The Blue Fish, a sushi restaurant that eventually grew to one of Dallas-Fort Worth’s biggest homegrown Japanese chains, has closed on Greenville Avenue in Dallas.

The restaurant opened at that spot in 1998, then as a sake bar modeled after the cool-kids spots from Los Angeles, The Dallas Morning News’ critic wrote a few months after its debut. Founders Julie Lee and her brother Alex Lee helped introduce Dallas audiences to sake — both the cloudy, unfiltered alcoholic drink as well as the hot, cheap stuff. (The Lees suggested drinking it cold, as experts still do, but a $1 deal on carafes of hot sake quickly made Blue Fish on Greenville Avenue a happy hour hot spot.)

The restaurant opened relatively early in Dallas’s relationship with raw-fish restaurants, and The Blue Fish served a mix of uncooked fish as well as hot dishes like edamame, teriyaki-sauced chicken breast and a shareable 2-pound fried catfish.

“The Blue Fish is quite a catch,” the late critic Dotty Griffith wrote in 1998.

The “hip Lower Greenville setting” earned The Blue Fish a spot on The News’ list of best new restaurants of 1998. A few others on that list remain open and are now stalwarts: Tei Tei Robata Bar, The Mercury and Al Biernat’s. Seems 1998 was quite a year in Dallas food.

The Blue Fish grew in North Texas, with restaurants on Greenville Avenue, on the Dallas North Tollway near Frankford Road, and in Irving, Carrollton and Allen. When I visited Breckenridge, Colorado, a few weeks ago, skiers wearing puffy coats and gloves made a steady entry into the Blue Fish there, a few blocks off of Main Street.

Today, two Blue Fish restaurants remain: in Allen and in Breckenridge. Those are owned by founder Julie Lee Osborn, who got married since she opened the original.

The other locations were sold in 2019, she confirmed.

For decades, Blue Fish had an iconic stainless steel interior and neon lights, a look called “techno-razzle” in a 2004 review. That was the era of tuna towers and raw yellowtail spiced with jalapeños.

By the 2020s, Japanese food in Dallas had changed dramatically. Omakase restaurants, or those with $165+ price tags and a fixed menu of a dozen courses or more, were starting to pop up. Case in point: By late 2024, just one restaurant in Dallas earned a Michelin star, and it was unaffiliated Japanese spot Tatsu.

The Blue Fish’s franchise owners opened a higher-end Japanese restaurant, Blue Maki in Carrollton, in 2023. The restaurant sells temaki, or handrolls, in addition to sashimi, crudo and rolls.

The Blue Fish, on the other hand, seemed emptier on Greenville Avenue in the past few years.

Representatives from the franchise company did not return an immediate request for comment on why the Greenville Avenue restaurant closed. The phone has been disconnected.

Founder Julie Lee Osborn said she has no relationship with the franchisees of the restaurant she started, but she has interest in taking over the lease from her original Blue Fish on Greenville Avenue. More to come on that.

The Blue Fish was at 3519 Greenville Ave., Dallas.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on X at @sblaskovich.