaurant never fully recovered from the pandemic and the downturn in traffic. And while residents love the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood for its affordably priced single-family homes and lawns, the low population density can make doing business there a challenge.

And competition makes it difficult, too. Evanshaw said the neighborhood has seen “a whole slew of new eateries” open lately. New arrivals include Hello Trouble across the street and Animal Boy a few blocks south. “Every time a new one opens all of us feel it.”