Slanted Door is a pricey Napa experiment

In chef Charles Phan’s perfect world, he might never prepare another plate of shaking beef.

The classic Vietnamese dish has been a staple at Phan’s Slanted Door restaurant in San Francisco, launched as a hole-in-the-wall shop in 1995 in the Mission with a tiny, six-item menu.

Made from premium steak cut into small cubes the size of playing dice, the name shaking beef references how the juicy meat jumps around while shaken and sautéed in a pan, usually finished in French butter.

At the time, it was an unfamiliar dish for most Americans. Nearly 30 years later, after Phan has opened — and closed — numerous restaurants, written cookbooks, garnered international media coverage, and most recently, debuted a Napa location, he suggests it’s not his favorite anymore.

But don’t tell that to his customers — they might riot if he didn’t offer it.

“There’s some pressure prevailing to keep signatures on the menu,” he said.

Shaking beef has long been considered a luxury dish in Asia, generally reserved for special occasions. At his restaurant, Phan used prime filet mignon cut into 1-inch cubes with plenty of good butter, as he shared in his 2014 cookbook, “The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food.”

These days, of course, you can find lower-caliber versions at numerous restaurants, including the global PF Chang’s chain and the many casual-service Vietnamese eateries that populate Sonoma County.

So, when Phan opened his Slanted Door outpost in Napa this past November, it wasn’t a surprise to find shaking beef — this time, as Cape Grim Australian grass-fed tenderloin, cut in large chunks, wok-seared with thin-sliced red onion and a sauce of rice vinegar, mirin, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, minced garlic and butter.

Yet, it’s not the dish that I knew from long ago. It’s plopped across a messy bed of watercress; you saw the chewy meat into serviceable bites, then dip it in salt-pepper lime sauce.

Another thing has changed — the dish now costs $54 and is served a la carte. A side of jasmine rice is $5, and if you want some heat from a trio of housemade fresh Thai chili oil, chili crisp oil and sriracha, that’s another $9.

Phan understands the raised eyebrows about pricing, but he also knows the value of his name.

He is, after all, perhaps America’s most famous Vietnamese chef and has won a mantel-full of top awards throughout his career — at one point, he had expanded into a phone book’s worth of international Slanted Door locations and casual offshoots. He regularly served more than 1,000 dinners a night at his upscale spots.

In 2021, I wrote about the jaw-dropping anticipation for his Napa unveiling. At a Festival Napa Valley Arts for All Gala fundraising event in St. Helena, he offered a private preview dinner for a party of 32, and it sold for the cool sum of $180,000.

But Phan knows very well the reality of the current economy, he explained, and the stresses that the pandemic brought.

“All the food costs went up, and inflation,” he said. “The restaurants have needed a price increase for a long time, and we’re trying to figure out a way to get the kitchen to have more money, so there are things like a 20% service charge. … Unfortunately, it's very complicated to explain that to the customer.”

It took almost three years to open the new Slanted Door in an 8,000-square-foot Howard Backen-designed building that used to house the Kitchen Collective, a private cooking club that closed in 2020.

It’s stunningly beautiful modern setting of glass walls, a 220-seat dining room and a glassed-in kitchen, all anchored by an elegantly finished, tree-studded dining courtyard was expensive, to say the least.

COVID didn’t help, but Phan used the slowdown to take a fresh look at his recipes.

“When we opened in a much larger space (than the Mission) in the (now closed) Ferry Building in 2004, every day there would be like 900 people at the door, and they all wanted the same familiar things,” he said. “Maybe we got lazy doing the same things over and over. So, when we had a little break, it was nice, and got us to where finally we're willing to let go some of the past items and try some new food.”

For now, the Napa menu is relatively brief, nowhere near the lengthy list of choices Phan fans have come to expect. But options are being added — lunch and happy hour debuted a week ago.

There are a few newish dishes to explore, such as excellent scallops tartare in leek vinaigrette for scooping with rice crackers ($24) and a mesquite grilled, lemongrass marinated Klingeman Family Farm (Washington) pork chop drizzled in cilantro sauce with a spark of pickled chiles ($38).

Then there’s the bánh nam, a simple-looking banana leaf that unwraps to reveal a rice dumpling with ground pork, dried shrimp, and a shimmering lacing of scallion oil ($16). I also like cellophane noodles tangled with seasonal wild Dungeness, blue crab and a simple garnish of green onion, black pepper and sesame ($36).

Nutty, creamy Hodo soy organic yuba makes another pleasing, plant-based dish intertwined with glass noodles, spicy Fresno chiles and shimeji mushrooms ($28).

There are graceful touches to admire here and there, like chrysanthemum tea presented in a glass pot brimming with real flower buds ($7), or a dessert that’s a beautiful, brothy bowl of poached Bosc pear, crystal white snow fungus, Chinese dates, ginger and nasturtium ($12).

With modern customers so much more educated about Vietnamese food, however, there’s little groundbreaking cuisine at Napa’s Slanted Door.

We all know spring rolls stuffed with shrimp, pork, mint and a slick of shallot mayonnaise alongside a dunk of peanut sauce ($18). Green papaya salad ($15) is no longer intriguing after all these decades, even when served with a golden spoon, as it is here.

Another long-standing statement dish, meanwhile — chicken clay pot — seems unfinished. The heritage loong kong (yellow breed) chicken arrives fatty skin-on in a murky, sweet, dark sauce of shallots, Thai chili, ginger and chili caramel ($36).

You’ll definitely want a side dish to round things out. Except I don’t want to pay $12 for bok choy trimmed of its flavorful leaves — the chopped hearts look stylish against a few bits of oyster mushrooms, but I miss the frilly, mustardy greens.

Some people may be put off by the noise level bouncing off hard surfaces unless you dine in the courtyard. As Phan told me, “I have a particular style I like — kind of loud and comfortable and entertaining at the same time.”

That mood works if you eat at the bar, a circular, 30-seat gathering spot that Phan, a former architecture student, built himself (and thank goodness you can eat late; food is served until 10 p.m.). Here’s a lively spot to nibble on wild gulf shrimp-garlic-chive pan-fried dumplings ($18) or my favorite dish — pho.

When the Door opened in the fall, some customers lamented that the Vietnamese soup wasn’t available. But with the new lunch service, we can get it now, stocked with chicken ($18), Hodo soy tofu and mushrooms in an earthy leek-mushroom broth ($18), or my choice, a hearty mélange of brisket, tongue and tendon grass-fed beef bone broth ($20).

Just don’t ask for it at dinner.

“It's kind of funny; most people know Vietnamese as pho, but in Vietnam, it’s a breakfast and lunch food,” Phan explained. “In Vietnam, you have cheap food, and you have fine dining restaurants. For fine dining, maybe they serve you asparagus soup or catfish soup, but they'll never serve you noodles because you’ll fill up and won't eat anything else, like squab or roast duck.”

Be ready for another quirk, too. Larger parties need to order a set menu.

“We literally force people of six or more to share because we can't cook too many dinners all at once; that's not how the kitchen is designed,” Phan said. “We call it a prix fixe menu, but basically, you have to take three appetizers and three entrees. We always make accommodations — let's say somebody doesn't eat meat or fish, and it’s not a problem.

“But sharing just makes the speed of service more fluid and not so disjointed. When you start holding entrees back to try to get 15 of them all out at the same time, somebody's plate is getting cold, and somebody is not getting their food at all.”

Carey Sweet is a Sebastopol-based food and restaurant writer. Read her restaurant reviews every other week in Sonoma Life. Contact her at carey@careysweet.com.