FLYING FISH STILL FLYING, THOUGH NOT QUITE AS HIGH

By Ronald Holden

It was a bolt from the blue, as if a pod of orcas suddenly breached in front of your rowboat as you paddled around the shore. Liu Xiaomeng (photo), a well-known operator of vast restaurants in China but totally unknown in Seattle, swooped in like an eagle three years ago and carried off one of Seattle's premier seafood restaurants, Flying Fish.

Launched by Christine Keff and Paul Mackay in Belltown in 1986, the Fish (as everyone calls it) had moved to South Lake Union three years earlier. Keff had come to Seattle from the Four Seasons in New York, and had worked at McCormick & Schmick and the Hunt Club in Seattle. Mackay had just opened El Gaucho and was interested in gentrifying First Avenue. Not that he had anything against the Peniel Mission, you understand, but the aromas of stale beer and urine didn't exactly attract high rollers. Keff's flavors at the Fish were new and honest, with fish like branzino and opah that were unusual at the time, and preparations like curries, stir-fries, and lemongrass that were considered exotic.

Within a couple of years, the Fish was ranked one of Seattle's top restaurants and Keff herself was named Best Chef in the Northwest/Hawaii by the James Beard Foundation in 1999.

Liu's restaurant empire is extensive. He's the founder of a chain of restaurants called Fortune Garden based in the northeastern metropolis of Tianjin, China. He began with one restaurant in 1992 and now has 15 stores in 8 cities, with a total of 3,200 employees. He moved to Seattle in 2014 with his wife, Sophie, "to retire," he says. He toyed with the idea of opening a steak house here (beef is hard to come by in China) but decided instead to concentrate on seafood. He started spending a lot of time eating at the Fish and became good friends with Keff.

Skewered shrimp

Meanwhile, off Highway 202 in Redmond, Liu found an old bamboo farm on which he built a seven-bedroom house with what he calls a "development kitchen." He had intended to make it a training base for his Chinese chefs so they could learn more about the dining habits of North Americans. Eventually, he plans to expand Flying Fish into Bellevue and Kirkland, as well as British Columbia and California.

Keff said, handing off her baby to Liu, "I'm happy to just be a chef again, and not have to worry about running a restaurant." She remained on hand as a consultant for six months or so, working on changes in the Chinese custom of "family dining" to the American preference for individually plated dinners.

Black cod

Best-laid plans, etcetera: getting visas for the Chinese kitchen staff proved more difficult than expected, Keff's consulting contract expired, and Liu's expansion plans were put on indefinite hold. Keff did some work for Argosy Cruises, only to see them decommission their dinner ship. Columbia Hospitality sent her to Napa to help out at one of its resorts, but she's been doing a lot of gardening lately, at her home in Bothell.

Firmly in control of the kitchen at the Fish (taking over a spot held by Zack Foster, Angie Roberts, and Steve Smrstik) is a 33-year-old Franklin High grad named Princess Franada. She did her culinary training at Renton Voc-Tech, worked at Palace Kitchen and BoKA, and has been at Flying Fish for over a decade now.

She knows better than to mess with one of the restaurant's signature dishes, the coconut curry Penn Cove mussels (photo), which get their delightful zing from Thai herbs and lemongrass. Lemongrass shows up again as the dominant flavor of the shrimp skewers, while the seared scallops arrived atop a parsnip purée dressed in a port-fig reduction. I was particularly looking forward to the smoked sake-marinated black cod, a dish that has made the fortunes of many Seattle chefs since it was created by Wayne Ludvigsen at Ray's Boathouse three decades ago. The fish was perfect, moist, enhanced by orange and tamarind flavors, but marred, alas, by a soggy scallion-sesame pancake that had lost its crispness in the black tea sauce.

Flying Fish continues its Belltown tradition of offering an excellent Oyster Happy Hour: half-shell oysters for $1 each, along with $1.25 scallops and an assortment of small plates. I'd prefer the bivalves were served on a bed of crushed ice rather than ice cubes, but that's just so they don't wobble as much.

The weakest aspect of a meal at Flying Fish is the wine list. Older vintages, wines produced in warmer climates, where are bright rieslings, unoaked chardonnays and herbal sauvignons of Washington? Plenty of heavy, steak-house reds, but no award-winning oyster wines, just a tired (2013) French white from the Loire, not even a Sancerre. Instead, wines from California (Fetzer and La Crema), some made from Washington grapes but still, not local. (These are the sorts of wines you often see on banquet menus, where distributors can more readily unload outdated or slow-moving inventory.)

The best suggestion, whether for a couple or a small group, is to order the five-course Chef's Tasting Menu and try a bit of all the famous dishes. And you end with a superb lemon-lavender crème brûlée.

Princess (Ieft), Christine Keff (right)

When the Fish moved to South Lake Union, it was swimming in a small pond; now it's surrounded by eateries on all sides, and the neighborhood is populated day and night. It's a shame that the restaurant's most recent blog entry is over two years old; there should be plenty of news to share, but there's apparently a gulf between the owners (even though they live in Seattle) and the day-to-day operation. The quality is there, but the excitement is lacking.

Flying Fish
300 Westlake Ave N
Seattle, WA
206-728-8595

flyingfishseattle.com

Vanilla bean creme brulee

June 2016

Ronald Holden's new book, "Forking Seattle," with more tales about local food & drink, comes out this summer.