Tu David Phu
Biography
Chef Tu David Phu, a San Francisco Chronicle Rising Star Chef and chef-partner at GiGi’s, a Vietnamese-inspired wine bar in San Francisco, draws from his Oakland upbringing and his family’s artisanal fish sauce legacy from Phu Quoc, Vietnam.
His culinary path began in his mother’s Oakland garden and developed in prestigious kitchens like New York’s Daniel and San Francisco’s Acquerello, where he was surrounded by the team that earned two Michelin stars. This journey inspired his Vietnamese-Californian pop-up Ăn and his Rising Star Chef honor in 2017.
Beyond the kitchen, Chef Tu shares his family’s story through the Emmy-nominated PBS film Bloodline and his cookbook The Memory of Taste, co-authored with James Beard Award-winner Soleil Ho.
Books
Tu David Phu trained in the nation’s top restaurants only to realize the culinary lessons that truly impacted him were those passed on by his parents, refugees from Phú Quôc. In his hometown of Oakland, California, his parents taught him hard-won lessons in frugality, food-covery cooking, and practical gill-to-fin eating.