(Image: @makotz via Instagram)

There was a time when Makoto Kimoto’s family of Japanese restaurants and bars was a close-knit, Capitol Hill affair.

It looks like the family is getting ready to spread out.

After the late 2020 pandemic closure of Kimoto’s Suika on E Pine, your hopes for his next project finding a home within walking distance on the Hill will have to shift. You’ll need to take a ferry to visit Hi Life.

The restaurateur announced the new “chopstick stand” project this week is under construction and preparing to open on Bainbridge Island.

Last September, CHS reported the sad news that Suika had lost its lease on E Pine. That pandemic-tainted year started with the birth of Suika’s daytime-focused sibling Rondo on Broadway. Tamari Bar, meanwhile, was born across the street from Suika in early 2018. Both Rondo and Tamari Bar live on.

The Suika space, meanwhile, is being lined up for a new home for a transformed, more music focused Capitol Loans as it makes way for new “packaging free” grocery The Naked Grocer.

In his post, Kimoto says the new place and his existing Capitol Hill joints are also hiring “for more new projects and challenges.”

We’ll need to find out more about what else Kimoto has planned for the Hill, his plans for Hi Life, and his connection to Bainbridge Island. His Instagram feed reveals sportfishing as a growing pastime for the entrepreneur so, if nothing else, the new venture will sometimes put him across the Puget Sound closer to Olympic Peninsula rivers. In a portion of his announcement in Japanese, Kimoto pitches the opportunity to “work hard and play hard in Washington, the best environment in the wilderness.”

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