Flying Fish Flying (Or Will It Be Swimming?) to South Lake Union

Mark Bauschke Photography

Chef Keff has had it with Belltown.

Flying Fish, one of Belltown's most durable and highly-regarded restaurants, is not long for the neighborhood. Nancy Leson reports that the Fish will swim (or will it fly?) through the Ship Canal to South Lake Union, where its landlord will be Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate.

Chef-owner Christine Keff tells Leson that Vulcan's vision for South Lake Union includes "four or five restaurants of my caliber: very local, very Seattle restaurants."

As for Belltown, it doesn't appear that Keff will do much looking back. She says the neighborhood's go-go bar scene has made it an inhospitable environment for restaurants and other small businesses, telling Leson: "You've got a lot of small landlords who never get together to have any say in what happens around them. And before you know it, things have gone to hell."

For Keff and the Fish, perhaps. But for the droves of oiled-up, twenty-something hardbodies who hail cabs along 1st Ave by night, it's a devilish slice of heaven.