Benja Thai & Sushi

Benja Peterson took the long way to running a restaurant. Before she opened Benja Thai & Sushi in St. George in 2006, she had spent time as a Thai Buddhist nun, then years teaching local cooking classes — the kind of small-group format where students get to know the cook and start asking when she’s going to open a real restaurant. Eventually enough of them asked, she did. The first room opened on the Ancestor Square block at 2 W St. George Blvd, and the family added Benja’s Thai Garden at 435 N 1680 East as a second location.

From Buddhist Nun to Ancestor Square

The path to St. George ran through Thailand and a teaching practice in Southern Utah long before there was a storefront. Peterson’s husband and children work the rooms with her, and that family presence is part of what regulars come for — service feels like service in a household kitchen, not a chain franchise. The 2006 opening landed Benja Thai on the same Ancestor Square block as the Painted Pony, George’s Corner, and what would later become Bee Sweet and a FeelLove location. Twenty years on, the Ancestor Square room is one of the longer-tenured tenants on a square defined by long tenancy.

Two Kitchens in Two Neighborhoods

The original Ancestor Square location anchors the downtown side of the brand; Benja’s Thai Garden on 1680 East serves the corridor closer to the regional hospital and the older residential blocks of east St. George. Both kitchens turn out the same broad menu — red, green, and yellow curries, pad see ew, a full sushi program, soups, noodle plates — and both run as family operations under the same ownership. Splitting into two rooms at two sides of town is the move you make when one location stops being able to absorb the volume.

Benja Thai in the 435

For a register of locally rooted Southern Utah businesses, Benja Thai is a strong listing: documented founder, family operation, two locations across St. George, two decades of continuous service, and a story that doesn’t read like marketing copy because it isn’t. The Buddhist-nun-turned-restaurateur arc is rare anywhere; in a town where most owner stories run through ranching, construction, or franchise capital, it’s distinctive enough that local food coverage has profiled the restaurant repeatedly. The kitchens have stayed consistent across both locations — the family makes sure of that.