The Slanted Door Is Heading Back to Its Original Mission District Home

James Beard Award-winning chef Charles Phan confirmed Monday to The Standard that the Slanted Door, his well-known Vietnamese restaurant, will return to the Mission District space where it first opened almost 30 years ago. He expects the doors to open in spring 2025.

Phan launched the restaurant in 1995 at 584 Valencia St. It later moved to 100 Brannan St. before settling in 2004 at the Ferry Building Marketplace. There it spent more than 15 years anchoring the upscale Embarcadero food hall and was once the top-grossing restaurant in California. It closed at the start of the pandemic, though Phan insisted it would come back.

In May, he confirmed that the restaurant would not return to the Ferry Building because renovating the space would cost too much. Soon after, a new option appeared. The original Valencia Street location, previously home to the short-lived bar Chezchez and to Bon Voyage, both owned by the team behind Trick Dog, became vacant. Phan owns the building. He recalled thinking: "There's an empty chair, maybe I'll go sit in it."

The block has changed a great deal since Phan left in 2001, when he sold shaking beef for $9 and spring rolls for four dollars. He says he is not worried about returning to a neighborhood whose restaurant scene has been hit hard by the continuing economic effects of the pandemic.

Phan has lived in San Francisco since he was 15 and attended Mission High School. He remembers when Union Street in Cow Hollow was the hottest place to open a restaurant, and when the most talked-about dining spots sat just off busy Van Ness Avenue. Change, he says, is the one constant. "You've just got to believe in it," he said. "Be the chicken or the egg, I don't care. Just be one of them." He recently listed his four-bedroom, loft-style home on Fillmore Street for sale.

Before the reopening, Phan will take the building "down to the studs." When he acquired it more than two decades ago, he laid tile himself and cut corners on items such as the air conditioning system. This time, he said, the building will get the update it deserves.

The new dining room will seat about 100 people, compared with 250 at the Ferry Building. With fewer diners and more room to cook, Phan plans to offer more complicated dishes. Food prep will happen at the off-site commissary kitchen attached to Chuck's Takeaway, his counter-service sandwich shop. He is keeping details of the menu close to the chest, and the Slanted Door team plans to travel to Vietnam for research this fall.

Longtime fans should be prepared for a menu that may leave out some of the restaurant's greatest hits. "If you've been doing the same thing for 30 years, they're going to want you to do the same thing," Phan said. "But I don't want to do the same thing."

While San Franciscans wait, the Slanted Door locations in Napa, San Ramon and Beaune, France, remain open. Meals can also be ordered online through the Slanted Door Supper Club.