Fish Flushed

Baking Fish leaves its Paramount locale

Comments (0) By Mark Stuertz Thursday, Apr 19 2001

Fish restaurant, the nationally lauded downtown seafood spot that businessman Steven Upright and chef Chris Svalsen launched some four years ago in what was then the Paramount Hotel, is now a floater, done in by hot air. According to Upright, one of the three air conditioner compressors on the building's roof burned out, putting a severe strain on the remaining pair. It eventually blew out the whole system, a scenario which has played out over the last three years, he says. People don't like to sweat while eating fish, so he closed Fish and held his breath waiting for the air conditioning to be repaired as promised by April 13. It didn't happen, so with his cash flow choked off, he put Fish out of his misery. "You can only take so many right hooks, and after a while you want to stop bleeding," Upright says. "I just want to get out of here and make the horror story stop." He also wants a new Fish home with an air conditioner and a workable thermostat. Upright says he'll move all of his equipment and furnishings out of the hotel over the next few weeks. He's in the process of raising funds to relaunch Fish (with Marc Haines as chef, he hopes) in another part of the metroplex--but most assuredly not in downtown Dallas--sometime next fall. Meanwhile the 75-year-old hotel, which was renamed The Hotel Lawrence, is in the grip of a $4 million renovation begun last fall by the building's new owners, Big D Hotel Associates of Annapolis, Maryland. "You can describe it in two different scenarios," Upright says derisively of the renovation. "One is urban and the other is country. The urban one is the emperor has no clothes, and the rural saying is somebody has put a dress on that monkey. Now it looks pretty, but it's still a monkey ain't it?"

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