Owens & Hull at Grand Champion combines the best of Atlanta’s barbecue tradition with Texas attitude. Robert Owens and Bryan Hull came up through two different schools of barbecue. Owens cut his teeth in the kitchen of foundational joint Sam & Dave’s BBQ, in Marietta, Georgia, starting in 2007. He left the restaurant in 2011 to open Grand Champion BBQ. Hull debuted his pop-up, Secret Pint, in Atlanta in 2021 after taking a couple courses at Goldee’s Barbecue, in Fort Worth. “I wouldn’t be where I am without those guys,” Hull said. He’d watch instructional videos while working as an audio engineer recording audiobooks. Hull decided last year that he was ready to dedicate his life to barbecue, and Owens wanted an infusion of energy, so they joined forces to open Owens & Hull at Grand Champion outside Smyrna, about thirty minutes northwest of downtown Atlanta, last September.

The five-hundred-gallon offset smoker from Georgia-based Primitive Pits is set between a pair of four-story apartment complexes. You can’t see the entrance to Owens & Hull until you drive around back to the parking lot along the bank of the Chattahoochee River. The restaurant shares a building with Reformation Brewery, on the ground floor of the Eddy at Riverview Landing apartments. Limited menus are available on Sundays and Thursdays, with smoked burgers on Thursday evenings. For the full barbecue experience, visit Friday or Saturday.

“It is Texas-influenced barbecue,” Hull said of the menu. That’s a necessary clarification, because unlike in the rest of Georgia, where pork reigns supreme, smoked brisket is a staple here (although its inclusion on the menu doesn’t signify any allegiance to Texas). When Owens first opened in this space as Grand Champion BBQ, in 2020, the joint was a replica of three other locations he had at the time with his business partner Gregory Vivier. They served brisket, but their barbecue was Atlanta-style, smoked in Southern Pride rotisseries, and they offered the same five meats and seven sides every day. “It became very monotonous,” Owens admitted. In 2021, Vivier and Owens had an amicable split, with Vivier rebranding two of the restaurants as Smokehouse Q and leaving Owens with two locations of Grand Champion. He closed the one in Milton early last year, leaving just the Smyrna location.

“The biggest thing that was holding us back as far as barbecue was the limitations of our smokers,” Owens said. He wanted to add an offset smoker, and Hull already owned one and knew his way around it. They talked for several hours over a meal in August of last year, then partnered up a month later. Hull hauled that five-hundred-gallon smoker to Smyrna. Owens said he has a thousand-gallon version on order that will increase the restaurant’s capacity.

I stopped in on a Thursday evening to try the smoked burger. Two slices of melted American cheese hung over the edge of a thick, black pepper–crusted patty on a soft, steamed potato bun. House-made pickles, burger sauce, and a not-too-sweet jam of roughly chopped smoked onions topped the patty. The coarsely ground brisket was loosely bound, so each bite through the stout bark gave way to the soft interior. It was an excellent homage to LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue, in Austin, whose burger has been the inspiration for many.

A return visit on Saturday (Saturdays and Sundays are the only days Owens & Hull serves pork ribs) brought a more bountiful tray. My consistent gripe with barbecue menus in the area is that the minimum order of ribs is a half a rack, which is too much if you want to sample other meats. The ribs are listed as such on the menu at Owens & Hull, but you can ask for one or two to be sold by weight. Mine were tender and juicy, with a peppery bark. Hull makes a mustard sauce similar to the gold sauce at Goldee’s and uses it to glaze the ribs. It provides a subtle sweetness to complement the salt and pepper, but it doesn’t overpower.

Sliced brisket is served Fridays and Saturdays only. (It’s understandable if you’re tempted to open an Excel spreadsheet to track the daily availability of meats at Owens & Hull.) Mine was spectacularly juicy, thanks in part to the Prime-grade cut from Creekstone. The fat cap of the lean side was perfectly rendered, and a stout, smoky bark surrounded the fatty slice. “Georgia customers are finally understanding fatty brisket,” Owens said. “We’re at a different place as a barbecue community.”

Atlanta is also getting Hull’s sausages. When attending those barbecue classes at Goldee’s, Hull said, “the two things I wanted to learn was brisket and sausage.” The house sausages are jalapeño and cheddar and a black pepper and garlic that’s based on the Goldee’s original. Hull adds mace and mustard powder. He also makes a specialty sausage every week. I loved the heat and garlic kick of the Portuguese linguica calabrese sausage. (This weekend, look for a choriqueso sausage.) All the sausages were juicy, and while the casings weren’t chewy, they could’ve had a better snap, which Hull acknowledged when he handed me the tray.

Hull takes the chopped brisket sandwich seriously, and he encouraged me to try one. Rather than blending the brisket with a sweet, tomato-based sauce, he tops the generous pile of meat with white sauce and mustard barbecue sauce. The sandwich also gets pickled onions and jalapeños, but not dill pickle chips, as Hull finds them distracting. All the flavors worked well together, but I did like it better when I added pickles.

After I tried a little of everything, Hull asked what my favorite bite was. He looked surprised when I pointed to the smoked turkey. The peppery slice was on the thick side, but still tender. I didn’t need to dip it into the melted butter, but I’ll take that flavor boost any day. Plenty of Atlanta regulars need some convincing to order the turkey, which isn’t as common in town as brisket or ribs. “I can’t tell you how many people we convert to ordering turkey at the counter” by handing them a sample, Hull said.

Many barbecue joints in the area employ table service, and I had come to miss the efficiency of ordering at the counter. Owens & Hull offered a welcome change of pace. “I feel counter service is more personable,” Owens said, but it’s not the norm in Atlanta. At the counter, I could see the sides, so I knew I needed some greens and mac and cheese. The special of Cajun rice with brisket gravy was a stunner that tasted like a blend of dirty rice and jambalaya. I could have made a meal of it alone.

If Atlanta has a signature side, it is mac and cheese, but many folks use something other than elbow noodles. Back when Owens was working at Sam & Dave’s BBQ, owners Sam Huff and Dave Poe added David Roberts as a partner to run the kitchen. He brought with him his mother’s mac and cheese recipe, which called for rigatoni and a cheese sauce made with cheddar, Monterey Jack, Parmesan, and plenty of heavy cream. Roberts went on to open Community Q in 2009, the same year Huff and Poe split to form BBQ-1 and Dave Poe’s. They all served the same mac and cheese, and so did Owens (with the addition of smoked gouda) when he opened Grand Champion, in 2011.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the recipe in 2010. It became a staple for many local cooks, including at holiday gatherings of the Hull family. Hull has tweaked the recipe once again for Owens & Hull. “I love shells,” he said of his preferred pasta shape. “I grew up eating Velveeta Shells & Cheese. They get more of the cream and stuff in there.” Hull also adds mustard powder for flavor and as a binder. The mixture is topped with more cheese and baked until golden. I got a perfectly browned scoop of it and was a little sad that I didn’t have room to finish such a beautiful serving.

When I talked with Hull and Owens and asked about the style of barbecue they serve, their answers differed. Owens leaned toward Atlanta-style, and Hull toward Texas. Hull paused and said, “Regionality in American barbecue is almost dead.” He argued that the local flavor is found in the sides and the wood used for smoking, like the Georgia oak he and Owens prefer. The smoked meats, he said, are shared and copied among the younger generation of pitmasters to such a degree that it’s hard to declare provenance.

As their menu expands, Hull and Owens will add humble cuts, like the pork steak that has a cult following in Texas, and trendy ones, like a smoked beef shank, a.k.a. “Thor’s Hammer.” If they’re as good as everything I tried, Atlantans are in for a series of treats. They can thank Owens for seeing an opportunity to change with the times, and Hull for joining up to create what is currently the grand champion of barbecue joints in Atlanta.