Clowning kitchen crew at Shallots. Kenny Lee is at left.
Shallots, the Asian bistro at the corner of Fourth and Vine, now stands empty; it was here that I had my first dinner as a Belltown resident, and I immediately fell in love with the vibrant flaors and the attention to authentic details ("slippery-coating" the prawns before stir-frying them, for example).
Kenny Lee launched Shallots in 1996 and kept the place running with a rotating cast
of investors and chefs despite the vicious economic downturn, the departure of Group
Health offices and an increasingly spotty dinner trade. For the past six years, the mainstay of his business was catering and banquets and a neighborhood delivery program.
Lee's appeals to Equity Properties for rent relief fell on deaf ears. Earlier this year, he finally found a couple of buyers, worked with them for three months and left for an extended vacaton in China. (A previous deal to sell Shallots to chef Simon Nguyen failed in half a year; he had to take the restaurant back.) The new buyers, Don Briggs and Jessica McNeese, neither of whom had ever operated a restaurant, hired a chef who used to work at Buckley's. They intended to add sliders, steaks and pub food (!), but they couldn't get a liquor license because, says Lee, Briggs had a felony conviction on his record. Without the liquor license, they didn't even bother to open. Instead, Briggs and McNeese defaulted on the lease and were evicted. Lee returned from China to find the space gutted.
"They asked me to take it back, but won't even go to look at the premises," Lee said. "I'm just very, very sad."
Leave a comment