Chef Tributes

Charles Phan changed how America eats Vietnamese food. His family fled the Vietnam War when he was 13 and settled in San Francisco's Chinatown. After studying architecture at UC Berkeley, he opened The Slanted Door in the Mission District in 1995. Dishes like shaking beef and cellophane noodles with Dungeness crab made it one of the country's most beloved restaurants and earned him the James Beard Award for Best Chef: California in 2004.

Charles was a cherished customer and friend of Salute Santé! for many years, from the early days in the Mission to Napa. He died in January 2025 at 62, after opening Slanted Door Napa.

Michael Chiarello was a pillar of the Napa Valley food community. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he opened Tra Vigne in St. Helena in 1987, later founded Bottega in Yountville and Coqueta in Yountville and San Francisco, and won an Emmy for Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello.

He was a close friend to Salute Santé! We were featured us in his NapaStyle store and catalog, and he chose our Syrah grapeseed oil for his restaurants. At one NapaStyle event he surprised us by calling our oil “the best artisanal food product I've seen in 25 years in the Napa Valley.” Thank you Chef.

He died in October 2023 at 61.

Self-taught, Charlie Trotter opened his namesake Chicago restaurant in 1987 at age 28, and for 25 years it was considered one of the finest restaurants in the world. He won multiple James Beard awards, wrote 14 cookbooks, hosted the PBS series The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, and was named James Beard Humanitarian of the Year in 2012 for his culinary education foundation.

In 2004, at a Jean-Louis Foundation dinner in Palm Springs, he told us he featured Salute Santé! in his books, and he later gave us a tour of his kitchen in Chicago. His encouragement pushed us to keep making our oil better. He died in November 2013 at 54.

Jean-Louis Palladin earned two Michelin stars in 1974 at age 28, the youngest chef in France to do so at the time. In 1979 he came to Washington, D.C., to open Jean-Louis at the Watergate, where his use of American ingredients inspired a generation of chefs, among them Éric Ripert, who worked in his kitchen. He won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef in 1993.

Jean-Louis planted the seed – the grapeseed – that began our quest to create the highest quality grapeseed oil. Recognizing the many culinary and health benefits of grapeseed oil, he encouraged us to make it readily available for the professional chef, as well as the home chef. “Create the market for grapeseed oil in this country. I believe, that is the thing to do,” he would say.

Jean-Louis’ passion for perfection and beauty in his food and presentation have been our inspiration as we set the highest standards for quality, for which Salute Santé! Grapeseed Oil is known for. We are honored to salute Jean-Louis Palladin – the man and his memory as the original Salute Santé! star chef.

He died in November 2001 at 55.