New restaurant Mule Train will open in Atlanta’s South Downtown next week
The husband-wife team behind the pop-up Plate Sale will debut their first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Mule Train, in the South Downtown development on Sept. 30.
Mike and Shyretha Sheats are bringing a seasonal menu and beverage program to their eatery at 87 Broad St.
Rural Georgia roots in a new Atlanta restaurant
Shyretha Sheats grew up in Carlton, about 20 miles northeast of Athens, where Mike Sheats was raised. They’ve been together for 20 years after meeting through friends at a Christmas party, and their careers have been intertwined for more than a decade.
Despite their rural beginnings, spending time in downtown Atlanta was a big part of Shyretha and Mike’s adulthood. Shyretha attended Georgia State University, so she and Mike used to walk around downtown, admiring the buildings along Broad Street but never imagining they might one day open a restaurant there, she said.
Shyretha and Mike’s careers took them to Charleston, South Carolina, for a time where they worked in a cocktail bar and restaurant, respectively. In 2015, they returned to Atlanta to help open Staplehouse, Mike said.
They launched their pop-up, Plate Sale, in 2017. It was inspired by the plate sales they grew up participating in, where their communities would gather at churches and in front yards to sell plates of food.
When they shared the idea with the late chef Angus Brown of Octopus Bar, he encouraged them to host the pop-up at his restaurant. The relationships they built over the years of running Plate Sale helped them gather the resources and supporters necessary to open Mule Train, Mike Sheats said.
Mule Train lands in South Downtown Atlanta
Originally, the Sheats were hoping to open their restaurant in Athens, but last year they were approached by a broker for the South Downtown developers who offered to show the couple some of the historic property’s available spaces.
And thus, Mule Train found a home in Atlanta.
“We’re calling it Georgia open-door hospitality,” Mike said.
The restaurant name is inspired by a piece of Mike’s family lore.
When his aunts and uncles would visit during the summer, they would all talk about how they were going to “mule train.” Mike never got to go himself, but he later learned his family members were going to someone’s yard to hang out, drink corn liquor and eat whole-hog barbecue.
“It was just kind of like a stop-through,” Mike said. “Where I’m from, my mom’s door is always open. Most people’s doors are always open if you have some kind of connection with them. You can stop by any time. So mule train wasn’t like a real restaurant, it was just a stopping point.”
Bringing Mule Train to Atlanta feels fitting since the city began as a stopping point at the end of a rail line, Shyretha said.
Mule Train’s philosophy on food and drink
While they won’t have moonshine available at the restaurant quite yet, Shyretha will be running a tight cocktail program with plenty of storytelling, she said.
The cocktails will use seasonal ingredients like the food menu, and it will start out with a collection of six or so drinks that focus on the classic themes, like a sour, a high ball, a stirred drink and something on the rocks. She likes working with gin, so a gin and sherry cocktail served with an olive and a bit of aromatized wine will be one of the offerings.
“I also like to have a little fun with seasonal ingredients,” she said. “So I will work with our chef team on prepping and sourcing some of those ingredients that we can use in our program as well.”
There will be a small draft program with cocktails on draft and some large format, experimental beers from the Creature Comforts cellar. The wine program will follow a similar lead with several options by the glass and some rotating bottles with a focus on family-owned, long-standing natural wine producers.
The food will change seasonally based on what the Sheats can source from Georgia farmers. They plan to highlight the best ingredients they can find with a focus on simple preparations of vegetables and whole cuts of meat, Mike Sheats said.
Right now, some highlights will include an aged pork, with no parts going to waste. They’ll use the bones to make a jus, he said, and the pork will be aged and lightly smoked on a yakitori grill with binchotan charcoal, then paired with pan-roasted okra from Woodland Gardens. He will also use wisteria in a pork stock reduction as a finishing glaze on the pork.
“We want to try to use everything,” he said.
There will also be a squash dish made with a variety of Candy Roaster squashes. Mike Sheats said he’ll slow-cook the squash, then make a lacquer out of marigold vinegar, squash juice and fermented habanada peppers, which is a heatless variety of the habanero.
“They look simple to the eye, but it is a lot of work that goes into these dishes,” he said.
Atmosphere and hospitality rooted in family history
The restaurant’s interior is a mix of classic and modern, Shyretha said, with dark wood paneling inspired by both of the Sheats’ grandparents’ houses to give it the feel of a Southern home. An intimate, four-person bar has a dark granite counter, and navy blue banquettes make up a majority of the seating. They decided to include an open concept with a view into the kitchen and bar.
“We all are saying hello when you walk in, and it creates this trust also with the guests to be able to see everyone just in the space and working together,” Shyretha said.
Creating a great workplace for their employees was just as integral to the restaurant as a wonderful guest experience, she said. Fostering that balance has been a goal for the couple since they began working in the hospitality industry.
Mule Train is the latest restaurant to open in the South Downtown development in addition to Spiller Park, Tyde Tate Kitchen, Broad Street BBQ, El Tesoro, Delilah’s Everyday Soul, Bottle Rocket Sushi and Glide Pizza.
Now that the buzz of the 2026 FIFA World Cup has passed, the Sheats said it’s been a little quieter but there are still people who seem to be catching onto what the downtown restaurant scene has to offer. Lunchtime has a pretty steady crowd, they said.
“I think it’s going to be a good thing,” Mike said. “I think it’s just the city needs to get used to coming downtown to dine.”
87 Broad St. NW, Atlanta. instagram.com/muletrainatlanta
