According to his family, Charles Phan, the celebrated chef and restaurant owner from San Francisco who won two James Beard awards for his inventive Vietnamese cuisine at the Slanted Door, has away at the age of 62.
The Slanted Door Instagram account revealed the shocking news of Phan’s passing in a post that was credited to the Slanted Door Group and the Phan family.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the heartbreaking news of the unexpected passing of our beloved leader, visionary, and friend, Chef Charles Phan, due to cardiac arrest,” the message stated. On Monday, Phan allegedly passed away.
In the statement, the family expressed gratitude to the community for their “support and kindness” and asked that their privacy be respected while they deal with the unexpected loss.
“For now, let’s honor Charles’ extraordinary life and legacy by keeping his spirit alive in the way we savor and share meals with one another always family style,” stated the message.
Phan was born in 1962 in South Vietnam, but he and his family left the nation when he was 13 years old due to the fall of Saigon and the U.S. departure from the Vietnam War. After moving to Guam for a short time, they settled in San Francisco with Charles, the oldest of six children, who took on a variety of duties, including cooking for the family. The Instagram post claims that Phan absorbed Western cooking from television shows while learning Vietnamese cuisine from his mother and aunt.
Before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley to study architecture, Phan attended Mission High School. However, he finally left school because of tuition increases. Before choosing to pursue cooking with his own restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District, he held a number of occupations.
The Slanted Door, which opened on Valencia Street in 1995, immediately gained a devoted following and excellent acclaim for its sophisticated Vietnamese food presentation. The restaurant’s demand for reservations would ultimately overwhelm the facility, so in 2002 Phan moved to a larger location south of Market before relocating to the Ferry Building.
Phan was the recipient of California’s prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef in 2004. The Slanted Door earned the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant ten years later. Over the years, the restaurateur would open several other businesses, such as the Wo Hing General Store, the SFJAZZ Center’s restaurant South, and the Pier 3 whiskey bar Hard Water.
Although the Ferry Building restaurant’s 2020 pandemic closure was only intended to be temporary, construction problems at the building forced Phan to declare last year that it would not be reopening.
But when Phan revealed that the Slanted Door would be moving back to Valencia Street in the spring of 2025, fans in San Francisco were ecstatic. San Ramon and Napa are other sites of The Slanted Door. Phan also ran Chuck’s Takeaway, a Vietnamese sandwich store on 18th Street in the Mission. Additionally, Phan wrote two cookbooks, “The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Cuisine” and “Vietnamese Home Cooking.”
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