Plumbing, Sushi and Maple Trees

Up on 12th Avenue, near Pine, there used to be this plumbing shop.

A polished, latrine hardware store, of sorts. It was housed in one of my favorite buildings on my hill: a historic white dove of a building with wide, sparkling windows nestled between taller and more modern sorts. It looked confident it it's skin; she had aged well.

The old Dawson Plumbing building.

Quite a few months ago I saw the Dawson Plumbing sign had been taken down, and fresh construction spastically commenced. I almost cried because somewhere in me I always thought I might open something in that precious pale spot someday. The building was emptied, gutted, cleansed, and birthed a most unlikely child named Momiji, a sushi restaurant. The owner is Steven Han, the same entrepreneur who started a few belltown sushi spots.

Momiji

I ate at Momiji (Japanese for "maple trees") for the first time last night, ready to not be impressed. Maybe it was the fact that my dining companions were bubbling newlyweds, or because I was famished and the rolls were massive and unabashedly odd.

Maybe I was charmed seeing they replaced the rear parking lot with a glass-walled Kyoto garden,

or because Yuri Kinoshita's woven paper lighting installations hugged and curved along the wall and made me feel like I was floating in a basket.

Maybe it was the translucent white salmon that melted away like butter under a black sunspray of tobiko.

Whatever it was, I had arrived mourning the copper pipes of the plumbing co. and left content and praising a meal worth having again. soon.