A new course for downtown

KIRKLAND

For years, it was called the Happy Clam. Then it was Lenny's for a while, named after former Sonic basketball coach Lenny Wilkens. But it was pizza that finally made a success of the restaurant space on Kirkland Avenue.

The pizza was offered by Davinci's, which opened in 1989 and soon became a staple of downtown Kirkland, with an outdoor patio filled to capacity all summer and an indoor bar filled all year.

Now it's over.

Davinci's is gone.

By mid-June, a new restaurant is expected to be operating there, with a whole new approach.

The Marina Park Grill will still be owned by Mike Brown, but instead of pizza and an interior decor based on swirly gobs of paint that could safely be called unusual, the restaurant will offer upscale seafood aimed at direct competition with nearby bistros such as the Crab Cooker and Anthony's Homeport.

By July or August, what had been the nightclub part of Davinci's also will be gone, replaced by a Mexican bar and restaurant known as the Marina Cantina.

For an operation that has been there 11 years - a lifetime in the restaurant business - the changes are substantial and maybe even a little sad, as once-glittering disco balls swing forlornly in the shut-down bar and the dining room that had served countless pepperoni and mushroom pizzas instead is filled with sawdust.

Brown says it's all part of getting older and having the city change.

"Nightclubs are really fickle," said Brown.

The pizzas were good, but it was the nightclub that made it all work.

"We did great in the summer, but the nightclub was what carried us," Brown said.

He still has a plaque on the wall of his office given by a now-defunct Eastside weekly newspaper that named Davinci's its "favorite singles bar" in 1993. But along with the buzz of the good times came changes.

"Kirkland used to be a funky little town," reminisced Brown, where people 20 and 25 years old would live while they got started.

"Now they can't afford to live here," he said, and the restaurant site at 89 Kirkland Ave. has found itself surrounded by $1 million condominiums.

Besides that, Brown, 49, said, "I got old. I didn't need that club stuff anymore."

He also opened a steakhouse, 21 Central, a block away on Central Way, with lavish woodwork, ritzy table settings and valet parking.

As a result, Davinci's closed, the interior was gutted, exquisite furnishings were found at a Seattle restaurant that had closed, and a full-scale redo began.

One of the focal points of the redecoration arrived recently from New York: a 26-foot-long art-deco bar dating from the 1930s that will grace a wall of the Marina Park Grill.

Once the renovation is complete, the work will move to the old nightclub, where Ricardo Jimenez, 17 years in the business at such places as Daniel's Broiler, will be the chef.

The summer haven of the outdoor eating area on Kirkland Avenue will be kept, Brown said.

And if it all works out, fancy seafood will prove as successful as fancy pizza.

Peyton Whitely's phone message number is 206-464-2259. His e-mail address is pwhitely@seattletimes.com

Shop Talk appears on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month.