Nasir Armar
Parachute Bakery | San Francisco, CA
September 2026
Nasir Armar started dreaming of the sweet life while working in his father's bakery in Chennai, India as a kid. Always leaning toward the pastry side of things, Armar attended culinary school at Manipal University before working for Chef Girish Nayak at Toast and Tonic in Bangalore, India, learning to create intricately plated desserts. In 2017, Armar expanded his pastry vocabulary at Chef Janice Wong's 2am:dessertbar in Singapore before moving to San Francisco in 2018. He spent the next four and a half years working at Rooh, a modern Indian restaurant in the Bay Area.
Armar's path changed when Rising Star Alexander Hong came in for dinner one night. Armar expressed his adamant desire to join the team at Hong's distinctly Californian tasting menu restaurant, Sorrel. In 2021, Armar was hired as the restaurant's pastry chef. He spent the next two years guiding the pastry program and cultivating his distinctive voice—which marries precision with nostalgic flavors.
In 2023, Armar jumped at the opportunity to run the pastry program at the two-Michelin-starred Saison, where he worked under Rising Stars alum Richard Lee, who modeled empathic leadership. There, he reimagined the restaurant's bread and pastry program, incorporating wood-fired techniques and refining his approach to fermentation, lamination, and seasonal ingredients. In 2025, Hong reached back out to Armar to see if he'd lead a new patisserie concept as a chef-partner. Armar agreed and spent the next three months traveling across Europe, picking up inspiration and doing stages to deepen his understanding of traditional lamination practices. He took his skills home to San Francisco and developed the pastry program for Parachute Bakery, which opened in the fall of 2025, in just 40 days. Now, Armar and his team push out over 1,500 pastries a day, with bakes happening three times a day to ensure freshness. As Parachute Bakery looks towards expanding into a second location in the East Bay, Armar prioritizes staying present for his team, teaching with a hands-on approach, and turning the bakery into a Bay Area institution.
2026 StarChefs San Francisco-Oakland Rising Stars Award Winner
