Solely a single row of excessive home windows on the roofline on the shiny façade of the hulking black field that’s China Harbor faces the road. This provides the long-lasting Westlake Avenue constructing mysterious vibes. However inside, two sprawling flooring of eating and banquet house overlook Lake Union.
After 30 years and 1000’s of events, China Harbor will serve its last feasts on September 29. “We simply needed to give attention to different future initiatives for now,” says chef Danna Hwang, who joined the restaurant three years in the past. She was introduced on by Thomson Zhao, who bought the traditional spot in 2019. Chief amongst these future initiatives is the second location of the pair’s much-lauded Mercer Island restaurant, Vivienne’s Bistro, which is scheduled to open subsequent month inside downtown’s Sheraton Grand Seattle, taking up the house beforehand house to Loulay.
“These 5 years have flown by, leaving a profound and colourful mark on our lives,” says a public letter, posted by China Harbor. It went on to thank clients for his or her help via the restaurant’s powerful occasions: Zhao took over China Harbor, for which large-scale banquets and events of as much as 500 folks had been an enormous a part of the enterprise, simply earlier than the pandemic shut down occasions. Slowly however certainly, he and Hwang turned the restaurant right into a vacation spot for meals, not only a place to go for weddings. Then, in December 2021, the constructing suffered structural injury, and the restaurant was pressured to shut through the profitable vacation celebration interval.
The imposing midcentury fashionable constructing on the waterfront started life as house to the Seattle Elks membership, opening in 1961. In 1976, the Elks membership retreated to the basement and the primary areas grew to become a sequence of eating places: West Veranda, tiki bar Don the Beachcomber, Greenjeans, Greenstreets, Ostería Mitchelli, then Hunan Harbor. In 1994, China Harbor took over, making a reputation for itself by internet hosting dances, political rallies, karaoke, and pace relationship nights, together with many different gatherings. Different elements of the constructing held different companies, together with the basement swimming pool.
The mysteriousness of the constructing’s exterior mixed with the late-night hours and barely irregular nature of the enterprise led to each rumored and precise hassle. A car parking zone theft that led to police making a racist touch upon video introduced China Harbor into the information in 2010. Extra usually, these unaware of its large occasion enterprise provided musings on how a spot with such a big footprint and mediocre meals made its cash. (Jokes they certainly would have made even when it weren’t a Chinese language restaurant, proper?)
When Zhao and Hwang took over, they accepted the problem of adjusting the restaurant’s long-standing fame with the general public. “They’re scared to stroll in as a result of the previous administration was soiled,” Hwang mentioned in an interview with the Seattle PI on the time. Detritus from the earlier nights’ events not littered the constructing’s principal staircase every morning, and the meals improved sufficient to create a strong takeout enterprise even earlier than diners and occasions returned in large numbers following pandemic limitations.
Zhao had initially employed Hwang to open Vivienne’s Bistro, however when development and provide points delayed that opening, she took on the China Harbor revamp. When the 180-seat Mercer Island restaurant ultimately opened in early 2022, the success there led Zhao to start out in search of a second location. Hwang says they anticipate to open the Vivienne’s Bistro location downtown in mid-October.
There’s no phrase but on what’s subsequent for the long-lasting constructing left empty by China Harbor’s departure, however it’s a prime slice of waterfront eating room actual property, so hopefully it will get snapped up quickly by somebody prepared to proceed the great combat in opposition to dangerous meals.
