On a corner in Gowanus, Brooklyn, there used to be a tool and die shop. It was gritty, useful in a previous life, and hadn’t yet been gentrified into something else. Fifteen years ago, many industrial buildings in that neighborhood were abandoned or underutilized. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que noticed a restaurant when they looked at that structure. For fifteen years, it was successful because they filled it with noise, smoke, Southern-style ribs, and live music. People traveled from all over the borough and beyond. Around it, the neighborhood changed. The structure is currently being demolished to create room for apartments.

That’s the clean version of the Brooklyn story. It’s also the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que tale, but the chain’s version of it has an additional irony that most people who are paying attention are probably aware of. Dinosaurs contributed to Gowanus’ popularity. Gowanus’s value has grown to the point where it is now more valuable as housing than as a barbecue restaurant. The restaurant that helped bring about that change is currently being priced out of it. This is what happens to a certain type of innovative New York establishment over an extended period of time, and the sadness expressed on Dinosaur’s Facebook page when they announced the closure—”it is with a heavy heart”—reads as sincere rather than staged.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que now has five locations: Harlem, Syracuse, Rochester, Troy, and Buffalo. The Brooklyn closure is anticipated later this spring. There used to be ten in the chain. In 2023, Stamford, Connecticut closed. 2023 saw the closure of Newark, New Jersey. In 2026, Brooklyn will close. In about three years, half of the restaurant has closed, and the decline is accelerating in ways that feel more like a reckoning than a controlled retreat.

The Restaurant That Made the Neighborhood Can’t Afford the Neighborhood: Inside Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s Slow Retreat

Here, the origin story is important because it influences all subsequent events. In 1983, John Stage started Dinosaur, a mobile concession that served food at motorcycle rallies and biker events rather than a restaurant. The cuisine was a reflection of that world: homemade sauces, Southern-style barbecue, and a rustic ambiance that was deeply ingrained in the local culture. When Stage established the first permanent restaurant in Syracuse in 1988, he was expanding upon an existing clientele—a group of people who trusted the cuisine because they had been consuming it on the road, at festivals, and outside.

What Stage accomplished over the next twenty years was truly out of the ordinary for the Northeast. In locations that other restaurateurs weren’t considering, he introduced serious barbecue to an area without it. Former stores, industrial structures, and locations that required renovation. That combination was effective. Ten locations at the height. branded rubs and sauces in stores across the country. An authentic regional organization.

Then came 2008, when Soros Strategic Partners sold a 70 percent stake to finance quick growth. Stage has been open enough about that time to give you an idea of how much it cost. “What’s gained is access to capital and resources,” he stated to Entrepreneur. “Culture and freedom to operate as you did in the past can be lost.” He regained control of the company by 2019. The phase of expansion was completed. After regaining control, he articulated a clear and specific objective: “We don’t want to open new stores, but rather focus on what we have and how to make it all better without distractions.” Knowing the closures that followed, reading that now makes it sound less like a philosophy and more like an early realization that the post-Soros footprint wasn’t going to last.

When the chain was still expanding in 2010, Ron Paul, the president of restaurant consulting firm Technomic at the time, recognized the more difficult issue, which predates even the Soros deal. “Barbecue is really a niche opportunity,” he stated. “Is it a concept or a menu item? When you can get baby-back ribs at Chili’s, does the American public really need a place for just ribs? We’ve seen that it’s difficult to establish a national chain in this self-limiting category.” Dinosaur’s invention demonstrated the Northeast’s need for serious barbecue. As a result of that evidence, other people started serious barbecue restaurants in the Northeast. These were smaller, more concentrated businesses that drew from Texas, the Carolinas, or Kansas City with the kind of specificity and dedication that a chain spanning several states cannot consistently maintain. Dinosaur had to contend with competition from the market it helped establish.

It’s difficult to ignore how many factors came together at the same time for this chain: the lease and development pressures that affect any restaurant operating in pricey urban real estate; the growing competition in a category it once owned regionally; the residual overhead from an expansion that was reversed but never fully unwound; and the continuous cost pressures, particularly with regard to labor and meat, that have made life challenging for full-service restaurants nationwide since the pandemic. Any one of these would be doable. What has happened to the footprint can be explained by all of them at once over a number of years.

There are still five places. This all began in 1988 at the Syracuse flagship, which remains. Stage still operates the Harlem location, which opened years ago in a city still learning how to embrace serious barbecue. The future of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will be determined by the capabilities of those five locations rather than the goals of the ten-restaurant version. Apartments will eventually be built in the Gowanus building where the Brooklyn restaurant stood for fifteen years. It’s likely that the new residents won’t be aware that their block was once home to a barbecue restaurant that contributed to its appeal.