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Award-winning Smyrna barbecue restaurant Owens & Hull will rebrand to Owens & Co., after business partners Bryan Hull and Robert Owens (Grand Champion BBQ) were unable to reach an operating agreement. Hull departed the restaurant in October and returned to his pop-up roots, launching Misfitsss BBQ with Chef Tyler Heath a month later.
Now Hull and Heath serve their takes on Texas-style barbecue at Round Trip Brewing in Underwood Hills on Saturday afternoons and at Communidad in the Old Fourth Ward on Monday nights. They hope to open a permanent location of Misfitsss BBQ by early next year.
In addition to a punk-rock reference (Heath spent 10 years playing in a Misfits cover band), the name of the pop-up alludes to the duo’s sense of placement in Atlanta’s culinary scene.
“I’ve worked in Michelin star restaurants. I’ve worked for sports teams. I’ve done small-scale, massive-scale catering,” said Heath, who was born in Canada. “I’m just trying to find a place to land.”
Hull, meanwhile, left audio engineering to pursue his love of barbecue, becoming part of Atlanta’s pop-up food scene soon after he launched Secret Pint BBQ.
“I’m a kid from Georgia and he’s a kid from Canada. We’re coming from wildly different [backgrounds], just a couple [of] misfits getting together and cooking stuff,” Hull added.
Heath first met Hull three years ago when he was popping up with Gabriel Tungol (Barangay ATL) at Little Cottage Brewery in Avondale Estates. Heath would later join Hull as a chef at Owens & Hull.
But Hull maintained a relationship with Round Trip Brewing from his Secret Pint days. (Hull and Heath are also fans of the brewery’s beers.)
“We want to be able to like what we’re drinking with the food we’re serving, and Craig [Mycoskie] has always been like, ‘If you ever want to do anything, just let us know,’” Heath said. “Craig was the first person we talked to. We didn’t even have to finish the sentence. He goes, ‘I’m in.’”
Right after Hull and Heath departed Owens & Hull last fall, Chef Nick Melvin reached out about a residency at Communidad.
Rather than return to Secret Pint’s menu and formula, Hull and Heath created something new with Misfitsss BBQ.
“Secret Pint did things a certain way, and what we’re doing now is a blending of our two [cooking] styles,” Hull said. “Tyler is responsible for as much of the food, if not more, with Misfitsss than I am.”
While Hull concentrates on smoking meats, Heath channels his chef and restaurant experiences into the side dishes.
This collaboration results in dishes like Thai hash, which combines barbecue trim with red curry paste, coconut, ginger, and garlic to make a Carolina-style hash. And each pop-up residency boasts its own identity. While the Round Trip residency operates more like a Texas-style meat counter, the Communidad residency serves dishes such as fried pork belly ends with salsa macha, chili slaw, Tex-Mex dust, and cotija cheese and a lemon pepper wet turkey torta.
“There’s so many different things you can do with traditional barbecue, but you’ve got to get that part of it right first, and that’s what Bryan’s got,” Heath said. “I have the background with all this different restaurant experience. Merging that with the [barbecue] techniques that he knows, the sky’s the limit on what we can do.”
Catch Misfitsss BBQ on Saturdays at Round Trip Brewing in Underwood Hills and at Communidad in the Old Fourth Ward on Monday evenings.