Famed San Francisco chef Charles Phan, 62, has been hospitalized after suffering a serious medical emergency that resulted in a brain injury, according to sources close to his family.
Staff at Phan’s restaurants have been notified, as well as members of the local restaurant community. No additional details about his condition have been confirmed by his family, who declined to comment and asked for privacy through a spokesperson.
Phan is one of the most prominent Vietnamese American chefs and has published two cookbooks on Vietnamese cuisine during his decades-long career. The news of his hospitalization, which a source says happened Wednesday, comes as he is poised to make a much-anticipated comeback this summer, when he’s expected to reopen his lauded restaurant the Slanted Door in the Mission after a years-long closure.
Phan, a pillar of the local restaurant community for decades, debuted the pioneering restaurant in 1995 on Valencia near 16th Street. It became a national sensation for elevating Vietnamese cuisine, which was not widely known to the U.S. dining public, and for using local, high-quality ingredients.
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He later moved the restaurant to 100 Brannan St. before landing at the Ferry Building Marketplace in 2004. There, the restaurant served shaking beef and crab with cellophane noodles to locals and tourists before going dark at the onset of the pandemic.
For years, Phan insisted he would reopen in the Ferry Building following a major renovation. Then, in May, he confirmed that the Slanted Door’s decades-long run at the high-profile waterfront location had ended. Three months later, he announced plans to return the restaurant to its original home at 584 Valencia St.
In the interim, Phan operates Slanted Door locations in San Ramon, Napa, and Beaune, France. His current business footprint in the city, however, includes just one restaurant: a takeout-only sandwich shop in the Mission, Chuck’s Takeaway.
A self-taught chef, Phan has earned some of the highest U.S. dining accolades during his decades-long career in the Bay Area.
He was awarded the James Beard Award for Best Chef: California in 2004 and was added to the foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America in 2011. Four years later, the foundation named the Slanted Door as Outstanding Restaurant in America.
Kevin V. Nguyen contributed to this report.