Onur Gulbay applied for jobs at more than 20 barbecue shops in Austin when he left his job as sales manager at a tech company. Eventually, he conceded that nobody wanted to pay a 40-year-old man with no professional knife skills to take up space in their kitchen. He took a job as a cashier at a gas station barbecue counter to get into the industry, working his way into the kitchen and toward the smoker.

That same dogged commitment fuels the best parts of Gulbay’s Outsider BBQ and Beer Garden, which opened in Frelard back in February. Picking up the exact right bread for the chopped beef and pulled pork sandwiches each day requires at least an hour of driving to Hillman City and back. He makes sweet pickles in-house solely to use as an ingredient in the potato salad. Most importantly, the round-the-clock babysitting of the restaurant’s two smokers produces an intensely tender brisket.

The all-natural prime beef, seasoned only with salt and pepper and smoked for 12 to 14 hours, is consistently among the city’s best. On good days, it matches the best Central Texas barbecue I’ve ever eaten—which came from the same restaurant where Gulbay ate his own life-changing first bite of smoked brisket.

When Gulbay moved from Istanbul to join his wife in Austin, she raved about the brisket and introduced him to the local specialty at the famous Franklin Barbecue. “It was an aha moment for me,” he says. Though grilling meat over live fire has a long history in Turkish cuisine, the meat is generally lamb, and he marveled at the novel use of brisket. “How can a brisket, this rough top muscle, turn into this juicy, tender cut-off slice?”

The gentle resistance of Outsider’s brisket when I tug off a piece and the invisible layer of fat whose presence I notice only in the buttery taste demonstrate that he has figured it out.

Gulbay began smoking meat as a hobby and—as so many have before him—became obsessed. When his wife’s job brought them to Seattle, he decided instead of finding a new job in tech, he would start a barbecue pop-up. He named his portable tent Outsider, an apt description of a Turkish man smoking Texas-style meat, and the small setup quickly drew big lines. After a year, he upgraded to a truck. Two years later, Gulbay was on the hunt for a larger commissary kitchen when he heard the original Frelard Pizza Co. space was available.

He moved in quickly, altering little about the dining areas—the firepits, covered patio, and roll-up doors that opened the entire length of the room were a big part of what inspired him to settle down. He slices the meats next to the cash register at the counter; customers watch as he weighs out the brisket. Glossy with fat, its charcoal-hued edge hems in the smoke ring, which matches the pink shade of the pickled onions served on the side.

Onions and pickled jalapeños also come inside the chopped beef sandwich, cutting through the meatiness. With the light, crispy bread that necessitates a trip across town, the simple combination is extremely successful. The pulled pork sandwich doesn’t quite have the same natural complexity—perhaps owing to a shorter smoke session. A squirt of the Carolina-style mustard sauce tastes like sunshine and makes up the difference.

The sliced meat I ordered on my first visit came out so juicy and flavorful that only the pork sandwich on my second visit reminded me to give the duo of barbecue sauces on each table a chance to show off. The deep-red Texas-style one, made with beets and heavily flecked with black pepper, runs inoffensive and slightly sweet. It’s fine, but wholly unneeded.

The snappy skin of the sausages hides a gentle heat, so when both the original and cheddar jalapeño versions turned out to be too spicy for my sensitive-tongued children, I happily swept up their leftovers with the slice of white bread on our tray. (No matter how much meat I ordered, each tray only came with that single slice. I quickly learned to request an extra.)

While Gulbay’s meats stay true to Texas tradition, he takes more liberty in other areas, achieving varying levels of success. I assume the sütlaç, a smoked Turkish-style rice pudding, is fantastic, because it was sold out on each of my visits. The potato salad, which could easily be renamed a pickle salad, falls squarely in the middle of the mayonnaise vs. mustard debate, emboldened with sour cream and Turkish yogurt. Jam-packed with dill and other soft herbs, it benefits greatly from the sprightly sprinkle of sumac. The flavors are so good that my table quickly forgave the undercooking of the actual potatoes. Remember, it’s a pickle salad, anyway.

Some sides are less notable. The mac and cheese and peach cobbler both offer little advantage over boxed versions, other than the ability to order a bottle of Shiner Bock or pint of Seapine Brewing’s Citra IPA to wash them down. Which, Gulbay explains, is part of the point.

“I'm having a hard time calling this place a restaurant,” he says. Sure, it serves food, but the reason he made the jump from the truck was the big, inviting combination of indoor and outdoor space. “I want this to be a place where people come to spend their time. We’re not rushing people,” he says. That’s why he put a miniature barbecue stand in the cordoned-off kid play area at the far end of the room, complete with plastic smokers. Gulbay, as always, commits to the bit, be it furnishing on-theme toys or the Texas-size task of learning to smoke a brisket.

“I want people to come here, spend their whole day drinking beer, enjoying their time with friends and family,” says Gulbay. Which is a lovely sentiment, but hardly a type of thing for which Seattle, particularly around Frelard, lacks. What was missing—until Outsider lit up in February—was a place to order a platter of juicy sliced brisket with that beer.