Aside from the existential nature of such a question, we are pretty confident that we are a restaurant. A restaurant that opened smack in the middle of a pandemic (August of 2020)! In the beginning, we only offered take out food, including burgers, salads, and our famous pints of house made ice creams.
As the pandemic progressed, we started doing very limited seating in our main dining room for an 8-course tasting menu. Finally, in May of 2021 restrictions were lifted on restaurants and we opened as the neighborhood restaurant we set out to open so many months before.
Our menu consists of what we consider to be comfort foods from around the world. Our entire kitchen staff has input on the menu, so it is an amalgam of all of our shared and individual experiences with the food of our childhoods, our homelands and things that inspire us in travel and research. Every dish is meticulously researched and developed to make sure we are executing a consistent, delicious and beautiful product for all of our guests.
Our beverage program follows a similar formula, digging deep into the well for bygone classic cocktails as well as some originals inspired by ingredients from the kitchen. Our wine list mostly consists of natural and organic wines that are chosen for their uniqueness as well as their fair price point. Most of the wines we find are in limited supply so our list rotates often and there will always be some new juice to discover! Our beers are a good mix of light, food friendly beers, local favorites and international, acclaimed brews. We also offer low and no alcohol cocktails.
In addition to our food and beverage options, staff is our most important commodity. We make an effort to allow our front of house staff to be their amazing individual selves. We don’t have a dress code and we also mandate that our servers and bartenders taste all of the dishes and make up their own adjectives to describe our offerings. We all have our own favorites for our own reasons, and that should come through in the service. It’s why our tag line is “Friendly Food, Delicious People”.
Although we have been operating through what has to be the most challenging fiscal time for restaurants in the last century, we make a conscious effort to support local charities and organizations that we feel drawn to, including Freedom a la Cart and All People’s Market. We look forward to doing much more for our community as we come out of this dark period and can focus on doing more good outside of the restaurant.
You may be curious about the history behind our name and the building in which we reside. Owner and “Restaurant Mom” Bronwyn Haines was born and raised in central Ohio (Delaware to be exact) and her great-grandfather owned a store in Clintonville for about 50 years called Chapman’s Poultry Market. Peter Hayden Chapman and his brother Mike would go around to farms in their hometown of Centerburg (the actual center of Ohio!) and other parts of Knox county and pick up eggs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys to bring to the big city and sell. Impeccable customer service and product were Grandpa Chapman’s highest priorities, and we share these values.
The current Chapman’s is in the location of the first Max & Erma’s, a restaurant with a storied past that started in German Village and went on to become a midwest chain of beloved neighborhood restaurants. Columbusites have many meaningful memories within this walls and we love reminiscing with them and hearing about the days of M&E, and even before that when it was Annie’s Bar.
Pizza
Cafe-Coffee
Italian
Diner
Ice Cream