We called it back in May, and it has come to pass: Chef Charles Phan is bringing The Slanted Door full circle back to its original digs in the Mission District, five years after closing the restaurant at the Ferry Building.
When Phan announced three months ago that The Slanted Door would not be reopening as planned in its anchor, corner spot in the Ferry Building, SFist surmised that the restaurant’s smaller, original location back at 584 Valencia Street remained vacant, and as far as we knew was still in Phan’s real estate portfolio. So when he hinted that he might want to reopen his famed Vietnamese restaurant “elsewhere” in San Francisco, that would seem to be the logical first choice.
And, indeed, Eater has confirmed with Phan that this is his plan, and The Slanted Door will reopen at 584 Valencia early next year, almost exactly 30 years since it originally debuted there in 1995.
“Going back to the old place I think would do more for Slanted Door than had we stayed in the Ferry Building,” Phan tells Eater. “I think the size, the volume, that was going to hinder us. But now this gives us a brand new opportunity where we could continue to change dining.”
The Slanted Door famously brought valet parking to Valencia Street, and what was until then a fairly low-key and un-gentrified section of the Mission, in the late 1990s, as its popularity exploded. Before Phan began looking to expand the restaurant, President Bill Clinton dined there with Chelsea Clinton and some of her Stanford friends, along with Secret Service agents, during the last year of his presidency, in April 2000 — they had brunch at the Valencia location, and Phan told the Chronicle at the time that it was no big deal since Mick Jagger had already dined there twice.
Clinton had reportedly chosen The Slanted Door for brunch over other suggestions, which included Rose Pistola and Moose’s, both long gone now. (Flour + Water Pizzeria has taken over the Rose Pistola space, and Moose’s became Park Tavern, which may be reopening soon.)
Phan was one of just a few chefs at that time trying to, as he said, take Vietnamese cuisine “to the next level,” and The Slanted Door became an enduring hit, ultimately earning Phan the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Pacific in 2004, and then Outstanding Restaurant in the country in 2014.
The success brought a move first to 100 Brannan Street in the early aughts, and then to the newly renovated Ferry Building, where The Slanted Door became the bustling corporate restaurant it became in 2004. It later became one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the state.
The Valencia Street spot would sit vacant for a few years before becoming Wo Hing General Store, a Chinese food and cocktail concept from Phan in 2011. That only lasted a year and a half, and since then, a few concepts have cycled through, including Urchin — a French bistro — and Bon Voyage, a cocktail bar from the Trick Dog team, followed by Chezchez, which opened and closed within 16 months during the pandemic.
Phan, perhaps wisely, shut things down entirely when the pandemic began in early 2020, and at that point his business empire had already been doing some contracting. He had closed his casual Out the Door locations already at that point at the Westfield Centre and in Pacific Heights, and he had been concentrating on a new location of The Slanted Door in San Ramon, and a short-lived noodle shop in Berkeley. To those, he has since added new locations in the last year in Napa, and in the heart of Burgundy, in Beaune, France, and a couple years back he opened the sandwich shop Chuck’s Takeaway at his commissary kitchen in the Mission.
Phan tells Eater that he’s working with his Ferry Building designer, Olle Lundberg of Lundberg Design, to revamp the Valencia Street space. And he says the decision was solidified after Chezchez, the previous tenant, decided to shut down late last year.
“The tenant in my building was moving out, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll go back to where I come from,'” Phan tells Eater. “It seems to be the theme of my life.”
Look for The Slanted Door to emerge from hibernation, back where it came from, in the spring of 2025.
Previously: The Slanted Door, a Longtime Anchor of the Ferry Building, Is Not Reopening
Top image: Chef Charles Phan prepares a dish at his dinner with Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske part of the Bank of America Dinner Series presented by The Wall Street Journal at Chef’s Club on October 13, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for NYCWFF)
This article was originally published by a sfist.com . Read the Original article here. .