After working in restaurants like Husk and Little Pearl in Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C., chef BJ Lieberman was ready to start his own venture. He was drawn to Columbus, Ohio, particularly because his wife was from there.
Lieberman signed the lease for what would become Chapman’s Eat Market a few weeks before the pandemic started. When they opened in August 2020, the restaurant was very different from what Lieberman predicted.
Chef BJ Lieberman
“My whole career, I refused to put food in a box — that’s antithetical to everything that I tried to do with food. But all of a sudden, we were in this situation where we could only put food in a box,” he told Restaurant Hospitality in an interview (stream the full interview above). Still, the restaurant’s pandemic pivot to takeaway inspired a lot of dishes that became favorites on the menu, including their burgers and fries, and extremely popular pints of ice cream. “We’ve sold over 10,000 pints since we’ve been open,” he said. “It’s funny how fate just kind of changes your plans and what it is that you’re trying to do.”
About a year after opening, fate would have it that Chapman’s was listed as one that the New York Times was most excited about. This again changed the trajectory of the restaurant, as reservations filled and expectations grew.
(The evolution of the restaurant would continue right up until the publication of this article; Lieberman announced after this interview that Chapman’s would close in August when the restaurant’s lease was up.)
Dishes at Metsi’s. | Metsi’s
Lieberman later opened Ginger Rabbit, a jazz club, and then a fine dining spot, Hiraeth, in the summer of 2023. With Hiraeth, fate again — or perhaps one could call it timing — played a role. At the time, diners in many cities were pulling away from fine dining as economic and political uncertainty were paramount. Liberman closed Hiraeth and reopened another restaurant, Metsi’s, in its place. Metsi’s focuses on Italian classics and has a more casual vibe.
“What we were trying to do with Hiraeth was a little bit more of a suit and tie restaurant, and what we decided to do with Metsi’s was a little bit come as you are. We’re trying to meet people exactly where they are in the neighborhood,” Lieberman said. And he’s finding, so far, that it’s the right restaurant for the right time and place.
For more from Lieberman, stream the interview at the top of this page.
