Chef Demetrius Brown and business partner Brandon Blanchard open Heritage on September 10, 2026, at 63 Georgia Avenue in Atlanta’s Summerhill neighborhood. The tri-level restaurant, which grew out of Brown’s four-year-old Heritage Supper Club pop-up series, is the first permanent home for a concept built around the culinary traditions of the African diaspora, the Caribbean, and the American South.
Key Takeaways
- Heritage opens September 10 at 63 Georgia Avenue in Summerhill, at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Reed Street, across from Little Bear and above Redacted Basement Drink Parlor.
- The restaurant operates across three levels: a cocktail lounge with à la carte dining on the main floor, a tasting menu dining room accessed through a concealed entry, a separate dessert area, and a rooftop with views of the surrounding neighborhood.
- Chef Brown launched Heritage Supper Club as a pop-up in 2021 and earned Atlanta Magazine’s “Best Food Pop-Up” designation within a year.
- Brown and Blanchard purchased Inman Park’s Bread and Butterfly in 2023, where a diaspora-inspired dinner menu earned a spot on The New York Times’ national restaurant list in 2024 and a place among Atlanta’s 25 top restaurants three years running.
- The menu spans Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian, and West African influences alongside dishes drawn from Latin America and the American South.
Four Years of Borrowed Kitchens Led to 63 Georgia Avenue
Heritage Supper Club spent its first four years without a fixed address. Chef Demetrius Brown operated the pop-up in coffee shops after closing time, in restaurant dining rooms on their nights off, and in any borrowed space where a multi-course tasting menu could be set up and served to a small audience. The format was intimate by design and by necessity. Brown cooked, plated, and narrated each course himself, pairing dishes with specific music selections that traced the geography of the African diaspora through sound.
The supper club found an audience quickly. Atlanta Magazine named Heritage Supper Club the city’s “Best Food Pop-Up,” and the dinner series became a regular fixture in Atlanta’s dining calendar. But the pop-up model had a ceiling. Brown has described the transition from a one-person operation to a full restaurant as the challenge of learning to hand off a vision that had lived entirely in his own head. With Heritage, the question was not whether the food could work in a permanent space but whether the experience, the storytelling, the sequencing of courses, music, and environment, could survive the shift from a 20-seat pop-up to a multi-level restaurant.
A Tri-Level Format Designed Around Three Distinct Experiences
Heritage is structured across three levels, each with its own menu, atmosphere, and function. The main floor houses a cocktail lounge with soft seating for approximately 35 guests and a concise à la carte menu. Brown has described the lounge dishes as the food he grew up eating on his mother’s side: shepherd’s pie, roti curry, a Caribbean-spiced chicken burger, and beef Wellington reworked with hibiscus. The lounge is intended as the more casual entry point, a space where the food is approachable and the pricing accommodates walk-in diners who are not committing to a tasting menu.
The dining room, accessed through a concealed walkway, serves a multi-course tasting menu similar in structure to the Heritage Supper Club format. Dishes on the opening menu include waakye, yakitori-grilled jerk chicken, crudo, Carmen’s Cucumbers prepared multiple ways as a tribute to Brown’s childhood memories of eating cucumbers from his aunt’s garden, and melengene. Each course is paired with a specific cocktail and a specific piece of music. Brown’s goal, as he has described it, is to engage every sense across the full length of the meal.
Dessert is served in a separate section, curtained off when the dining room is full, extending the evening into a third space. A rooftop level offers views across Summerhill.
The Design Reflects Multiple Chapters of the Diaspora
Atlanta designer Imani James led the interior design for Heritage, balancing earthy tones and greenery with a range of textures and artwork from local artists. Brown has described the overall look as a “Scandinavian-meets-Afro feel,” using a neutral base palette with accents of burgundy, yellow, purple, and green.
The lounge draws on a different reference point entirely. Brown’s design brief for the main floor was the brownstone culture of 1950s Harlem: burgundy upholstery, leather, brass hardware, and Civil Rights-era portraiture on the walls. The idea was to evoke the social clubs and private gatherings that served as cultural anchor points for Black communities in mid-century New York, then layer that atmosphere onto a restaurant bar in 21st-century Atlanta. The dining room, by contrast, is more minimal, giving the food and music room to operate without visual competition.
Bread and Butterfly Stays French While Heritage Goes Home
Brown and Blanchard will continue to operate Bread and Butterfly in Inman Park. The two restaurants are related but occupy distinct lanes. Bread and Butterfly leans French, drawing specifically from nations colonized by France: Haiti, Senegal, Congo, French Guyana, and Madagascar. That framing allowed Brown to explore diaspora cuisine within a recognizable fine-dining grammar, and the results landed the restaurant on The New York Times’ national list in 2024.
Heritage is the less mediated version of the same impulse. Where Bread and Butterfly filters African and Caribbean traditions through a French culinary lens, Heritage presents them directly, rooted in Brown’s own Trinidadian family history and the broader sweep of Black foodways. Brown, who was born into a Trinidadian family and raised in Rhode Island and Georgia, has more than 30 years of experience in the restaurant industry, including time at Serenbe, the luxury farm resort and residential community south of Atlanta where he and Blanchard first worked together.
Heritage Joins Summerhill’s Growing Dining Corridor
Summerhill has attracted steady restaurant and retail investment in recent years, and Heritage opens into a block that already has density. Little Bear sits directly across Georgia Avenue. Redacted Basement Drink Parlor occupies the lower level of the same building. The neighborhood’s proximity to downtown Atlanta and Georgia State Stadium, combined with a pipeline of residential and mixed-use development, has positioned Summerhill as one of the city’s more active corridors for independent restaurant openings.
Heritage adds a format that Summerhill does not yet have: a tasting-menu-driven concept anchored in a specific cultural narrative, with a cocktail lounge attached for guests who want a lighter version of the same kitchen. For Brown, the location was deliberate. He has said that the neighborhood’s evolving identity makes it more receptive to the flavors and the format Heritage offers than a more established dining district would be.
FAQs
Where Is Heritage Located in Atlanta?
Heritage is located at 63 Georgia Avenue in the Summerhill neighborhood, at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Reed Street. The restaurant sits across from Little Bear and above Redacted Basement Drink Parlor.
Does Heritage Require a Tasting Menu Reservation?
The tasting menu is served in the dining room and is reservation-based. The main-floor cocktail lounge offers a separate à la carte menu with more casual seating and does not require the same commitment as the tasting experience.
What Type of Cuisine Does Heritage Serve?
Heritage focuses on the culinary traditions of the African diaspora, spanning Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian, and West African influences alongside dishes drawn from Latin America and the American South. The menu reflects Chef Demetrius Brown’s Trinidadian family roots and 30-plus years in the restaurant industry.
Is Heritage Related to Bread and Butterfly?
Both restaurants are operated by Chef Demetrius Brown and Brandon Blanchard, but they serve distinct concepts. Bread and Butterfly in Inman Park leans French, drawing from nations with French colonial histories. Heritage presents African and Caribbean cuisine directly, without a French culinary framework.
