Ken Bosley
Ken Bosley is part of the Bosley family that has owned and run Owensboro's Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn since February 1963, when his parents, Catherine and Hugh "Pappy" Bosley, bought the restaurant for $50,000. The family grew it from a roughly 30-seat roadside restaurant into a 350-seat restaurant with a USDA-inspected processing plant and a large catering department. His parents both died in 2003. In a 2009 Southern Foodways Alliance oral history, Ken described himself as one of four siblings who owned the restaurant, working alongside the third generation, including his son Patrick.
Technique
Moonlite cooks its meats directly over hickory wood in pits built of concrete blocks, rather than with indirect heat. Meat goes on seasoned only with salt and pepper, and about half an hour before it comes off it is basted with a dip of Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper and water. A family owner said in 2025 that the mutton takes 15 hours.