Courtesy indo
Shrimp fried rice
indo will launch a new street food concept this Friday, August 21. James Beard-nominated chef and owner Nick Bognar said the indo Street Food menu will include grab-and-go Thai classics, and that the restaurant will be offering patio dining as well as curbside pickup.
“Everybody is leaning towards something more casual,” Bognar told St. Louis Magazine. “We were aiming for something that we’re really good at and that we can do really well, but also something that’s maybe missing from St. Louis.”
Courtesy indo
The menu will feature around a dozen core items, including Thai street food staples like chicken satay (pictured at right), papaya salad, and a house-made Thai sausage with sticky rice. “We’ve done that as a special a few times, it’s a really kick-ass spicy Thai sausage” Bognar said. The cool, spicy papaya salad will be served with house-made. candied dried shrimp.
A few items will be familiar to indo fans. The Khao Soi (short rib with egg noodles in red curry broth) is a natural fit for the street food concept, Bognar said, and something he always eats in Thailand. One of the highlights of indo’s regular dine-in menu, fried ribs with palm sugar glaze, will also remain. Bognar said that he’ll probably use pork instead of lamb ribs to keep the price down – price points across the board will be lower than indo’s normal rates – “but they’re still going to have that same flavor profile,” the chef said.
Bognar said one benefit of the new concept is the ability it gives the kitchen to get creative. That could mean putting an indo spin on a classic street food item, or serving up an authentic rendering of an old favorite. One example of that invention will be a poke which will feature the kind of sushi-grade fish that is a signature at indo. With chefs in the kitchen drawing on Korean, Japanese, and Filipino heritage, Bognar said the menu could take lots of different directions.
“This is going to give us a really awesome way to change the menu all the time, keep things exciting,” he said. Diners can expect the menu to change regularly as items are introduced and withdrawn. “There’s street food all over Asia, and that’s what we want to do,” Bognar said. “There were so many ideas we had that it was hard to whittle it down to a really clean, small menu to start with.”
The new concept will launch on August 21. For the first few days the menu will be available for curbside pickup only, but Bognar said indo will also be transforming a section of the parking lot at the back of the building into a patio that will likely seat around 40 diners, though Bognar said they may be able to accommodate a few more. “Hopefully we can take advantage of some of this weather,” Bognar said. “We’re a little late to the patio game, but we wanted to play it safe and we feel it’s time now.”
Courtesy indo
Dishes will be prepared in the restaurant and served in to-go containers, which will be set down for the diner to pick up and either take home or find a table on the patio. Bognar hopes eventually to be able to do some cooking outside, to introduce an echo of the more intimate experience of dining at indo’s sushi bar.
“We’ll put some planters out there, some little tables,” Bognar said. “The whole idea is to create a Thai street food scene, not super fancy, but I think it will be a cool vibe. We can play some music and people can eat spicy Thai food while chilling outside while it’s hot.”
A rotating selection of bottled cocktails created by indo general manager and cocktail master Kira Webster (formerly of The Bao) will help with the chilling. “She’s got some really great ‘hot day’ cocktails,” Bognar said. “Easy to drink, great with spicy food, really fun.”
The initial service hours are from noon until 8 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and from 4-8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. The indo team is aiming to have the patio ready to open by August 28, but it may take a little longer to get all the pieces in place.
“This is something I think fits the market right now,” Bognar said. “This gives us a lot of space, people can be away from each other and we can serve this fun, less-commitment menu instead of people having to spend $150 a person. But hopefully this gets us through the next couple of months.”
indo was nominated among the Best New Restaurants nationwide in the 2020 James Beard Awards. Bognar himself received a nomination in the Rising Star Chef of the Year category, his second time receiving the nod.
indo’s dining room has been shuttered since mid-March, and Bognar said that will remain the case until he feels it’s safe to reopen. “We do want to get back to fine dining and what indo was before COVID, but I think a lot of the value of that relies on service, and until we can bring that back I don’t think people are going to see our true colors when it comes to the food that we want to do.”
The recent spike in cases scuppered a plan to resume dine-in service at the beginning of August. Bognar was proud of the menu he had designed for that reopening, combining indo favorites alongside new creations and featuring Japanese fish prominently. “We had worked really hard on coming up with some really cool new menu items,” he said.
Bognar is excited by the opportunities that indo Street Food offers him and the indo team, but he’s also looking forward to putting that new menu into practice, when it’s safe. “When it is time to bring that back, it’s going to kick ass,” he said.
