Austin Goetzman Returns to Aria, Where His Culinary Career Began
Years after starting his career on Aria's line, Austin Goetzman has returned to the Buckhead restaurant as executive chef
The last time Austin Goetzman worked in the kitchen at Aria, the lauded restaurant housed in a former Buckhead residence, he was fresh out of culinary school. On Aria’s line, he learned the rhythms of a professional kitchen. Now, Goetzman has returned to the restaurant as its executive chef. For him, the new role is more than a career move: It’s a homecoming.
Goetzman grew up in Alabama and knew by the time he graduated high school that he wanted to be a chef. “I moved to Atlanta two months after I graduated high school and started culinary school at the Art Institute of Atlanta,” he says. He began working at Aria after graduating, but he wasn’t particularly familiar with the restaurant before applying; a colleague had urged him to give it a shot.
“I was just a kid fresh out of culinary school, so I was pretty unfamiliar with what Aria was,” says Goetzman. “Once I got here and started working, I understood more of the impact that Aria had on the dining scene in Atlanta at the time.”
His time at Aria set him on a path through fine dining that eventually led him to Lazy Betty, where he worked alongside executive chef Ron Hsu and then co-executive chef Aaron Phillips. Together, they earned a Michelin star three years in a row. But when Aria owner Andrés Loaiza called Goetzman about an opening in the kitchen, he knew he was ready for a change.
“I was looking for something different,” says Goetzman. Fortuitously, so was Loaiza, and the transition moved quickly from there. Goetzman took over the kitchen in June 2026 and wasted no time making his mark. His approach to the menu, he says, is to make it more modern while prioritizing the best ingredients he can source. “If I can get the best tomato, my tomato dish will probably taste better off the rip no matter what I do to it,” says Goetzman.
That philosophy plays out in his corn agnolotti, a celebration of late summer with artfully arranged handmade pasta, lobster, and tomatoes brightened with makrut lime. Demi-sectomatoes dot the plate like rubies. “We dehydrate them very slightly, just so they’re still chewy and gummy,” he says. “It’s juicier than a sun-dried tomato but still has that big flavor punch to it.”
Looking ahead, Goetzman is excited for what’s to come at Aria—a change of seasons in more ways than one. But he’s also reflective about what it means to be back.
“It’s great. It’s a lot of fun being able to come full circle and leave a mark on a restaurant that left such a mark on me at a young age,” says Goetzman. “It’s rewarding, but it’s a lot of work.” aria-atl.com
