Niche Food Group is based in St. Louis, Missouri and owned by executive chef Gerard Craft. As a Food & Wine Best New Chef, Food & Wine Innovator of the Year, 2015 James Beard Foundation Award-winning Best Chef: Midwest, and Inc. Magazine Star Entrepreneur, Chef Craft has been a pioneer for the Midwest dining scene.
A native of Washington, D.C., Chef Craft became addicted to the restaurant life while living in Salt Lake City as a snowboard photographer. Chef Craft went on to cook at Bistro Toujours in Park City, Utah and Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, California as well as stage at Ryland Inn in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey before making the leap to open a restaurant of his own.
Always a believer in following intuition, Chef Craft settled on a boarded-up building in the Benton Park neighborhood of St. Louis, a city that he had never visited, to open his first restaurant, Niche, at the age of 25 in 2005.
Niche Food Group now includes 8 restaurants in St. Louis and one in Nashville, Tennessee: French bistro fare at Brasserie by Niche, approachable Italian at Pastaria, laid back burgers and brats a brassWELL inside Rockwell Beer Co, a wood-fired, South American-inspired restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel, Cinder House, a deli, wine and retail shop at Pastaria Deli & Wine, cocktails, wine and beer at the Kitchen Bar inside City Foundry STL Food Hall, neighborhood brunch spot inside Bowood Farms Garden Center, Bowood by Niche, and latest concept, Fordo’s Killer Pizza, a wood-fired pizza kitchen located inside City Foundry St. Louis’ Food Hall.