The Flying Fish is just fine. We’ve had whole fish that was slightly overcooked and dishes that favored style over substance—there are better ways to wrangle the Washington coast’s excellent razor clams than on an open-faced sandwich—but overall, Flying Fish delivers a consistently satisfying seafood bonanza. It provides a taste of the freshest catches, a few reasonably well-executed Thai flourishes (the chef spent some time studying Thai cuisine), and an atmosphere that’s casual and fun but still feels like it’s trying to dress up a bit.

Although normally we’d embrace a move out of the tourist trap of the Pike Place Market area, Flying Fish’s new digs aren’t necessarily an improvement. The new space is more modern, perhaps, but it has much less personality. Granted, it’s hard to make large generic commercial spaces—in this case the bottom floor of one of the city’s new biotech buildings—look as lived-in as an older building in a historic part of town, but it’s always a little depressing when a restaurant can’t get beyond that cafeteria/fancy diner feel. And we have no words for whatever happened at the bar: red globular lanterns hang over chartreuse bar stools that are inverted cones. Oh well, at least “packed and cheerful” is a good distraction for these kinds of design missteps.