On a sunny summer morning, weeks before reservations to their new tasting menu restaurant opened to the public, chef Demetrius Brown and business partner Brandon Blanchard were cheerful.
Sitting together on the patio at Bread & Butterfly, the Inman Park cafe where the two highly trained kitchen vets held their popular Heritage Supper Club dinner series before purchasing the restaurant in 2023, Brown and Blanchard spoke about their new venture, the brick-and-mortar arrival of Heritage.
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The two first worked together at the luxury farm resort and residential community, Serenbe, located south of Atlanta. Blanchard, who has longtime experience in food and hospitality management, recognized exceptional talent in Brown, a Johnson & Wales graduate from Rhode Island with Trinidadian roots. Together, they turned Heritage Supper Club into one of Atlanta’s most acclaimed pop-ups.
As a supper club, Heritage Supper Club represented culinary traditions and flavors of the African diaspora, expressed through Brown’s particular culinary perspective and Blanchard’s operational skill and high-level service standards. And at its new permanent space, Heritage is intended to allow the duo to build on their concept through an expanded suite of reimagined interpretations of African, Caribbean, and Black American cuisine, offered in a carefully designed multi-level space with a rooftop offering panoramas of Summerhill and beyond.
The goal, they say, is to bring a sense of majesty to marginalized food traditions while telling undertold stories of African diasporic cuisine and culture via modern and classic cooking techniques.
“One thing we’re going to do really well is have a very strong point of view of what our food is and what our service is like,” Brown says.
“As much as we’re saying it’s [focused on the] African diasporic, it’s more of a representation of everywhere Black people have been. So whether that’s lemon pepper wings, which are going to be on the cocktail menu, or whether it’s waakye — which is going to be on the tasting menu — all those things are rooted in Black culture. But we’re using ingredients and techniques to make it more palatable, more approachable for people who may not be familiar.”
Heritage has two dining options: dinner service featuring seasonal tasting menus or the à la carte menu available exclusively in the restaurant’s lounge area and featuring bites like Brown’s house-ground Caribbean chicken burger. The opening tasting menu will include dishes like the aforementioned waakye and additional courses excluded from the a la carte menu, such as yakitori-grilled jerk chicken, calabaza squash, representing West African and West Indian traditions, and a family-inspired dish of fermented, pickled and frozen, granita-style cucumbers.
The beverage program is developed by veteran drinks expert Keyatta Mincey. Signature cocktails will include the Heritage with Bayab African Gin, local honey, and orange bitters, and a rice-water martini with Bayab gin or Vusa Vodka, both from Black-owned spirits companies based in Africa.
“My hope is that every drink complements the story being told on the plate and creates a memorable experience for every guest,” Mincey said.
Brown says the design of Heritage, curated by local designer Imani James, was influenced by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Walking through the simulation of a slave ship made him wonder how he could use design and motion to evoke emotion in a dining space.
Guests entering Heritage will first encounter the lounge area before accessing the art-immersive dining room through a dim hallway ending at a hidden door, opening to reveal a double-tiered dining room in front of an open kitchen. Throughout the space, there are earthy color tones and textures, from the seating to the large, thought-provoking Black art by Atlanta-based artists like Aaron Monu and Honey Pierre, whom Brown commissioned to create a quilt-like image of his grandmother made of yarn.
“If you look throughout each corner and crevice of the restaurant, everything has intention, everything has a meaning, everything has a story.”
— Chef Demetrius Brown
“I mean, if it was up to me, we would’ve opened three, four years ago. I think we’re at a time now, not even just in the city, but in the country, where … it hearkens back to the same time where David Chang came out. Everybody was, you know, kind of infatuated with Asian, Thai, Korean flavors. I think we’re in that same place now,” Brown says of Caribbean cuisine’s current cultural heatwave.
Before, I think, it would have been a harder sell for a lot of people. And I think now that Atlanta has positioned itself as a total destination; we’re not so reliant on tastebuds in the state and the region. Now we have more eyes on what we’re doing.”
Another factor was the unexpected opportunity to buy Bread & Butterfly from its previous owners, Billy and Kristin Allin, who’d watched Heritage Supper Club draw crowds to the restaurant. Upon taking ownership, Brown steered the French cafe’s menu toward foods influenced by the colonization of African and Caribbean nations including Senegal, Haiti, Niger, and Jamaica. Bringing those ideas to life offered practice and proofs-of-concept for Heritage, whose opening was the original goal.
“That’s why we started dinner here and why we wanted to really push, to see if we could build enough traction. I think that proved the point to a lot of people that it can be sustainable.”
“One of the main reasons we started working together was because it was very clear to me that he was doing what he loved, and he’s not veering from that,” Blanchard says of Brown.
“We’re taking a big risk. We’re putting food on a table that a big portion of people we want to come in can’t pronounce, don’t know what it is, don’t know where it comes from. We’re stepping out there and saying, we know this is great.”
Blanchard said the belief in the execution of the experience and the story they intend to tell give them a level of faith and fortitude in the restaurant and how it might shape the city. That means making sure Heritage feels universally welcoming to all diners.
“If you choose not to, that’s on you. But we feel very confident in what we’re doing, and we’re doing it with passion, with love. And I think that’s what’s missing in Atlanta.”
