Mike Sheats is from Athens. Shyretha Sheats is from Carrollton, about 45 miles west of Atlanta. Their first restaurant opens this week in South Downtown, and for two Georgia natives who’ve spent years cooking and pouring drinks for other people’s places, it’s a homecoming.
The couple’s first brick-and-mortar, Mule Train, is a 40-seat, full-service restaurant built around the foodways of Northeast Georgia and whatever their farm partners are harvesting that week. It opens for dinner Wednesday, September 30, at 87 Broad Street—a permanent home for the team behind the acclaimed pop-up Plate Sale. Expect a menu that shifts with the seasons, a tight drinks program that works directly with the kitchen, and a concept built with discovery in mind. Just don’t count on a set opening menu.
Mike, whose resume includes McCrady’s Tavern in Charleston and Muss & Turner’s and Staplehouse in Atlanta, lets the produce dictate the direction—a habit picked up from kitchens that stock the pantry first and cook from there.
Early dishes have included candy roaster squash with habanada and marigold, and aged pork with wisteria and okra, though with the menu turning over every four to six weeks, there’s no guarantee either will still be around when you visit. Late summer means lighter plates, heavy on seafood and lean proteins. Once it cools off, look for duck, beef, braised dishes with dumplings, and cured, aged meats.
The format nods at a meat-and-three (protein, green, starch) without quite being one. Lunch gets closest: a rotating lineup of a sandwich, green, pastry, and vegetable dish for the workday crowd. Dinner is full-service, plated, and built around seasonality.
“I love meat and threes,” Mike says, “but I just think if we’re doing it, we’re doing it a little bit differently.”
Shyretha’s bar program is crafted to work in tandem with the kitchen.She’s aiming to get the two teams sharing ingredients—think syrups or powders made for a dish, then repurposed in a drink. Right now, that’s tea steeped from wheat bran. The draft system stays small on purpose: just four taps, including a rotating non-alcoholic pour (currently a carbonated muscadine limeade with lime and bay leaf) plus a draft cocktail and beer. Wine runs through Shyretha’s own favorites, and she’s planning to bring in experimental, cellar-worthy bottles from local beer makers, poured in small tasting portions like wine.
The name “Mule Train” echoes the same community-building sentiment the couple is building in the back of house. Growing up, Mike’s family scattered north come summer, but August meant homecoming: a week of church services before revival, with relatives filtering back home. It was during that same stretch that his uncles would head down to ‘the mule train’—his aunt and uncle Mabel and Odom’s place in rural Northeast Georgia, where relatives gathered. He never went himself; it was just a name he picked up as a kid.
The idea to build a restaurant around it came later, when the couple was living on Shyretha’s family land during the pandemic, working to bring her grandmother’s farmland back into use.
“It was that whole sense of community that I feel like we had been doing with the Plate Sale,” Shyretha says. “It just kind of made sense.”
Going from concept to a brick-and-mortar restaurant took several years. Mike traces it to a month-long stint running a friend’s restaurant while its owners were out of town, when he and Shyretha first started dialing in numbers, learning to order at scale, and deciphering profit margins. Funding is what slowed things down after that. Traditional lenders wanted six months of consistent numbers from an established business, and The Plate Sale didn’t meet that requirement. The couple went with private lenders instead.
“The probability of a lender supporting a new neighborhood, a new startup, was a little more difficult than we anticipated,” Shyretha says. “But we found success in navigating that journey, and here we are.”
The South Downtown address was an intentional choice, too—Shyretha knows the neighborhood well from her Georgia State days. The developers behind the area’s rejuvenation floated it to the couple once, years ago, but nothing came of it at the time. When the opportunity resurfaced, they spent months touring spaces before settling on 87 Broad Street. Mike says it’s the first time anyone’s offered to help them build a space from scratch instead of handing them someone else’s old shell.
Ask either of them what matters most before opening night, and it’s actually not the food or what’s behind the bar.
“We’re calling it a Georgia open-door hospitality restaurant,” Mike says—a nod to the Southern habit of welcoming anyone who knocks, one he wants extended to the staff as much as the guests. “If we’ve got a happy team, we’re probably going to have happy food.”
Shyretha wants to create a place where people can build careers, not just pass through. “We’re creating a culture that debunks traditional restaurant culture,” she says.
At the end of the day, it’s all about good old-fashioned Southern hospitality. “We finally have a space for our open door,” Mike says.
Mule Train opens for dinner beginning Wednesday, September 30. Reservations are available via Resy, with walk-ins welcome as space allows.
Mule Train, 87 Broad St., Atlanta, muletrainatl.com
