New downtown Columbus restaurant will feature house-butchered meats, local produce
The space formerly occupied by Bare Roots Farmacy is receiving new life in the form of fine-cut meats, to-go sandwiches and craft cocktails.
The Animal Farm, 105 12th St., will officially open to the public Wednesday, co-owner Hudson Terrell told the Ledger-Enquirer. The restaurant, run by Terrell and his business partner Landon Thompson, will focus on house-butchered meats and seasonal local produce.
“I just want people to have a good time,” Terrell said. “I don’t want it to be a place where you go for a nice dinner and it feels stuffy and serious. We don’t want to take ourselves serious. We want all the food to be fun. Really, I just want people to have a communal dining experience.”
Upscale dining roots
Terrell, a graduate of Brookstone and the University of Georgia, worked at Five and Ten, an upscale Southern dining restaurant in Athens, while attending UGA. He then worked as a manager for Acre, a Southern restaurant in Auburn.
Thompson, originally from Columbus, served as a chef at numerous restaurants in Atlanta, the most notable being Cooks and Soldiers — an upscale Spanish cuisine-based restaurant in Atlanta’s Westside Provisions District.
The lunch menu will be like a fast-casual sandwich shop, Terrell said, to appeal to workers trying to get “in and out” on their lunch breaks. For dinner, the restaurant will transition to a casual-fine dining vibe, with an emphasis on shared plates meant for groups of customers.
“The whole premise of (Animal Farm) is we focus on local, whole-animal butchering,” Terrell said. “So, it’ll be a lot of interesting cuts.”
The menu hasn’t yet been released, but Terrell said a few of the menu items will be half-roasted chicken and lamb shank.
The wine list will include “fun and interesting” selections, Terrell said, to add to the unique experience the two owners are aiming for. The restaurant also will serve a seasonal cocktail menu intended to be playful and “kind-of out there,” he said.
“It’ll have a communal, fun dining experience,” Terrell said. “You’ll see a lot of interesting cuts of meat that you won’t see anywhere else. ... We’re trying to bring all the stuff that we learned from Atlanta and Athens, and bring it here. That’s the idea.”
A ‘fun and inviting place’
The restaurant’s location, off Broadway yet close to the downtown area, has good bones, Terrell said. The back patio was what ultimately sold the two on the location.
“It’s like a walled-in courtyard,” Terrell said. “We can seat another 50 people out there. We really want to drive events to that. We’re gonna have some live music and really make that a spot that’s used a lot.”
Terrell said the restaurant’s interior is designed for customers to feel like they’re being welcomed into a home. A couch with a matching rug, next to a lamp atop a side table, greets visitors as they step into the redesigned space.
The Animal Farm is designed to be a “fun and inviting place,” according Terrell. Like visitors are walking into a friend’s house for a meal. Like “you’re in our house and we’re throwing a dinner party,” he said.
The kitchen is “right smack in the middle” of the space, with a long window allowing diners to view the scene on the other side. It’s “basically an open kitchen,” Terrell said.
“The feel of it is a modern farmouse vibe,” Terrell said. “That’s what we were going for when we designed it. ... We want to have food and drink that brings people together, because I know some of my best memories were around the table with friends and family.”
When to visit
The Animal Farm will be open Tuesday-Thursday from 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and from 5 p.m.-9 p.m. It’ll operate 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays.
This story was originally published September 21, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
