The Wren is going to need some more forks.

Three days after making it on The New York Times’ list of the 50 best places to eat in the country, the Fells Point pub was also named one of Bon Appétit magazine’s 20 best new restaurants in a piece published Friday.

“It’s wild,” said chef and co-owner Will Mester, who is ordering more utensils to keep up with demand. The Wren has been “probably three times as busy” as usual this week — and that was even before the Bon Appétit news broke. As evidenced by the crossed-out items on the pub’s chalkboard menu, dishes have sold out fast, leaving Mester to change the offerings even more than usual.

Keep in mind that the chef works with specialty ingredients that can’t be found at a restaurant supply store: think bacon from a small farm in California, or whole kid goat from Colorado. “We work with a lot of preserves,” Mester said, “things that take a lot of time to make and be ready.”

Millie Powell, Mester’s wife and The Wren’s pastry chef and floor manager, said she’s preparing for a busier-than-ever weekend with crowds in town for an oyster festival in Fells Point and the Ravens’ home opener. “It’s definitely overwhelming,” she said. “I’m surprised I have actually not gone insane.”

One thing that’s helped: some gentle ribbing from friends in Ireland, where Powell was featured this week in The Irish Times. “Everyone back home is just making fun of me,” she said. “Irish people will humble you very quickly.”

But Powell, Mester, and co-owner Rosemary Liss are all grateful for the lift during a challenging period.

“It’s a hard time for small businesses, especially restaurants,” said Liss, Mester’s business partner on The Wren as well as their Station North bistro, Le Comptoir du Vin. Their friends in Washington, D.C., have closed up eateries right and left, she said. “I’m hoping this extra little bump in publicity will help both the Wren and Comptoir out.”

In a summary of the spot, Bon Appétit contributing editor Amiel Stanek noted that Mester and Powell intended The Wren not as a restaurant, but a pub in the style of a “public living room” — the kind popular in Powell’s hometown of Dublin, which “bewitched Mester during their transatlantic courtship.” And yet, Mester’s accomplished gastropub fare, ranging from country-style omelets to whole roast pigeon, said otherwise. “Problem is, when you serve food this good,” Stantek wrote, “people are going to treat your pub like a restaurant, even if you do away with reservations and table service.”

The accolade is not Mester’s first brush with Bon Appétit. He and Liss were featured in the magazine’s “Hot 10″ list of restaurants for Le Comptoir du Vin in 2019. Back then, “I didn’t even know it was as big a deal as it was,” Mester said. He and Liss were unprepared for the influx of reservations that followed, and had just a few months to see a benefit to their bottom line, Liss said, as the pandemic lockdown forced them to temporarily close the following year.

At The Wren, Liss and Mester have a better idea of what to expect. Mester plans to allow some reservations for customers who want to dine in an intimate rear lounge, as opposed to the current first-come, first-served policy. “At the same time, it’s not so easy to just prepare yourself for it in a way that makes everything run smoothly immediately,” he said. The Wren seats fewer than 40 people, making it tough to accommodate crowds.

The Wren is one of just a handful of spots to make it to both The New York Times and Bon Appétit’s top lists. Others include Dōgon in Washington, D.C., and Ha’s Snack Bar in New York City.

But despite being featured on two of the most influential restaurant roundups in the country, Mester says The Wren is still a bar at heart. He hopes some customers come in just for a pint, or perhaps to sip from The Wren’s massive Scotch collection and enjoy some banter with bar manager Adam Estes. Then again: “The most important thing is just that people come.”