Key Points
- Bread & Butterfly chef Demetrius Brown will open Heritage next spring in Summerhill.
- The Georgia Avenue restaurant will center food and music around cultures within the African diaspora.
- Heritage will include a cocktail lounge, a dining room serving a tasting menu similar to Brown’s pop-up, Heritage Supper Club, and a separate area for dessert.
After operating Heritage Supper Club as a dinner series for the past five years, founder and chef Demetrius Brown will evolve it into a restaurant next spring in Summerhill.
Brown, along with his Bread & Butterfly partner, Brandon Blanchard, will open Heritage at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Reed Street, across from Little Bear. And like Heritage Supper Club, the restaurant will center its menu and music around the cultures within the African diaspora.
While their Inman Park restaurant leans French, including influences via French colonization of African and Caribbean nations, Heritage will be Brown’s homage to Africa and its diasporic peoples.
“With the supper club, every single menu, every single season has a different playlist to help make the food I’m serving more approachable and provide people with a full-body experience,” Brown said. “You’re learning as you’re eating about the history, flavors, and dishes, while listening to music you’ve maybe never heard before. Most restaurants don’t do all three of those experiences in one service.”
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At Heritage in Summerhill, Brown hopes to provide that “full-body experience,” starting in the cocktail lounge, followed by a ten-course tasting menu in the dining room. To keep people engaged throughout the evening, the meal ends with dessert in another part of the restaurant.
The tasting menu in the dining room will be similar to those served at the supper club, with music and drinks paired specifically with each course. Brown said it’s important, however, for people to have options at Heritage.
He and Blanchard plan to offer an a la carte menu in the cocktail lounge with dishes such as beef Wellington incorporating ingredients like hibiscus. Cocktails will sport tropical flavors and spirits from Black-owned distilleries, with wine coming from Black-owned vineyards and producers. The lounge will also feature a separate playlist of music spanning the 1960s to 1990s.
“The purpose of the cocktail lounge is to provide a place where you don’t have to spend a lot of money for two people on a tasting menu. You can have a drink and snack, or a drink and a meal, or just a drink before dinner in the dining room,” Brown said. “The pricing in the lounge will be similar to Bread & Butterfly because we want Heritage to be accessible and part of the neighborhood.”
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Designed by Imani James, Heritage will seat up to 25 people in the lounge and 40 people in the dining room. A small area adjacent to the dining room will seat eight people for dessert. James plans to design Heritage to showcase local artists on the walls, and to include a two-tiered dining room framed by the kitchen accessed through a hidden entrance.
Brown, who was born in Rhode Island, but spent part of his childhood in Georgia, comes from a Trinidadian family that loves to cook. It’s what led him to becoming a chef after graduating from Johnson & Wales University.
He first met Blanchard while working at The Hill at Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills. They worked together again at The Pinewood in Decatur before the restaurant closed in 2020. Brown founded Heritage Supper Club during the COVID-19 pandemic, partnering with Blanchard.
Then, in 2023, Chef Billy Allin decided to depart his Inman Park restaurant, selling Bread & Butterfly to Brown and Blanchard. While most of the daytime menu remains intact, dinner spotlights French culinary influences on the African diaspora.
Bread & Butterfly garnered national recognition under Brown and Blanchard last year when The New York Times named it one of “America’s Best New Restaurants.” Rough Draft also named Bread & Butterfly one of its Best New Restaurants of 2024.
Heritage, 63 Georgia Ave., Summerhill. Opening spring 2026.