Photograph by Martha Williams
Like an old flame, barbecue keeps beckoning Todd Richards. Que-riosity, the chef’s new restaurant in McDonough, composes the fourth verse in his ongoing duet with smoke and fire. It follows Rolling Bones in the Old Fourth Ward, The Pig and the Pearl in Atlantic Station, and Lake & Oak in East Lake. While Richards began his barbecue career serving traditional fare with the usual meats and fixings, Que-riosity is more of a refined grill room where smoky flavors provide a theme instead of an entire menu. If barbecue is an old sweet song, Que-riosity finds Richards playing variations like a jazz musician.
The restaurant occupies a storefront in a shopping center on Jonesboro Road, off Interstate 75, a landscape of box stores, chain eateries, and big parking lots. The nondescript setting recedes once you step inside; it’s like walking into the chef’s home den. The 1,500-square-foot dining room glows with warm butterscotch walls decorated with abstract art painted by Richards himself. Shelves of cookbooks—he wrote two of them—line one wall, and a long bar with a TV tuned to sports dominates another. There are no red-checkered tablecloths; rather, marble tops and linen napkins. A soundtrack of ’70s soul sets an easy dinner mood.
Since he arrived in Atlanta from his native Chicago during the early ’90s, Richards has been one of the most creative and restless chefs in town. A four-time James Beard Award semifinalist, he has worked at such kitchens as the late Blue Ribbon Grill in Tucker and The Shed in Glenwood Park. He has also headed culinary operations at swank hotels, including his current gig as executive chef at the Waldorf Astoria Atlanta. All this to go along with One Flew South, his popular restaurant at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Soul: Food & Culture, his food stall at Krog Street Market. The man gets around.
Photograph by Martha Williams
Richards opened Que-riosity in March in collaboration with his wife, Gloria. The couple wanted to establish an upscale grill closer to where they live in Henry County. The dinner menu (they don’t do lunch) offers four cold small plates, four hot small plates, and six entrees. Some dishes will be familiar to guests who have eaten at his other restaurants: a flight of deviled eggs with bacon jam and pickled onions; grilled oysters with garlic butter; fried okra split lengthwise and dressed with lemon, hot sauce, and barbecue spices.
All are good, but I wanted to taste the dishes that justify a name like Que-riosity. Twice-smoked pork belly with red onions and mustard barbecue sauce ($14) tickled my pork cravings. Smoked chicken wings over red-velvet waffles with smoked maple syrup ($16) surprised me. I was expecting it to be very sweet, but it wasn’t; the waffle was light and soaked up the stronger flavors surrounding it. Only the hot honey and pineapple glazed ribs ($28) disappointed—they seemed excessively candied—but the accompanying Sea Island red peas, deeply smoky and lightly salted, were a little crock of joy.
The most impressive dish may be the grilled branzino ($44), stuffed with rice, collard greens, and mushrooms and served with stewed tomatoes and mussels. The flavors balance beautifully, and the multicolored dish looks artful enough to hang on the wall with the chef’s paintings.
Photograph by Martha Williams
Que-riosity offers a small dessert menu (highlights: bananas Foster cheesecake and red-velvet cake) and has started serving Sunday brunch, with specialties like blueberry French toast with lemon mascarpone ($18) and a creamy lobster and shrimp omelet ($36). Beverage director and longtime collaborator Ramsey Kashlan created a list of 21 wines and 22 cocktails, many of them with cheeky names like Conflict Resolution, Death in the Afternoon, and Sex in the Driveway. The 419 Fashioned features rye whiskey and is smoked. When it arrived, I lifted the lid off the tumbler, and a puff of vapor escaped like a tabletop magic trick.
If you go to Que-riosity expecting conventional barbecue, you’ll probably be disappointed. The higher prices may displease you too: A dinner and drinks for two blows past $100 in no time. But if you go to experience ingenious riffs on an American classic—and expect to pay for fine dining—you’ll be rewarded. “Barbecue is not a monolith,” Richards says. “There are lots of different ways of doing it.” At Que-riosity, he’s trying out some of them to our benefit.
This article appears in our August 2026 issue.
