Charles Phan rolled up in his big truck to a Santa Cruz farm around 2004, pulled out tables and set up a propane stove. He fired up his signature wok, threw in some beef and broccolini, and started cooking for some 80 people.
He was filming an episode for the documentary TV series “Chefs A’ Field,” where chefs and their family visited farms in search of fresh ingredients.
“I couldn’t believe it. [Cooking for all those people] was just, like, nothing for him,” said Joe Schirmer, founder of Dirty Girl Produce and owner of that Santa Cruz farm. “He put on such a show.”
The generosity, intelligence and humility that Phan transmitted on the show, carried into his three decades of work as a Vietnamese chef and owner of the Slanted Door, which got its start in the Mission. It came to an end this week. Phan, chef of the Slanted Door, died of cardiac arrest on Monday. He was 62.
“Seeing all the younger chefs, you know how inspiring he was,” Schirmer said. “He just had that star power, but with such humility.”
Phan’s contributions to Vietnamese cuisine in the United States started three decades ago when, in 1995 he opened a spot between 16th and 17th streets on Valencia Street, serving up shaken beef with beautiful beef fillet, crispy imperial rolls and high-quality wild gulf shrimp.
“He was one of the first chefs in the country to put ‘ethnic’ food in the spotlight, charge premium prices for it and to have local ingredients layered with Vietnamese flavors and techniques,” said Jessica Battilana, the co-author of Phan’s first cookbook, “Vietnamese Home Cooking.” “Nobody had done that before.”
If the restaurant became nearly impossible to get into after visits by celebrities such as Mick Jagger and President Bill Clinton, it also served lunch specials, making it accessible to the neighborhood.
“The Mission — Charles changed it. He was the pioneer of the Mission. The entire 18th and Valencia streets corridor, Charles opened it up,” said Eric Wolfinger, the photographer of Vietnamese Home Cooking. “It’s Charles’s world. We’re just living in it.”
Craig Stoll, co-founder of Delfina, agreed.
When Stoll worked on opening Delfina at 18th and Valencia streets in the late 1990s, Phan shared advice on getting permits, recommendations of good plumbers, and options for sheet metal for the hoods. He also set the stage for people to combine different cuisines with fresh, high-quality local ingredients, Stoll said.
By the time Delfina opened, following the footsteps of the Slanted Door, the Mission District started to become a destination for tourists. “There were little maps they put in downtown hotel rooms, and the Mission was literally not on the map,” Stoll recalled. At the time, Valencia Street was “auto body shops and lesbian bars.”
The Slanted Door, together with restaurants like Timo’s and the Flying Saucer, changed that, Stoll said.
“He was staying very true to what he knew and loved, but just with pumped-up ingredients and in a pumped-up space,” said Wolfinger who traveled with him to Vietnam.
Some of these ingredients came from Dirty Girl Produce, Schirmer’s family-owned farm in Santa Cruz. “For a long time, they were buying hundreds of pounds of French beans. Heaps at full price,” said Schirmer.
That was 2012, a couple years before the Slanted Door became the highest-grossing independently owned restaurant in California, with an estimated annual sales of $16.5 million.
A chef and a caretaker
Phan found the Mission at 16 as a student at Mission High School, a few years after his family fled Vietnam to Guam on a cargo boat in 1975. When the family got to international waters, he was the only member who spoke English well. His mother took him aside and said, “You’re going to have to take care of us now.”
And that’s what Phan did. When he opened the Slanted Door, he employed his entire family. From interviews with friends and colleagues, it seemed as if Phan continued to be a caregiver throughout his life.
In the spring of 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, Battilana, Phan’s co-author, received a text from Phan. “Can I drop by your house with some food?” he asked.
“I hadn’t even asked for it, and I know I’m not the only person that would tell a similar story of a time when he helped them out when he didn’t have to,” Battilana said.
Battilana moved to Maine later that year. She texted Phan one day, saying how she was homesick for California and missed his food. “I wish I could go eat the lemongrass tofu at Out the Door right now,” she messaged.
The next day, she received a FedEx overnight package, a box filled with chicken buns, pho kits and condiments.
“That’s always how I will think of Charles. He’s a person who would go out of his way to do things for other people, not for the fanfare, not because he was a famous chef, just because he had a good heart,” Battilana said. “And his way of showing love and care was through his food.”
Putting together his first cookbook
Before “Vietnamese Home Cooking” published in 2014, Battilana met with Phan two to three times a week. At the time, Phan had already been recognized as the best chef in California by the James Beard Foundation. But it was the first time for both of them to write a cookbook.
Battilana would give Phan “assignments:” Write something about what it was like to take the boat from Vietnam to Guam, for example. “I’d give him a week or so, and nothing,” Battilana recalled. After a few times, Battilana realized, “This is not going to be the way we work together.”
So they shifted gears, with Phan telling Battilana stories on the fly as she accompanied him on his many errands. She recalled the time a local chef needed an appliance and Phan delivered a spare one from his commissary kitchen. Battilana tagged along.
“I would sneakily ask about the stories behind these recipes that became the narrative of the book,” she said. “The silver lining was that we really got to know one another in a deep way, and I had this front-row seat to his generosity.”
Phan insisted on shooting photos for a portion of the book in his homeland of Vietnam. Wolfinger joined Phan for the 10-day trip. At the time, Wolfinger was a “green” food photographer who had just shot a book for Tartine Bread.
But the interview with Phan was short and straightforward. “It’s like, ‘Do you want to go to Vietnam? How much do you cost? Okay, cool, you’re hired,’” Wolfinger said.
Most of the shoots happened in San Francisco, “in the Charles Phan way,” Wolfinger said. Unlike most cookbook productions, where people hire a food stylist and use props for the shoot, Phan wanted to cook every dish that appeared in his book.
“He didn’t want things tweezered and fussed. He wasn’t interested in any fluff. He wanted things to feel real,” Wolfinger said.
In Vietnam, Wolfinger set out to document “the heart and soul” of everything Phan did. “He returns to Vietnam all the time, for inspiration and to let his hair down,” Wolfinger said.
In the hot and muggy days in Saigon, Phan and Wolfinger would eat three or four meals every day just before noon: Pho, soups with fried donuts, skewers on the street and iced coffee. In the afternoon, they’d retreat to the hotel and drink whiskey on ice for a few hours. At night, they’d go out and have “another five midnight snacks.”
“He knows everything, and where to go,” Wolfinger said. Phan was less busy in Vietnam, and walked around with the same swagger. “He was hard to keep up with,” Wolfinger said. For Phan, “it was home. He was free. Nobody knows Charles. He can do and say whatever he wants.”
Going through the archives today, Wolfinger noticed that the dishes he shot at the Slanted Door or at Phan’s house were not too different from the food the pair encountered in Vietnam.
But Phan’s career was not all success and glory. “Charles failed a lot as a restaurateur. He failed at more restaurants than most people will ever open,” Battilana said. “But the failures didn’t deter him from trying things that he believed in.”
What he believed in was opening restaurants that sold food he liked to eat, she said.
Exiting and returning to the Mission
Phan left the Mission in 2002 after neighbors pushed back on a proposed expansion at the Valencia Street site. Rather than fight it, he moved to South of Market and eventually into the Ferry Building. From there, he opened Slanted Door locations in San Ramon and Napa.
Even after leaving the Mission, he returned to help out on local events. In 2009, the Slanted Door participated in San Francisco’s first street-food festival. “It was a totally scrappy operation,” said Battilana, who worked on the festival with the La Cocina director, Caleb Zigas. The tables were built out of milk crates. Restaurants sent line cooks to work in the booths.
But Phan, by then a celebrity chef, showed up at the festival, cooking fried chicken “for six to eight hours on the street with a janky setup.”
“He was a real person who had done something extraordinary and genuine,” said Zigas. “But he still took the time to be with us. He gave his time and his wisdom, which was the most generous thing you can do.”
For years, the space he owned on Valencia Street stayed vacant and then, in 2013, he opened the short-lived Wo Hing General Store, a tribute to his father’s Chinese roots.
“I think the money coming from Slanted Door allowed him to be adventurous,” Battilana said.
After Wo Hing General Store failed, he leased the space to other restaurants and, in 2022, opened Chuck’s Takeaway, his only remaining restaurant in San Francisco, at 18th and Capp streets. By last year, plans were afoot to reopen the Slanted Door at its original Valencia location.
The last time Schirmer saw Phan was at the Mill on Divisadero Street. He was just sitting and having coffee. They chatted back and forth, as usual. Schirmer took Phan’s hand, at one point. Phan said he was really excited to get back to Valencia Street.
“He seemed so healthy. He seemed glowy in the sun,” Schirmer recalled. “He’s bright, and looking forward to everything.”
Talented, true pioner, humble, dedicated to work and taking care of family and friends. He will be missed. Charles gave Valencia Street a little vibe, for a while, until he left. He also put San Francisco on the map, in his own way, his latest endeavor in Burgundy France.R.I.P Charles Phan,.
Miss you so much Bud 🥲
Remain in light Charles Phan. You changed San Francisco and the Mission for the better. You took care of (and employed) your blood and restaurant families. You were generous, creative and nurturing. You were a true visionary. Thank you for all that you gave and did for our fair city.