As a teenager in Oklahoma, all Danny Bowien wanted to do was be in a rock band. The James Beard Award-winning chef drove to the local Guitar Center in Oklahoma City to oogle guitars. Eventually an employee at the store invited him to be the bassist for her Christian rock band, the Stellas. One of their highest-profile shows was opening for the Flaming Lips at the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots record party at a teppanyaki restaurant. (Bowien still keeps in touch with Wayne Coyne, who texts him pictures of his antics every now and then.) After the Stellas broke up, a friend in San Francisco invited Bowien to crash at his apartment and figure out what to do next. He decided to go to culinary school.

Bowien bounced around New York and San Francisco, picking up a Pesto World Championship along the way, before he started the first Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco with Anthony Myint. The operation was modest, sharing its space with a takeout Chinese food joint called Lung Shan, but it quickly became known for its audacious and densely flavored Sichuanese fusion cooking. Bowien eventually decamped to New York in 2012 to open up a new Mission Chinese in the Lower East Side. In their mostly rapturous review, the Times compared what Bowien does with Chinese food to what Led Zeppelin did with the blues. Other critics were quick to use the markers of punk rebellion and DIY to get a handle on the restaurant.

Before the original Mission Chinese was shut down by the health department in 2013, it had become something of a ritual for me: trek into the city for a show and have dinner there beforehand. After often waiting for hours, during which time the free keg beer they offered flowed freely, you were led to the ramshackle dining room through a narrow hallway, making it feel like you were walking into a secret. The space looked more like a vaguely tiki-tinged dive or a DIY club than one of the most decorated New York restaurants in recent memory, with a deeply lit energy to match. Then the food would arrive, its bold flavor combinations inspiring something close to hallucination. Looking back now, I think Mission Chinese and venues like 285 Kent or Glasslands occupied the same cultural space for me, in that they informed my taste and my idea of pure fun in more ways than I can explain.

In the two years it took to find a new location for Mission Chinese, Bowien opened up a Mexican place called Mission Cantina, co-wrote an excellent cook book, and started a band with Geoff Rickly (of Thursday) and Chris Conley (of Saves the Day) named NARX. The group followed Bowien on his book tour last year, playing rough and tumble punk in vaunted fine restaurants. Though he spends more time in the kitchen than behind the drum kit, music is, in one way or another, often orbiting Bowien. When we meet at Mission Cantina before dinner service, the staff is blasting Rihanna’s “Work” as they catch their breath before the rush. As we say our goodbyes, Bowien was rushing out the door to surprise his wife with tickets to Radiohead’s show at Madison Square Garden that night.

Pitchfork: How did NARX start?

Danny Bowien: That's a crazy story. Four or five years ago, I met Geoff [Rickly] at the first Mission Chinese in New York. At the time I thought that he was the lead singer of that band Girls, Chris Owens. So when he walked in I gave him a hug. He was really nice, and I'm sure at that point, Geoff was used to that. After he ate, he asked me to come to this show. We went around the corner to Pianos and I realized on the walk over that he was not my friend Chris, this was someone I did not know. Then I realized, “Oh shit, this is Geoff Rickly,” when other people from Thursday showed up. I played it off, I didn't say anything. We ended up partying all night.