Pitmaster Josh Bowen stoking the fires at Mothership Meat Company.
With the exception of Robert Pearson, who first brought Texas barbeque to Long Island City, it’s pretty safe to say Kansas City native Josh Bowen has done more to popularize low and slow traditional American barbeque in Queens then any one man. Five years ago he opened John Brown Smokehouse in Astoria. There in a tiny space hard by an auto body shop, he turned out sumptuous chunks of that K.C. classic, burnt ends, double-rubbed and double-smoked nuggets of meat candy. A few years later, he pulled up stakes and moved John Brown to L.I.C. turning into a full-fledged barbeque restaurant complete with a backyard featuring live blues. On Mondays and Fridays Bowen takes to the stage himself. His next act? A little something called Mothership Meat Company, an encore of the acclaimed Alchemy Texas BBQ.
Queens Dinner Club is proud to partner with Bowen and Mothership for a very special “sneak peak” dinner later this month.
Where did the idea of Mothership Meat Company come from?
It came from our Alchemy days, kind of R&D Texas barbeque and my partner had a property in Astoria that he wanted to make into something. So here we are.
What about the name come from? Are you a fan of George Clinton?
That’s a weird one because that one just literally came out of the the ether. We’d needed a name and I was like ‘Mothership,’ that sounds good. I mean, I like Funkadelic, but it just sounds like a cool name warm and homey, but also sort of out there a little bit. And I think that represents the food we’re going to be doing there. (more…)
