Charles Phan, a chef whose love of food led to opening the popular Slanted Door restaurants and showcasing modern Vietnamese cuisine throughout the Bay Area and beyond, died on Monday, January 20. He was 62.

The cause was cardiac arrest, his representatives confirmed via email. Phan was hospitalized last week following a medical emergency that resulted in a brain injury, the San Francisco Standard reported over the weekend.

“While this was sudden and shocking to many of us, we will endure as the Slanted Door has for almost 30 years,” the Phan family and the Slanted Door Group said in a statement. “The restaurants will continue to operate under the leadership of our management team as we navigate this transition.”

Phan was born in Da Lat, Vietnam, and at the age of 13, he and his family fled the country, eventually settling down in San Francisco. He learned to cook Vietnamese food from his aunt and mother, making meals for his five siblings and picked up other cooking techniques by watching television.

Phan held an early interest in architecture, attending the University of California, Berkeley, in pursuit of an architecture degree, but he ultimately left the program. Later he pursued cooking, opening the first iteration of Slanted Door in 1995. Phan, a self-taught chef, used fresh and local ingredients in his food and brought modern Vietnamese cuisine to a national audience. He was embraced for dishes like cellophane noodles with Dungeness crab and clay pot chicken. The Slanted Door moved to 100 Brannan Street before landing in the storied Ferry Building in 2004, in a new restaurant space designed by frequent Phan collaborators Lundberg Design. That flagship restaurant temporarily closed in 2020, along with other restaurants during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while Phan said he always planned to reopen, he eventually announced it would close permanently in May 2024. Three months later, he quickly followed that announcement with news that he would reopen San Francisco’s only Slanted Door in its original location at 584 Valencia Street in 2025.

In the intervening years, Phan expanded the footprint of the Slanted Door, opening locations in San Ramon, Napa, and Beaune, France. He also opened Chuck’s Takeaway in the Mission in 2022, a casual sandwich counter serving banh mi and egg salad sandwiches. Phan also opened and closed a few other ventures during his time, including the short-lived restaurant the Coachman and his popular whisky-focused bar Hard Water, which was evicted from its waterfront space in 2022. Phan’s UC Berkeley restaurant Rice and Bones, located in Wurster Hall, opened in 2017 but eventually closed its doors in 2023.

Phan wrote two cookbooks: Vietnamese Home Cooking, which highlights Vietnamese cooking techniques and won an award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2013, and The Slanted Door, which features a selection of recipes from his popular restaurant.

Phan received the James Beard Award for Best Chef: California in 2004 and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food in America in 2011. The James Beard Foundation further recognized the Slanted Door as an Outstanding Restaurant in America in 2014.

An Instagram post on the Slanted Door’s social media called Phan “our beloved leader, visionary, and friend” and “one of the most generous humans.” The post requested privacy for the family to grieve, writing, “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.”

Phan is survived by his wife and three children.

Patricia Chang

Eater SF will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.