Flying Fish

It's a wonderful thing to have restaurants you love and rely on, knowing you'll be happy with time and money spent there. It's even better when, like Flying Fish, you have the option to stay with the comfortable or try something new, say monkfish liver or cod tongue (seriously).

Owner Christine Keff (at right) didn't get interested in food until she was in college in LA getting her math degree. A friend took over the cafeteria to improve the food and asked her to help. She knew nothing but jumped in anyway. After graduation in 1976, jobs were hard to find. She took a part-time cooking job, then went full-time. "The restaurant owner taught me to cook," says Chris. "And I use the term ‘cook' loosely." But her interest grew and she worked around LA for several years.

Moving to New York, she got accepted to an apprenticeship program at the Four Seasons Restaurant. "Openings were really for culinary school graduates. They told me that if anyone asked I should tell them I went to a culinary school in California and it wasn't a good one—that would explain why I didn't know anything," she laughs. "It was a great opportunity. I learned from Seppi Renggli, a Swiss chef who is now retired. He was a great influence." In New York for 10 years, she finally became a chef for a couple of management consultants who wanted to open a Southwest restaurant. "They asked me to come in at 7 a.m. I knew nothing about the Southwest. So I bought two Diana Kennedy cookbooks on my way home. My roommate was from the Southwest and she shared her grandmother's sweet tamale recipe. We stayed up until 2 a.m. cooking. I took the tamales and Mexican hot chocolate to the interview and got the job. I always thought I could do anything—anything is possible when you're in your 20s," Chris laughs.

She opened three restaurants for the same owners, then left to travel for a year (1986-87). She worked wherever she went and picked up cooking and food tips from locals. She worked for two weeks at a hotel in Bangkok and had a house in Indonesia for a month with a kitchen where she practiced. She new just enough words to go to the market. "I'd pick up new things to try. One time I had something in my basket and went to another stall. The woman looked at what I had, took it out and replaced it with something else. I have no idea what it was; it probably wasn't safe. I was going to stir fry it. The biggest thing about traveling is that I ate, so I knew what things were supposed to taste like."

Flying Fish cocktails by Mark B. Bauschke Photography

She moved to Seattle at in late 1987 and worked at several corporate restaurants. "Looking back, it was the best thing I could have done," Chris says. "It forced me to think about costs, staying in business and customer service." She worked at Jake's, New Jakes and Leschi Lake Café for a total of three years. She then moved to McCormick and Schmick's for three years as a chef. She worked from 1992-94 as executive chef at the Sorrento Hotel.

In July 1995, she opened Flying Fish. "I wanted to do my food and it was hard to find a good job," says Chris. "It took about a year to open. The concept was always clear to me. I could see a niche for an upscale, non-corporate fish restaurant. Seafood restaurants at that time in Seattle were straight-forward East Coast-style fish houses. Other kinds of food were getting interesting treatment in Seattle, but not seafood." She chose Belltown because it was close to downtown yet affordable. And she had friends like Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakery and Marco and Donna from Marco's Supperclub who had businesses in the neighborhood. "It was a risk in that it was kind of a sleazy neighborhood then, but it was cheap!" She took on a 15-year lease, three five-year terms, which ends in 2010.

In 2000, she opened Fandango in the style of restaurant that was popular at the time—big, loud, noisy, lively. The tech crash hit; as they were coming out of that, 9/11 happened. "Literally within hours, the dining public made a 180° turn," Chris recalls. "Market research showed that people wanted small, intimate places where kids could go because parents didn't want to leave them alone. It was everything we weren't. We lasted four years, but it would have taken another three or four to make it. I regret that it didn't work, but there isn't anything I could have done differently. Maybe it will come back someday as a smaller place—all the people who know that food are still with us."

Flying Fish will continue to offer consistently good service and interesting food. "We've kept more accessible dishes on the menu than expected, but have a diverse clientele. They may come for the familiar, then try something new." Five principles govern every decision made, including hiring: honesty, integrity, diversity, value, quality. "It's why we're so consistent," explains Chris. "It's rare that someone makes a decision I wouldn't have made myself. We all think alike."

Beautiful ahi by Mark B. Bauschke Photography

As always, they'll pay attention to sustainability, work with local farmers and purveyors as well as those around the globe and hold cooking classes and dinners with Chris and Guy (Flying Fish GM and wine buyer). "I'm proud of what we've done," says Chris. "People like this place. It's not the newest thing anymore, but we make people happy every night."

* Flying Fish moved to the South Lake Union neighborhood: 300 Westlake Ave Seattle, WA 98109

Connie Adams/July 2009