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Chapman’s Eat Market and Ginger Rabbit owners are opening a new Italian restaurant, Metsi’s, in Italian Village this summer.Metsi’s will feature a blend of classic American-Italian and modern Italian dishes, utilizing a wood-fired hearth.
BJ Lieberman and Bronwyn Haines, the husband-and-wife team behind Chapman’s Eat Market and Ginger Rabbit, plan to open an “approachable, fun” Italian restaurant this June in Italian Village.
They’re calling it Metsi’s, and it will be located at 36 E. Lincoln St. That’s the former home of Hiraeth, a restaurant that the couple opened in August 2023 and closed in June 2024.
Columbus Monthly described Hiraeth’s menu as “Mediterranean-meets-North-African-meets-chef’s-whim.” Lieberman describes Metsi’s in terms that are a bit easier to grasp.
“We kind of want a healthy mix of ‘classic’ American-Italian dishes … as well as some modern favorites,” he told The Dispatch.
The menu is still in the works, Lieberman said, but he mentioned modern-style Italian dishes such as fennel and citrus salad, grilled steak with Italian salsa verde, grilled fish with charred escarole and “stuff like that.”
Classics are the types of dishes he loved as a child at old-school, New York-style “red-sauce joints,” he said. The Metsi’s name is a nod to Lieberman’s father, a New York native and New York Mets fan.
The chef, who grew up in suburban Washington, D.C. and worked there before he and Haines relocated to Columbus, said Metsi’s won’t be a New York cliche or carbon copy of the places for which he’s nostalgic. Those memories will be part of the new restaurant’s heart and soul, but not its decor. The new restaurant will not serve pizza, Lieberman said.
Instead, according to Lieberman and Haines, the atmosphere will be “metropolitan Italian.” The live-fire hearth that informed the menu for Hiraeth will be employed for Metsi’s as well.
The couple’s plan includes different vibes and different names for the restaurant’s two main areas.
On the ground level, The Bar at Metsi’s will be a large, light and airy open bar area where they plan to host weeknight happy hours (called “Negroni Hour”). The downstairs area, called Metsi’s Wood-Fired Italian, will have a dining room overlooking the open kitchen and hearth, plus a private dining room for up to 20 people. Lieberman described that area as “funky.”
The full food menu, cocktails, wines and Italian aperitifs will be available on both levels
Dining Reporter Bob Vitale can be reached at rvitale@dispatch.com or at @dispatchdining on the Instagram social platform.