Hiraeth, the live-fire restaurant from the owners of Chapman's Eat Market, opens Wednesday
Hiraeth, a new restaurant concept founded by BJ Lieberman and Bronwyn Haines, is set to open its doors on Aug. 9, promising a unique dining experience that blends nostalgia with elevated cuisine.
The husband and wife behind Chapman's Eat Market and Ginger Rabbit are excited to open another Short North concept at 36 E. Lincoln St., which Lieberman calls his favorite neighborhood in Columbus. The couple opened Ginger Rabbit at 17 Buttles Ave. in the Short North in 2022.
Hiraeth, derived from the Welsh language, doesn't have a direct English translation but generally represents a feeling of home, or homesickness, but in a positive way.
Lieberman, who is seemingly full of movie references (he and Haines' moody jazz lounge, Ginger Rabbit, was inspired in part by the Ryan Gosling starred-film "La La Land"), said the feeling is similar to a scene in the Pixar film "Ratatouille."
"If you've ever seen the movie 'Ratatouille' ... and the reviewer takes a bite of the ratatouille and gets transformed back into a little child ... and then he transforms back into an adult. That's like the literal definition of Hiraeth," said Lieberman.
The two-level restaurant will be a space for creating comforting and nostalgic yet refined dishes, with its kitchen built around a live-fire hearth.
"There's very few dishes that have more than a few components in it, but everything is just executed very, very well," said Lieberman. "What we're trying to do is create a home away from home."
Lieberman said the restaurant's opening menu will grow as it continues to reflect the team's diverse experiences and backgrounds.
The woodfire hearth at Hiraeth will be what sets the restaurant most apart from Lieberman and Haines' other restaurant concept, Chapman's Eat Market, at 739 S. 3rd St. in German Village.
Lieberman is excited about every dish on the menu so far, developed by the restaurant's head chefs, from the long-developed naan cooked over the hearth and a Greek tomato salad with tzatziki sauce to a whole-fried fish with sweet chili sauce, which he called a "stunner."
"I really haven't done any development of my own for the menu. I've kind of taken a backseat on that," he said. "My biggest joy these days where I am in my career is watching other people's ideas come to fruition."
Lieberman said when he and Haines first moved to Columbus, their intention was to open a few concepts: a neighborhood restaurant, which would become Chapman's, and a bar concept that would become Ginger Rabbit.
A third concept was always a part of the roadmap, and they hired a team keeping in mind that they would eventually expand.
"We knew that we wanted to do another restaurant," said Lieberman. "We hired people who were sous chefs who, in all right, should have been head chefs. We really brought in a team all understanding that this was the goal over the course of the first few years of operations.
"I think that this is just us executing our plan," he said. "Anything that happens after this we haven't planned yet."
Hiraeth will be open from Wednesday to Saturday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Columbus restaurant Hiraeth opens Aug. 9 in the Short North
