David Chapman
Kimball House | Decatur, GA
FEBRUARY 2018
David Chapman grew up just outside Atlanta in Avondale and graduated from college in 2008 in the dismal throes of the Great Recession—with a philosophy degree no less. After college, he got a pay-the-bills job at Rise-n-Dine, brewing Counter Culture coffee and falling in love with hospitality.
Once he knew his way around a counter and cup, Chapman wanted to grow and secured a barista-bartender hybrid position at Hugh Acheson’s Empire State South. For the next two and a half years, he worked for Bartender Kellie Thorn, learning to apply culinary techniques and a Southern perspective to the classics. He also served as Tales of the Cocktail apprentice in 2012.
That foundation helped land Chapman a gig on the opening team of Miles Macquarrie’s Kimball House in 2013. Having since risen to head bartender of the lauded Decatur restaurant and bar, he continues to build upon Kimball House’s detail-obsessed approach to cocktail making. Chapman tinkers with classics, has mastered the centrifuge, and collaborates with his culinary counterpoints at the restaurant. Macquarrie, Chapman, and their bar team have earned Kimball House nods as a James Beard semi-finalist for “Outstanding Bar Program” three years running, from 2014 to 2017.
