Some customers are so devoted to the fried deviled eggs and brick oven pizza at Walker’s Tap & Table that they visit chef Chad Wells’ rural Glenwood eatery nearly every day.

“This place serves food so good I’d fight my future self for leftovers,” a customer wrote in a Google review a month ago. “It’s almost unbelievable that such a hidden gem is tucked away in a nondescript strip mall,” wrote another. Even Reddit is on board, with one commenter calling Walker’s the area’s best restaurant “by leaps and bounds.”

Now Wells and the owners of Walker’s Tap & Table are preparing to launch another Howard County spot, this time in Marriottsville. Sister concept Barrington Tap & Table will take the place of Black Flag Social House, which closes Oct. 12.

Barrington doesn’t have an opening date yet, but Wells and his business partner Anthony DiGangi are confident it will be operating well before the start of holiday season. “We’re not talking months here,” DiGangi said. The team plans some minor upgrades to the space, including screening-in a back deck and adding panels to dampen indoor acoustics.

Black Flag owner Brian Gaylor said he was spread too thin between the Marriottsville branch, which launched in 2024, and the brewery’s flagship location in Columbia, which will remain open.

“We’ve been struggling with some food costs and getting things to really click at the restaurant,” Gaylor said. He reached out to DiGangi and the team at Walker’s for help before both parties agreed that Walker’s would just take over the restaurant. “They seem to have the formula down for this area,” Gaylor said. “They seemed to be in growth mode. There’s a lot of people shrinking right now.”

As Barrington, the restaurant will retain most of the staff from Black Flag Social House, DiGangi said. Beer fans can look forward to flights and growlers, as well as a variety of local brews on draft, including some from Black Flag.

The new eatery will feature a slightly larger footprint than Walker’s, eventually making it prime for private events. “That’s something that we have always wanted to be able to do,” Wells said. Since Walker’s opened six years ago, though, it’s has just been too busy to accommodate that. “We turn away a lot of parties because we’re so busy here,” DiGangi said.

Barrington’s — named after Barrington, Illinois, a village outside of Chicago and the hometown of DiGangi’s business partner Lesley Salandra — is not the first new concept from the Walker’s team. Last year DiGangi and Wells opened Rosie’s Delicatessen, an Italian deli and coffee shop that sells breakfast sandwiches and subs in the same strip mall where Walker’s is located. DiGangi said some customers in the area tend to go to Rosie’s for lunch and then Walker’s for dinner, or vice versa. There aren’t many other dining options nearby, and business at both places is “exceeding our expectations, big time,” DiGangi said.

Earlier this year, DiGangi and Wells also opened a Walker’s on Main food truck on the premises of Mount Airy taproom Liquidity Aleworks. The truck serves snacks and sandwiches, but DiGangi said they ultimately decided to scrap a pizza menu.

Pizza will be on the menu at Barrington, though, along with the sort of inventive apps and entrees that customers have come to expect from Walker’s. Wells has a few more surprises up his sleeve, including a comeback for a few “wildly popular” items when Walker’s debuted but have since come off the menu. Don’t expect to see the exact same fried deviled eggs, though. “We’re trying to keep Walker’s as Walker’s and Barrington as Barrington,” Wells said.

Barrington’s location will also be a new challenge to tackle. Walker’s, as DiGangi often says, is in “the middle of nowhere, but the middle of everything.” Friends often use the restaurant as a meetup spot between places like Frederick, Westminster and Baltimore. Compared to Glenwood, where cornfields are commonplace, Marriottsville, about a 15-minute drive away, feels like “the big city,” DiGangi said.

In the hyper-competitive restaurant world, and at a time when some owners are turning to GoFundMe campaigns or pleas on social media to stay afloat, DiGangi and Wells say they have cracked the code for success through a combination of good food, attentive service and strategy. “We found the recipe and we live it, we breathe it,” said DiGangi, who left his career in finance to follow his passion for the restaurant industry.

Before working at Walker’s, Wells won the attention of area foodies for his work at Alewife in downtown Baltimore, as well as with appearances on Food Network shows like “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” and “Bizarre Foods.” But he sees his days on the small screen as being largely behind him. As a 44-year-old father of two, he’d rather have a TV opportunity go to another chef just starting off in their career.

In any case, they need him in the kitchen at Walker’s.