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In a city like St. Louis, it's not easy to stand out in the food scene, maybe even especially here.

St. Louis is made up of a lot of neighborhoods, and just about every neighborhood here has its own food scene.

The Botanical Heights neighborhood is not an exception.

Here, fish aficionados and lovers of Thai food alike show up for dry aged nigiri, sashimi and spicy Thai fusion dishes made by Nick Bogner of Indo.

Nick's mastery of dry age sushi and respect for his Thai food heritage even has Indo standing out in the national scene.

So when you see all Nick has accomplished with Indo and you hear people calling him a prodigy, You have to wonder what's his secret to success.

As a chef I need to stay curious in order to evolve.

For me, that means looking beyond a good meal to learn more about who made it and what inspires them to cook, la comida es amor Every great city has great food.

I'm going on a journey around the world right here in St. Louis.

I'm on a quest to find passionate chefs who cooks from the heart to prove that food is love.

It's going to be delicious.

Food is love.

Love your food.

This is the Botanical Heights neighborhood.

You may remember it from previous episodes of Food is Love when I visited Elia and Olio and Nixta with Chef Ben Poremba or the darkness croissant at La Patisseri Choquette.

But today I'm here for something different.

It's Sunday, and I'm here at Indo.

I'm going to catch Nick breaking down fish and talk to him a little bit about sushi and culture.

Though I've never been one to pay attention to awards, titles, et cetera, when I hear things thrown out like Food and Wine best New Chef or James Beard best New Restaurant, the caliber of work Nick Bogner is doing in his small corner sushi restaurant, Indo, starts to sound interesting and indicates that something delicious is probably waiting inside.

Some pictures, that's my parents back when they used to run a hotel, and my grandfather with his first wife and then my grandmother.

Already knowing Nick's knack for dry, aging fish.

There is at least one thing in this kitchen I need to see for myself.

So what I'm really interested in over here is this cabinet right here?

Yeah.

So this is our fish aging cabinet.

It has a really small temperature range, so it stays very cold all the time.

And also, it's a little dryer in there, too, so it's great for dry aging.

If we put beef in there, you can dry aged beef, but what we do is we do fish.

So Shima aji here, that's a type of horse mackerel.

In the back there's a madai or red snapper.

These are actually really cool.

You're going to love this.

This is a rosy throat sea perch, which is a really rare fish from Japan that's very sought after out there.

So we get those from Japan.

It's like a snapper that has the fat content of almost like toro.

So it's like butter.

Amazing fish.

Yeah.

Super excellent.

Some striped bass here, and then in the back is a cherry ocean trout.

And I think they have those up in Denmark, right?

So like a fjord ocean trout.

This one actually comes from Tasmania.

Down here we have aji, or horse mackerel.

So another type of horse mackerel.

Okay.

This is a Japanese technique?

Yeah.

Some people think that this is kind of a newer technique, but I think it's just more coming out into the mainstream of what people understand about fish.

Today, Nick is treating me to an ohmakasa, roughly translated, "respectfully let another decide what's best."

In this case, I'm leaving it up to Nick what to serve me.

So it's basically a chefs choice menu of a whole bunch of yummy fish.

I'm beyond excited for this.

It's cool, because when you sit down and eat an ohmakasa, you're going to have so many different flavors and stuff, and it's just fun.

It's cool that you get to see this part, because guests don't usually get to see this part.

This is an aji, or a horse mackerel.

It has a wonderful velvet fattiness, and it's great fresh.

So this one doesn't really dry age.

We've only dried it out for maybe half a day.

So people ask me, they say, well, what is Indo?

My explanation is, well, do you like sushi?

And everybody goes, yes.

Do you like Thai food?

They go yes.

And I'm like, well, can you imagine the marriage of the two flavors?

I think that's a great way to explain it.

It almost doesn't make too much sense until you kind of know me as a person or like a chef.

Because for me, it's just kind of what I like to cook now.

My entire life, I've worked in Japanese restaurants, and I've done sushi for a really long time.

So I've always going to do some sort of sushi, whether it was sashimi or raw preparation crudo even.

The food of my family and my heritage is Thai food.

My family is all Thai.

All the women in my life, my mom, my aunts, my grandmother, were all amazing cooks and professional chefs, too.

Where was your first job?

Where you actually start making sushi?

At my mom's restaurant Nippon Tei.

Yeah.

So I think around 15, 16, they needed some help up on the sushi bar, and I had been kind of observing for years.

But if she's Thai, why did she open the sushi restaurant?

She had a ton of experience as a restaurant manager in hotels, and she met some guys, Japanese sushi chefs, and she brought them on as her chef, and then she just was more of a restaurantour.

Over time, she learned how to do everything, and then that kind of trickled down into teaching me as well.

I started as a dishwasher, did whatever she needed to kind of help out the restaurant, family business.

At one point, something switched where I started to take it more seriously instead of just kind of being annoyed that I had to help the restaurant, and I started to like it a lot.

So the name Indo, where does that come from?

So when I thought about kind of what my food was, we think a lot about the region at one point was referred to as Indo China, and that's kind of a European way of saying southeast Asia.

Okay, it's dated for sure, but I like to try to represent that proudly too.

And most of southeast Asia is where I pull a lot of my flavors from, I'm half Thai, and my dad's from the United States, and I think that that kind of shows in my food as well too.

I think that a lot of the food I docan be very approachable for someone from St. Louis.

I don't necessarily like all the most hardcore asian flavors either, and I think it's cool that I can kind of bring that Midwest kind of comfort zone I guess .

I mean, you communicate that kind of cuisine to St. Louis, knowing both side of it.

Exactly.

That's excellent.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's how I feel like when I think about how I like to represent that kind of, like, Indo China vibe.

Yeah.

Such a show of precision cutting and knowledge of each fish.

Achievements aside, it's obvious to me that Nick knows a lot about what he's doing.

But to find out more about Nick, I'm sharing today's omakase experience with his mom, Anne, Owner of the St.Louis sushi institution Nippon Tei.

An immigrant from Thailand, Anne came to the US.

To pursue an education, and she never left.

Nick remember a lot of stuff that my mom made for him.

We call her kuniyai.

Nick called her kuniyai, so grandma she made one dish with the pumpkins.. Pumpkins and eggs and garlic.

He loved that.

There's so much food that we eat that triggers a memory of your childhood or your parents or grandparents, and it sticks with you forever.

Forever.

And you have this craving for the flavors because it reminds you of things that you,.

Those memories.

Right.

Larb like Thai northern style Larb has so many regions.

Every part of Thailand, they tend to have their own recipe.

My mom, she used to make it all the time for us, and I have been making it since my mom passed.

I'm thinking about her all the time, almost every time when I make that dish.

Really excited to do another omakase dinner for the first time in a while and show you kind of what we do on the sushi side of things.

Kind of bringing the Thai flavors to the sushi started when we were eating in the back of Nippon Tei with the other employees, and me and my aunt and my cousin, we would eat and we would make fish with, like, spicy Thai chilies and stuff.

And we never sold it to customers, and I don't know why, but we just didn't think it was, like, a thing to sell, and we just made sushi.

And here at Indo, I was like, let's make that spicy fish thing that we used to eat and love so much.

This dish really kind of, for me, embodies, like, myself as a chef with the Thai flavors and then the Japanese techniques.

A little more of that chili oil.

This is the issan Habachi, our signature dish .

Oh, wow.

That garlic is awesome.

Isn't that good?

Yeah, it's like a little frosted flake or something.

Yeah, this is definitely you can taste the Thai flavors now, right?

Like tom yum.

Yeah, like coconut cream.

That's very good.

This really says everything about Indo, this dish.

Right?

It's simple, yet it's very sophisticated.

Because you're fusioning those flavors.

Trying to explain how good all the food was today is impossible.

The melding of Thai spice with sushi like this is something that I've never seen before, and it has me wondering if Nick is, in fact, a prodigy of flavors.

Piece by piece, we worked our way through some really excellent sushi.

I've had so much that I hit my limit, but it's hard to stop when it's this good.

Just when I thought the experience couldn't have been any better, Nick offers me a gracious proposition.

But I'd love to invite you over to her house.

Or maybe she should invite you.

I don't know.

We want to show you some of the food that we do in my family and when we gather as my family, and we want to let you try some of the recipes that my grandmother taught us so you can kind of see some of the roots of ours.

Oh, wow.

I'm very excited.

Dinner with Nick's family?

Count me in.

I'm sure whatever we're having is going to register pretty high on the spice chart.

But for now, I want to get a good look at where Nick first learned to make sushi.

So I'm meeting Anne at her restaurant at Nippon Tei So I'm on Manchester, and this is so interesting about Nick's family.

They're everywhere.

There he is.

She opened 21 years ago, so there's been a lot of changes.

So Nippon Tei has been here for 21 years.

21 years.

In this location?

Oh, wow.

We are going to not necessarily open a new restaurant, but moving Nippon Tei to the city where we can be a little bit closer to Indo and we can work in kind of a better symbiotic relationship between the two places and also giving us a little more space to do some new things that we've been planning and kind of working on as well.

We're going to combine the fish butchering and dry aging program out of one building, and that's going to be huge.

It should allow us to do way more creative things with our program.

As far as the fish that we dry age and doing more of that.

We want to bring kind of this classic Japanese grill section to the menu.

So taking this amazing dry aged fish and actually cooking it on Japanese binchotan charcoal, which is one of the most amazing ways to enjoy this stuff.

Okay, so now I've seen the Japanese restaurant Nick grew up in and see where he learned to make sushi.

But what about Thai food?

We are visiting Chiang Mai in Webster Groves.

Nick Bogner's family reaches a lot of restaurants in St. Louis and have for many years.

Nick has taken me to meet someone who not only influenced his cooking, but his mother's decision to move to St. Louis.

This is Sue Hill, Nick's aunt and restaurateur.

Sue has owned and operated the Pan Asian restaurant Bistro Saffron, in Cape Girardeau.

Sue looked after Nick's mom when she first came to the United States and continues to be a force in the family business of food.

When I was here the very first time alone and I was so excited when my sibling just coming and when Nick was born, he was so warm up to me, and I'm so excited for them.

Did you see in Nick at some point?

Did you know that he was going to become a chef?

Nick just didn't eat just anything.

He's quite picky, actually.

Number one, I know that my mom fed him good food.

My mom came and helped my sister.

I don't think he had bottle of food.

So, I mean, he was fed Thai food from an early age?

Yes.

I was kid Nick sometime and we went to eat and he refused to have the kids menu.

Someone put the kids menu in the front of his high chair.

Whatever.

He just wants to see what I'm going to eat and what we have.

He ordered adult food and he's always from the get go and he can talk about food.

And I said, wow, we can have Kunyai follower here.

Like any good aunt would do, Sue insists of feeding us while we're here,.. and who am I to resist?

Plus, it's a chance to taste some of the food Sue learned to make back in Chiang Mai.

This is what you can eat just like for lunch.

Okay.

Something very simple that remind me when I was a kid, My mom would make this for us, and she gave us a lot of rice, and then we had to share.

What is it called?

Padwoonsen.

Pad means stir.

Oh, I didn't know that so pad means stir, okay.

But what kind of noodles is that?

Like grass noodles or cellophane noodles?

You cook something easy, you put a little bit of salt and you see it smells good.

Is this like a peasant meal?

Yeah.

Chinese would use the oyster sauce, right?

Yeah.

Everything oyster sauce.

We use soy sauce.

Okay.

Light soy sauce.

Okay.

A little bit of green onion and onion.

It doesn't take long before the meal is ready, and it looks like it's quite the spread.

This is not your stereotypical Thai food at all.

This is the kind of food Nick's grandmother made for her family.

So what do you call these things?

This is Saka sai moo This is the tapioca.

And then we have the filling, we make the filling with ground pork and onions and black pepper toasted peanuts.

But you have to cook it down like hours.

Cook it down.

And then you make a little ball, and then you wrap it in that.

Thank you very much.

This is so delicious.

And such fresh flavors too.

But you see how different.

It's not the usual just restaurant Thai food.

These are my favorite, though.

I can't eat enough of these.

It's hard to beat simple ingredients and flavorful food like this.

So in Thai culture, do you just put everything out on the table and then you just take a little bit of what you want?

It's not like your first course, second course Family style, always family style.

This is how I grew up with.

We don't have anything fancy you know, like Japanese style or something.

European style China you know.

Yeah.

When I was born, this is just all we have.

But it just reminds me of my mom when we were a kid.

You see the dent or whatever, thats what keeps it rustic.

Thats what keep it family.

Yeah.

Anymore now I've cooked so much food now that I need to be inspired.

And what inspire me is this right here.

Your cooking is totally a reflection of you and what you do.

It's because of your mom, your aunt, and how you are brought up.

Little moments like these are worth so much to me.

Time with good people and a humble meal that speaks volumes about Nick.

I get a strong sense that Su is just as proud of Nick as his mother is.

He remembered the good taste.

I think he can pick something and he can taste it.

Yeah, that's what I just found it very intriguing in my little nephew.

And I do agree.

Food is peacemaker.

You're right.

Food is what bring us all together.

That's bringing the world a little closer.

The family influence on Nick's food style is obvious.

From working in his mother sushi restaurant to the flavors of his Thai heritage.

When you think about it, it really makes sense that Nick would combine the two.

Kind of a genius move.

Now that I have a better picture of what influenced the food at Indo, it's time for my dinner date at the Bogner home.

Even before I make it to the door, I can smell the spices.

Walking into the kitchen, I'm greeted by Su tending coriander beef on the stove.

Meanwhile, Nick is prepping khao soi, a kind of noodle dish That is made of coconut milk and curry paste.

And if that wasn't enough, Anne is making laab, in this case, with ground tenderloin.

So onions, The red onions, cilantro, green onions, crispy onions, crispy garlic, spice, nutmeg, long pepper.

Is it hot, or is it just fragrant?

It's a fragrant.

Its kind of both, you know.

Oka.

The thing that makes it spicy is that dry Thai chili pepper that we put it in.

Okay.

Yes.

We don't use salt.

Okay.

Just a fish sauce.

Kunyai's recipe.

In fact, most of the dishes made here tonight is Kunyai's recipes.

And the only thing better than the smell are the stories about Nick.

As a kid, Nick and I would do backpack camping, and Nick's like, dad, I'll take care of the menu.

And I don't know how old you were.

You were probably eight or nine even.

And even backpack food, he wanted to make something out of that because MRE is no fun.

Yeah, exactly.

I might even have that pan.

That would be your official first cooking pan.

That camping pan, I think.

Yeah.

I did like to cook when we're camping.

He was so young.

He was, like, ten.

He asked Mike to go to the grocery store and pick up whole chicken.

Okay.

Yeah, he wants whole chicken.

And I was at work, and we have Thai cookbook.

He read the book, the soup and everything.

I came home from work, the dish was on the counter top, the cookbook, the paper was open.

That dish that he made, nick made the spicy chicken with basil and Thai chili pepper and garlic.

The food that he made look exactly like on the book.

So I saw it and I tasted it.

It was good too.

I don't want him to be in the restaurant business.

And that night when I came home and I saw that, it was like, oh, no.

For most, tonight's dinner would be considered pretty spicy.

But for the family sitting around the table here tonight, this is comfort food.

The khao soi is so interesting.

Like, it has so many things going on.

And then in Northern Thailand, they're kind of famous for the khaw soi in Chiang Mai, right?

You like it mom?

Mmm Hmm, tastes so good Nick.

Larb is usually reserved for special times where it's worth the extra effort.

This is what you're going to get when you come to our house on Christmas.

Okay, let's see how you think.

The larb is delicious.

Too spicy?

No.

It feels like an honor to have it on my plate.

This is the kind of food and the kind of evening that raises the benchmark, a dinner, built around family recipes and good stories.

I remember that when Nick came to us and said that this is the restaurant that he wanted to be.

And I said, Nick, are you sure you're going to put this on the menu?

I said, Nick, I don't know.

This is a little bit risky.

I just said what if they don't order?

And Nick said, mom, Indo not going to be just another restaurant.

That's what he said.

I remember he did what he said.

I think that's good.

He said he's going to make Indo special.

This is going to be like national.

He always said that word to me.

And I got goosebump, too, when I think about it.

And he did it, and he did it so well.

But, you know, opening a restaurant doesn't matter where you open it.

It's a challenge and it's hard work.

And it's nonstop.

It's seven days a week, 24 hours a day, if you want to make it.

When I was younger and I didn't want to be a chef, I worked at the restaurant, but I didn't want to be a chef or I didn't know that I wanted to be a chef.

And that was a point in time where I don't think there was a lot of highlighting of chefs and what they did.

And my mom and I saw what the reality of restaurants were very early on.

And I knew it from experience.

My mom doesn't get home until 9:30.

I'm usually asleep, you know what I mean?

And I remember trying to stay awake so that I could see her when she got home from work.

And nobody knew who you guys were.

Nobody cared.

Just the guest that came in, maybe a handful of people, and those same people we probably still know now.

But I got to see that reality and understand, if you want to do this, you have to work so hard.

So it's good to have that in the back of my head, because I understood what the actual kind of sacrifice you make to try to make such a great restaurant.

And it's just complete dedication to that.

And there is a way to make it pay off, but you have to try.

You have to do so many things.

It's just intense.

And when I knew we were going to open Indo, I was like I just have to do this as hard as I can.

I have to try.

Maybe my life, I haven't really even tried as hard as I could at anything.

I started out wondering about Nick's secret to success.

Right away, it was clear the people around him are a strong factor.

He absorbed the flavors of Thai cooking from his family.

He grew up in his mother's sushi restaurant.

And the recipe of success, family is clearly a key ingredient.

His respect and admiration for the women in his family is something Nick wears on his sleeve.

My grandma had a profound impact on all of us, but in a different way, especially my Aunt Su, who's the eldest.

And my mom.

She taught me some cooking, too.

And it was good to be able to spend some time with her and learn some stuff in Thailand before she passed away.

I've noticed from the stories of Nick as a kid that from an early age, he had an interest in food that was all his own.

And hearing him talk about his restaurant with so much feeling today, his success should come at no surprise at all.

Nick's style of food is unique to his experience.

I don't know anyone anywhere who's doing what he's doing at Indo.

Yes.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you.

chopped pickle herring, thai red chili onions.

And we have a little pineapple juice and ginger, curry cream that I made, cucumbers to give it a little crisp.

The attention and love that Nick has put into his fusion of flavors has elevated his family's foothold in the food scene and maybe even created a new style of sushi.

In light of all that, maybe that magazine writer was right.

Maybe Nick is a prodigy.

It's not my place to say for sure.

We are making a pickled herring tar tar.

What I can say with confidence is that Nick's kunyai would be proud of him now.

Here's to the local restaurants, to the chefs, owner, operators, the staff, the ones who love being in the weeds night after night when we go to work each morning.

That's who we have in mind.

From where we source our food to how we deliver it.

Here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service proudly supporting Food is Love.

Support for Food is Love comes from Natural Tableware, supplier of sustainable green alternatives to plastic tableware.

Support also comes from Moonrise Hotel, a boutique hotel located on the Delmar Loop in St. Louis.