Courtesy of Heritage
After purchasing French cafe Bread & Butterfly in 2023 and launching an African diaspora-inspired dinner menu, chef Demetrius Brown is turning his focus to his next venture: a full-service Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Summerhill called Heritage. Named for his four-year-old supper club, the tri-level restaurant will offer a tasting menu in the dining room, a la carte fare in the lounge, and dessert in yet another area. Slated for a late winter or early spring opening, Heritage will aim to affect every sense in the body via food, drinks, decor, and music, each carefully chosen to tell a story.
“Bread & Butterfly will always be more French leaning. We limit that to countries like Haiti, Senegal, Congo, French Guyana, and Madagascar—countries colonized by French in the past,” explains Brown, who is of Trinidadian descent. “Heritage is my own memories of food, what Black food was in the past and today. Its areas affected by the diaspora—the Caribbean, all of Africa, Brazil, and the South. This is exactly what we did at the supper club.”
Photo by Alphonso Whitfield
The primary focus of Heritage will be a 7 to 10-course tasting menu with dishes influenced by Brown’s memories of cooking with his great-grandmother. A seating will take two to two-and-a-half hours and include items like Jamaican beef patties and maafe (West African peanut stew), as well as spins on beef Wellington using Afghan ingredients like collard greens, star anise, cloves, black cumin seeds, and suya spice. Another dish will be similar to the coq au vin at Bread & Butterfly but made with chicken thigh meat piped between the skin and meat, dry aged for three days, seared, and finished with hibiscus jus.
“We’re using same local producers as most restaurants here. We’re just adding a little more seasoning to the dishes,” Brown says. “At the end of the day, we want to do something Atlanta doesn’t have. I think this neighborhood will be more receptive to the flavors we have to offer.”
Gratuity will be included in the roughly $200-per-person price tag. Drinks are extra. Expect a 20-bottle wine list featuring as many Black and African producers and distributors as possible. Beer will be local, while classic cocktails are tweaked to fit concept. Examples include a Haitian mule comprised of Haitian-branded rum, lime, and ginger beer with epis powder on top, and an old fashioned infused with plantain skin.
Courtesy of StarChefs
Located downstairs from the entrance, the 40-seat dining room will be modern and airy with marble and large statement lights. It’ll have a “Scandinavian-meets-Afro feel,” Brown says. Look for neutral earth tones with pops of burgundy, yellow, purple, and green.
“The space is big. The layout informed the dining experience,” Brown says. “The African diaspora is so wide and varied—relying on one design lens didn’t make sense, so we decided to create different experiences.”
On the main floor is the bar and lounge, where a concise a la carte menu will be offered. Options include shepherd’s pie and roti curry—items Brown refers to as “more approachable” and food he grew up eating on his mom’s side.
“We want it to feel like the brownstone from the ’50s in the Harlem Renaissance with burgundy, leather, brass, and artwork from Civil Rights Era,” he says. There will be soft seating for around 35 people and portraits of Jesse Jackson and Malcolm X on the walls.
Tasting menu desserts will be served in a separate area sectioned off by a curtain when the dining room is full. Here, diners will sit at a bar to enjoy a pre-dessert, dessert, and petit fours. Offerings may include pound cake and vegan cassava cake made with Brown’s great-grandmother’s recipes, and bon bons created with Haitian chocolate.
Photo by Vincent Lott
Music, too, is intended to play a large role in the restaurant. Songs will be paired with the tasting menu items to tell a cohesive story. “Strange Fruit”—the haunting song about lynchings in the South, made famous by Billie Holiday—will play while diners try fried plantain with Kelewele spice and peanut foam, smoked tableside. This references a field trip Brown took in elementary school, where his class visited a plantation and learned about lynching. Brown says he always thought plantains were a strange fruit.
“I want to pay tribute to the slaves,” he explains. “Peanuts are mainstay in Africa, and we hang the dish from a globe and smoke it the way lynched black people were burned. It’s a very deep dish.”
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Carly Cooper
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