Charles Phan, Whose Slanted Door Elevated Vietnamese Food, Dies at 62

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 inexpensive noodle dishes and spring rolls with ones that married the best local ingredients with the food he grew up on, died on Monday in San Francisco.He was 62.His death, in a hospital, where he was taken last week after experiencing cardiac arrest during a tennis game, was confirmed by Anh Duong, the publicist for his restaurant group.Mr.

Phan became something of a food world star.He published two cookbooks, competed on the television show “Iron Chef” and walked through the streets of Saigon with Anthony Bourdain on his TV program “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 the Slanted Door, the San Francisco restaurant he opened in 1995, buoyed fellow chefs from immigrant families who had long wanted food critics and diners to value dishes from their countries as much as they did cuisine from Italy or France.“We knew right away when he opened the restaurant 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 takes it from the street to dining room.”Mr.Phan realized that making his mother’s dishes with the kind of local, top-notch ingredients used in kitchens like San Francisco’s Zuni Café was a gamble.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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