When Flying Fish Sushi Bar closed, diners asked when it would reopen. Here’s that answer

Messages began piling up a few months ago and they all had the same question: What happened to Flying Fish Sushi Bar & Grill in Tacoma’s Westgate neighborhood?

“We’re sad that Flying Fish has closed! I know it was the go-to sushi and teriyaki place for lots of North End families,” wrote reader Stacy Gregory.

Heidi Wink Schooley inquired about the closure in August.

“The place is so popular it may require a little patience and time to get your order, but we’ve always found it worth the wait,” she said. “We miss Lee and look forward to supporting him in a new location — hopefully still in the North End?”

I’ve got answers.

The closure of Flying Fish happened so quickly, owner Uisup Lee — who diners know simply as “Lee” — didn’t have time to tell his longtime customers he was moving.

He cleared out the space at 2723 N. Pearl St. by the first of July.

Lee said he intended to continue at his original location under a lease extension, but he mistakenly missed a deadline to extend it, which moved him to a month-to-month lease. When the shopping center’s owners lined up a new tenant for the Flying Fish space, he started negotiating to move Flying Fish to another part of the same shopping center.

It took three months to negotiate the terms of the new lease he signed last week.

Lee will move Flying Fish across the parking lot to a new location that’s about the same size. It’s near the Chase Bank.

What also is certain is that the new space will take several months to construct because Flying Fish will move into a non-restaurant space requiring extensive remodeling.

Regulars of the sushi restaurant, which has a subspecialty in Chinese, Korean and Japanese cuisine, might not recognize Flying Fish when it reopens.

Lee plans to make substantial improvements in the atmosphere. It’ll seat about the same number of diners, 25, in a 1,400-square-foot space, but he’ll be able to build a more efficient kitchen to handle take-out, which comprises the bulk of his business.

Lee said he’s nervous about the significant investment to upgrade the restaurant, but “we want to modernize,” he said. “Our previous restaurant is too old, and too small of a kitchen because our sales increased.”

The move will cost him a considerable sum — about $100,000 — but he knows he would have had to invest at some point to update the 12-year-old restaurant.

Lee opened Flying Fish 12 years ago as an outgrowth of his former career working as a fish importer for a Korean company. The Seattle office of that company was what led him to move to the Northwest in the 1980s.

He settled in Gig Harbor and opened the restaurant in 2006. He owns another business in Gig Harbor, where he’s been working in the interim. One of his former Flying Fish customers even tracked him down at the restaurant to ask when he’d reopen.

Other customers have run into him at Costco or the bank and the question is always the same, “When are you reopening?”

He said that answer is: hopefully in the spring. He thinks permits will take two months and then construction will take another three.

When he reopens, the dining room will be shinier, but the menu still will be “crowd friendly,” as Lee describes it. I call it a something-for-everyone restaurant. His menu lists traditional Korean soon dubu alongside Chinese wok classics, an extensive sushi menu, bento boxes and Japanese classics.

This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 11:30 AM.