Charles Phan, a self-taught chef whose family fled Vietnam when he was a teenager and whose sleek restaurant helped change America's perception of Asian food by replacing menus of cheap noodle dishes and spring rolls with menus that combined the best local ingredients with the food that he grew up and died Monday in San Francisco. He was 62.
His death, at a hospital where he was taken last week after suffering cardiac arrest during a tennis match, was confirmed by Anh Duong, his restaurant group's publicist.
Mr. Phan became something of a food world star. He published two cookbooks, appeared on the television show “Iron Chef” and walked the streets of Saigon with Anthony Bourdain on Mr. Bourdain's TV show “Parts Unknown.” He fed celebrities like Rihanna, Stephen Curry and the Obamas. But even with that fame, he rarely turned down invitations to donate time or food to charity events or help other chefs.
His success with Slanted Door, the San Francisco restaurant he opened in 1995, galvanized fellow chefs from immigrant families who have long wanted food critics and diners to appreciate dishes from their country as much as dishes from Italy or France.
“When he opened the restaurant, we knew immediately what it was going to be,” Rob Lam, the chef and owner of Lily in San Francisco, said in an interview. “We were like, dude, this is a game changer. This brings it from the street to the dining room.”
Mr. Phan realized that making his mother's dishes with the kind of local, premium ingredients used in kitchens like San Francisco's Zuni Café was a gamble.
“Let's be realistic,” he told The Washington Post in 2017. “Twenty years ago I had to ask, 'Are white people going to eat this? Will they pay me for this?' I would sell a whole fish, and people would be angry when they see the eyes and the bones. It was about us trying to survive as a company.”
It was a smart bet. After trying a variety of jobs, including selling software, designing clothes and running the family sewing shop, Mr. Phan opened the Slanted Door, on Valencia Street in the Mission District, with help from his family.
The street was on the cusp of the neighborhood's technological boom: from a neighborhood of bohemians, Spanish-speaking immigrants and dilapidated Victorian homes to one of the city's boutiques, third-wave coffee shops and some of the most innovative restaurants.
Diners sometimes had to dodge drug deals to get to the Slanted Door, which occupied a small space he renovated. But once inside, they were rewarded with plump Dungeness crab claws over cellophane noodles and shaking beef, a dish known in Vietnamese as bò lúc lắc. The name refers to the way a chef must keep a hot pan constantly moving to sear the meat. In Vietnam, the dish is often made with tough cuts of beef, finely chopped and fried until almost crispy.
Mr. Phan rearranged the dish with medium-rare cubes of the same beef that Alice Waters used at Chez Panisse, her famous restaurant in Berkeley, and then served it on pristine local watercress instead of lettuce. It became the most popular dish in his restaurant.
“The food just struck you,” Miriam Morgan, a retired food editor for The San Francisco Chronicle, said in an interview. “You thought, 'What is this?' It was so bright and had such freshness. The flavors just came out.”
In 2004, he moved the restaurant to the city's Ferry Building, taking over a beautiful 8,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts space with captivating views of San Francisco Bay. In 2014, it was the most profitable independent restaurant in California, with annual sales of $16.5 million.
Toàn Phan was born on July 30, 1962 in Da Lat, a provincial capital popular with holidaymakers in what was then South Vietnam. His parents, Quyen Phan and Hung Con Phan, had emigrated from China. The first person in his family to be born in Vietnam, Mr. Phan was the eldest of six children.
His family owned a store and was so financially comfortable that maids did most of the cooking. When Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army in 1975, the Phans joined the millions who fled the country and boarded a boat for Guam.
“When we were safely on international waters,” he told The Washington Post, “my mother took me to the top of the ship and said, 'From now on, you must be in charge of this family and your brothers and sisters. to assure. ' I was 13. My childhood ended that day.”
After a year and a half in a refugee camp, the family ended up in San Francisco. Their American sponsor took the six Phan children to a doctor, and each was given an American name.
Once settled in Chinatown, Mr. Phan worked whatever job he could find, often in restaurants. At home he cooked for the family, while his parents each worked two jobs. He experimented with assimilation foods, including a Thanksgiving dinner straight out of Gourmet magazine. No one liked it, so the family ate curry and rice instead.
Mr. Phan headed to the University of California, Berkeley, to study architecture and design, and met Pichet Ong, a graduate student who would later become a pastry chef and a longtime friend.
The two improved their English by listening to singer Karen Carpenter. Mr Ong said in an interview: “For me it was that I loved the music, but for him it was about improving his accent because she articulated her words so well.” In Mr. Phan's third year, fed up with tuition increases, he left college.
With the success of Slanted Door, he opened and closed a series of other restaurants, including some that focused on Cantonese cuisine, a whiskey bar and a bánh mì shop.
Slanted Door has expanded to San Ramon and Napa in California, as well as Beaune, in France's Burgundy wine region. His flagship in the Ferry Building closed during the Covid pandemic and never reopened. When he died, he planned to move it back to its original location on Valencia Street.
He is survived by five siblings, his three children and their mother, Angkana Kurutach.
The food writer Joan Nathan said Mr. Phan was the best storyteller she ever knew.
“Even the most ordinary stories were funny,” she said. “He was one of those people you wanted to sit down with, have a glass of wine and listen. He was hysterical.”
And he was generous with his time to help other chefs find their feet. Tanya Holland, a chef who ran a restaurant in Oakland, met him at a Meals on Wheels event when she didn't know anyone in town. He became a trusted advisor, helping her negotiate leases and navigate the media.
“He didn't lead with ego like so many of these people,” she said in an interview. “He felt like there was enough room for everyone.”
Mr. Phan made it his mission to spread some kindness in an industry that didn't always offer him that kindness.
“I was so badly caught and humiliated that I once kicked in the door of my locker,” he told The San Jose Mercury News in 2003. “I do not condone the behavior of shouting chefs who disrespect people. That cycle must be stopped. People cannot be abused. That's what makes food taste bad.”
