co-founder and architect

James Ross

Discipline: co-founder and architect

Portrait of James Ross

i. Biography

Owner/Chef James Ross builds around a simple trade premise: food carries rhythm, memory, and the social mechanics that make a room hold together. At MT PRIDE BBQ in Mount Juliet, and through Chef-De-Shakie LLC in La Marque, Texas, United States, Ross treats the kitchen as both working craft and public space. The Art Institute of Houston added formal training to an approach already shaped by hospitality, flavor, and connection.

The Essentials Plain speech is part of Ross’s register, and it points to how he ranks the work. “Food and music are the biggest parts of my life, and family and friends. Those are the main food groups.” The joke is light, but the rule underneath it is clear: the meal matters most when it is tied to the people around it. That holds across MT PRIDE BBQ and Chef-De-Shakie LLC, where the food and the room are part of the same job. Neighborhood food culture is another thread in Ross’s thinking: places that function as more than points of sale. “Pizzerias can be a little hub of a community, and that’s certainly what I grew up with.” The value here is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is an understanding that a good local place earns its place through repetition, familiarity, and the regular flow of people who return because the room works as a social anchor. That same logic shows up in how Ross talks about the customer experience. “We wanted to do great pizza, but we wanted the place to be a neighborhood hang. And it’s working.” The measure is practical: good execution matters, but so does whether the space becomes part of daily life. For Ross, success is not only what leaves the kitchen; it is whether the room itself can hold a community. James Ross attended the Art Institute of Houston, and that training sits alongside the day-to-day work of MT PRIDE BBQ and Chef-De-Shakie LLC. The throughline is consistency of purpose: technique, identity, and a clear sense of who the food is for.

In Their Words “Food and music are the biggest parts of my life, and family and friends. Those are the main food groups.” “We wanted to do great pizza, but we wanted the place to be a neighborhood hang. And it’s working.”

FAQ Who is James Ross? James Ross is the Owner/Chef of MT PRIDE BBQ and the owner of Chef-De-Shakie LLC. What is James Ross known for? He is known for his work as an owner-chef and for the values he links to food, music, family, and friends. Where does James Ross work? He works at MT PRIDE BBQ in Mount Juliet and owns Chef-De-Shakie LLC in La Marque, Texas, United States.

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