Elka Gilmore, an innovative West Coast chef who helped redefine fusion cuisine in the 1990s, died on July 6 in San Francisco. She was 59.

Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Jennie K. Curtis, her former companion. She said Ms. Gilmore had been in failing health for years after work injuries (one of which required spinal fusion), breast cancer and complications of surgery.

In 1993, Ms. Gilmore was described as “the enfant terrible of the modern California kitchen” by The New York Times Magazine. That was two years after the opening of Elka, her highly praised restaurant at the Miyako Hotel in the Japantown neighborhood of San Francisco.

Ms. Gilmore, who often wore a baseball cap in the kitchen, welcomed new methods while holding on tightly to traditional ones. “I do not think roux is a dirty word,” she once said, referring to the classic French mix of flour and fat.