Nick Bognar earned his first James Beard semifinalist nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019 for the work he was doing at his mother’s restaurant, Nippon Tei. It was a groundbreaking achievement, and especially satisfying for a restaurant kid who grew up helping around the the restaurant and had returned home after stints at Uchiko in Austin and E+O Kitchen in Cincinnati to transform the menu.
Nearly a decade later, the chef-owner of Indo, Sado and Pavilion has earned his seventh semifinalist nomination, this time for Best Chef Midwest, a category he’s occupied in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Bognar’s concepts are known for their style and flash, but beneath the surface lies an intense dedication to educating the dining public about the intricacies of each dish. To the team, every element matters. Every dish is tweaked: every cocktail refined. And every guest has an experience like none other.
The ethos that has launched both Indo and Sado into the spotlight over the years has crystalized at Pavilion, the omakase experience Bognar opened in the final days of 2024. The concept has become a sushi chef’s ongoing conversation with his guests, a culmination of what he’s been working toward all along. He finds himself at a different place now; still very much the exuberant rock star chef, but with a grounded maturity and fierce dedication to creating long-term success for himself and his team.
I sat down with Bognar a few weeks ago inside Pavilion — an exceptionally alluring space that shuts out the world for a bit — to talk about this year’s nomination. Here’s what he had to say.
On the JBFA nomination that’s meant the most:
You know, every time we get an award, all the restaurants get a little bump, which is amazing. I’m most proud of getting the rising star nomination at my mom’s restaurant Nippon Tei, because that was a massive surprise. At Indo, we’re like, “Oh, we’ve got goals, we’re gonna be in the spotlight.” And that was when people finally knew who I was. But it was important to me that the work we did at Nippon Tei before we opened Indo, was to bring [the restaurant] to a place where we were proud again about what we were doing, because it had kind of gotten a little stagnant. That’s when we brought all the fresh fish in, and it was like a huge launching pad for what we were going to do [at Indo].
During a meeting with the people who were managing [Nippon Tei] for my mom at the time, I was like, “Guys, I personally think that if we do well enough with the changes that we’re making, we could get a Beard nomination here.” And everyone laughed. And I remember being like, “Haha, not really a joke, though. I feel like people will think this is awesome.” But they were used to that old-school style: they weren’t going to change. Now that I’m older, I understand that I wasn’t going to get those people to come on board with what I was doing. We got busy after that, and it was a totally different vibe.
And at the time, young Nick was like, “Oh, this is what you gotta do,” But I was also the only one who knew the big picture, which was that my mom’s restaurant wasn’t doing amazing financially, and if I was going to become part of it, I needed to do it.
On how awards create trust between restaurant and guests:
I think it’s easy to almost take it for granted at first, because you’re just kind of like, “We got another one!” But I try to think back to [Nippon Tei days] and remind people how big of a deal it was for me then, because we couldn’t do some of the things we do now if it weren’t for that. A good example of this is the uni we get from Hokkaido, Japan. We love that uni; it’s my favorite, and the one I’ve had the most success with on the menu, because it’s mild. It’s expensive, and you can get other uni around town, but a lot of people have told me they’ve tried uni and hate it, and this changes their minds. I think we can do things like that now and have people trust us with that because we have James Beard awards and recognition like that.
When I was younger, all I really wanted people to understand what we were doing and assume we were doing things the right way. And when you’re younger chef, it’s easy for people to be like, “Oh, this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s just price gouging us.” And then, with these awards, the trust came. My story is out there more now, and people understand the work that’s behind it.
We don’t do anything like anybody else, and [when it opened], Indo especially was not like anybody else. We only did nigiri and sashimi at Indo: we didn’t do maki. I think we would have gotten a lot of bad reviews if I had just opened [Indo] without getting that Rising Star [nomination in 2019], because there was a lot of people coming in and they’re like, “Sushi? Nah, you don’t have sushi.” And we still had a lot of guests get up and leave at the beginning of Indo, when we were still super cool, because we didn’t have what they were expecting. Now we have that trust from people, and this validation, and we can prove it to them when they come in the door. It means a lot for us to be able to do what we’re passionate about. And it helps so much, because I probably could never go back to a time when we cooked in a way where I can’t push it. I can cook whatever I want now, which is amazing.
On how personality and experience define each of the concepts:
I actually say this a lot: It’s part of our lifeblood as a company to show people new things and get them to enjoy it and teach them about it. There’s people who eat here that remember me from when I was a teenager at my mom’s restaurant, and they’ve been supporters of us since I was 15 [years old]. There’s a lot of things that are different [about a Japanese restaurant]. For me, there’s a there’s the scent of miso and soy, and it gets me excited when I know I’m going to enjoy it. When you know you’re gonna have a great dinner at a sushi bar, you get hooked on it.
Without that customer base [from Nippon Tei], and I don’t think Indo would have been successful, because it was a platform for us to stand on when we first started. It’s awesome seven years later for me as an owner, I’ve watched sushi become something people eat on a weekly basis, which is amazing.
And it’s also understanding what we do versus what a less expensive place does, too. There’s sushi at all different levels now. I think especially in St. Louis, you have the whole “Oh, this is the best sushi bar; no, this is the best sushi bar,” thing, like they’re pitting us against one another. And I kind of hate that, because there’s so many different kinds of sushi. So we have to get to the point where people have tried sushi and eat it enough to then understand that differences and variety can be good. For example, you can have a burger at Truffles — like the super fancy, awesome burger that they have — or you can have a Mac’s Local Eats burger, or you can have a diner burger, and they’re all good for different reasons.
There’s a personality element to sushi, and it’s very subtle. If you don’t know it, it’s a totally different language. It’s about how you put it together; it may look the same, but there are subtle differences. Sushi is very simple, so it’s hard to explain. It’s like how I like to talk about pizza, because pizza can come down to very slight differences in dough. Everybody can buy fancy pepperoni and that stuff’s great, but it’s all about the dough, and how long they rested it for and all of that.
On how Pavilion sets itself apart:
Pavilion been a new challenge too, because people would be like, “Well, why wouldn’t I just eat it Sado?” But a lot of stuff we do here [at Pavilion] will stay here, and there are differences. We want it to be this mystery. We had a little bit of a slump where we weren’t selling out every day over the summer, but now I’m noticing we’re getting a ton regulars from year one, which is awesome, because they get it and they understand this is a different thing.
There’s all these little, subtle things that we do at Pavilion to give people something extra, and it’s a lot of work. It’s a total vibe, too, because you get fun sushi chef interaction at the Sado bar, but it’s like we’re just nuts and cracking jokes and stuff. Here [at Pavilion], I’m here to have a conversation, and we can talk about whatever. It’s slower.
I feel very fortunate. I’m very proud of all the things we’ve done. I would say we’re easily ten times better than when we opened. It’s been a learning curve for me, too. I traveled with some of the chefs [in January]; Reid [Joern] and Hana [Chung] and I went to Austin, which was so fun. I avoided visiting other omakases for a long time, funnily enough, because I wanted to show my own personality through the food. And I think it worked, because my menu is personal to me with the little Thai influences and influences from my life — but seeing other omakases gave me a lot of cool little tricks.
On how it feels to still be going strong:
I’ve been pushing new concepts for years, and now I’m at the point where I just want to stabilize and make the place ready for longevity. I want to create this career-oriented restaurant that people can see upward mobility, and people who are at the top of that ladder feel like their lives are going to improve by being here. And now that we’re there, I’m like, “Okay, maybe getting to the finals is more about this than it is just pushing concepts and making crazy food al the time. Having this amazing system in place allows me to get back to the food again and lets me get creative and be part of that in a different way.
We want to move on to the finals with the James Beard awards: I would love to do that. I remember getting skipped one year during the rule change, and it kind of messed with me, because I remember thinking, “Will I not get nominated again after this?” I really think it helped me lock in a little bit. But I could very easily not get a Best Chef Midwest nomination and it wouldn’t be a big deal: it wouldn’t mean the restaurants are bad. I have a lot of different goals in my life now, too, so I don’t know. It means a lot to some of the other chefs here, and in the future, I hope we get a nomination for some of the other people in charge of the restaurant. I would really love to see my bar team get recognized at any of the restaurants, because they’re awesome. We’re operating on a very high level here with the bar, and I think it would mean a lot to them too.
We do this for us, and I think it makes sense that it trickles down tons getting these kinds of awards and recognition. One begets the other, right? Our work and our ideas all go towards our mission at each restaurant, which is essentially to get the best stuff we can, do the best we can with it, and still make it a great place to be for everyone.
Indo, 1641D Tower Grove Ave., Botanical Heights, St. Louis, Missouri, indo-stl.com
Sado, 5201 Shaw Ave., The Hill, St. Louis, Missouri, sado-stl.com
Pavilion (inside Sado), 5201 Shaw Ave., The Hill, St. Louis, Missouri, instagram.com/pavilion.stl