For four years, chef Demetrius Brown’s Heritage Supper Club existed in borrowed spaces: a coffee shop after hours, a restaurant dining room on its night off, wherever he could set up to tell a story through food. On Tuesday, September 10, that story finally gets a permanent address when Heritage, Brown’s new restaurant with business partner Brandon Blanchard, opens in Atlanta’s historic Summerhill neighborhood. The African, Caribbean, and Afro-American cuisine that built Brown’s reputation now has a home of its own for the first time.
From Pop-Up to Permanent
Brown launched Heritage Supper Club as a pandemic-era pop-up in 2021, and it didn’t take long to find an audience—within a year, Atlanta magazine had named it the city’s Best Food Pop-Up.
Blanchard, who had worked alongside Brown at Serenbe and later hired him to turn around the Pinewood in Decatur, became his business partner in 2022, and the two spent the next several years building toward a permanent space while running Bread & Butterfly, the Inman Park restaurant they acquired in 2023 under their Bellevue Hospitality banner.
Bread & Butterfly’s dinner service—introduced that fall—became something of a preview of what was to come, and the accolades followed: a spot on The New York Times’ national restaurant list in 2024 and a place among Atlanta’s 25 best restaurants three years running.
But a brick-and-mortar Heritage was always the goal. For Brown, the shift from pop-up to permanent restaurant meant learning to hand off a vision that had, until now, lived entirely in his head.
“With the pop-ups, the only person I had to rely on was myself; I knew everything from where the ingredients were sourced to the dishes we were taking inspiration from,” Brown said in a pre-opening interview. “The pop-ups were my thoughts, memories, and wishes on a plate, but now I am transferring all that internal dialogue to our staff. We had to find a team that is as passionate about preserving history and creating new memories for our guests as I am.”
In Blanchard’s mind, the hardest part was “matching the identity of the supper club and the storytelling with a brick-and-mortar building,” since a pop-up’s atmosphere shifts with every new venue, while a permanent restaurant has to hold all of those stories in one room, night after night.
Why Summerhill
The search for real estate wasn’t just about square footage. Brown and Blanchard purposefully scoured South Downtown and Sweet Auburn before settling on 63 Georgia Avenue in Summerhill, a neighborhood founded in 1865 as one of Georgia’s original Freedmen’s settlements. That history now becomes part of the story of Heritage—the cocktail menu includes a drink named 1865 in honor of the neighborhood, alongside another appropriately called Heritage in honor of Brown’s own family history.
Opening in Summerhill comes with a mission Brown doesn’t take lightly.
“My responsibility is the same as all the other business owners in Summerhill: to revive the neighborhood that was established by freed Black Americans and systematically dismantled by city planners and officials,” he said. “My purpose and mission is to become a pillar in the community that serves as a new era for the neighborhood.”
For his part, Blanchard points to the restaurant’s 10 local farming partners and a hiring pool that already includes several Summerhill residents as evidence of that commitment in practice. He says the team plans to attend the neighborhood’s monthly planning meeting to stay connected to what the community wants as development continues around them.
The Menu Is a Family Album
Ask Brown to name a single dish that best represents Heritage, and he won’t do it.
“I don’t think you can narrow down Heritage and the impact of the restaurant into a single dish because every menu item is entrenched in memories, history, and the cultural significance of the African diaspora,” he said. Though his own family traces to Trinidad, the menu spans Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian, and West African influences, alongside dishes drawing from Latin America and the American South.
To his point, the opening menu reads like a family scrapbook. There’s Pone, a cassava-and-squash dessert adapted from his great-grandmother’s recipe. There’s Carmen’s Cucumbers—cucumbers prepared several ways with uziza seeds and mint—which traces back to summer nights spent with his brother eating cucumbers straight from their aunt’s garden. The Jamaican Patties nod to a Rhode Island bodega Brown frequented during culinary school (and doubled as his winning dish on Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay”), while the Hispaniola Burger points toward his affection for Haiti.
One myth Brown is eager to dispel: that food from these areas of the world is automatically fiery.
“Food from Africa and the Caribbean is not as foreign or unfamiliar as we all think,” he said. “I like to say that our food can at times be spicy, but it’s always spice-full.”
Inside the Room
The restaurant keeps the vibe going, striking a balance between earthy tones and greenery with Moroccan clay walls and curated artwork throughout. Guests enter through a dark, moody lounge with walk-in seating for 14 and a full a la carte bar menu; the dining room seats 34 around an open kitchen and chef’s counter that Brown and Blanchard describe as the restaurant’s stage, all centered on a seasonal tasting menu. A rooftop patio and private events space, including a planned Heritage Garden, are in the works for the future.
The beverage program comes courtesy of Keyatta Mincey, a Wine Enthusiast Future 40 honoree and Tales of the Cocktail Catalyst honoree, who built the cocktail, wine, and non-alcoholic list around ingredients from Black-owned, BIPOC-owned, women-owned, and local producers, offering an extension of the same storytelling that runs through the food.
Giving Back From Night One
All proceeds from opening night on September 10 will go to Hope for Haiti and Georgia Organics, a pairing that reflects both partners’ personal ties: Blanchard sits on Georgia Organics’ board and points to the group’s work supporting small farmers across the state, while Brown has supported Hope for Haiti’s work since his pop-up days, drawn to an organization that sends aid directly to the Haitian people.
Blanchard says community giving won’t stop after opening week. Bellevue Hospitality already hosts a biannual dinner benefitting the Edna Lewis Foundation, and the group plans to build in regular giving once Heritage finds its footing.
What’s Next for Bellevue Hospitality
Both partners see Heritage as the beginning of something larger. “When Heritage succeeds, our restaurant group Bellevue Hospitality succeeds,” Brown said. “In five years, I want Heritage to be the most influential restaurant and Bellevue to be the most influential restaurant group in the Southeast.”
Blanchard’s version of that ambition comes with a wish list attached—a James Beard Award, potentially a Michelin star—plus two additional concepts already taking shape in the partners’ heads: a pizza restaurant built around Brown’s focaccia-crust pies, and a faster-casual version of Heritage aimed at making the cuisine more widely acceptable without cutting corners on sourcing.
For now though, the focus is singular. Reservations for the restaurant’s first weekends sold out before any formal press push—a sign, Blanchard says, that Atlanta diners are more ready for this cuisine than the risk calculus might have suggested.
“I know that once people come in, they’re gonna fall in love,” he said.
Heritage opens Thursday, September 10 at 63 Georgia Avenue SE in Summerhill. Reservations can be made now on Resy.
Heritage, 63 Georgia Ave. SE Unit A, Atlanta, heritagesupperclub.com
