Well, that was fast.

After just over a year with the Seattle Weekly, critic Jason Sheehan announced today that he will be leaving town.

"Soon enough, I’ll be pointing my nose east," wrote Sheehan on the Weekly’s Voracious blog, "and doing something I swore I’d never do: Going home again."

Despite his formidable knowledge of food and dining, Sheehan’s brash style, widely noted for being a rollicking hoot at its best (as in his excellent recent review of Din Tai Fung in Bellevue) but also overly autobiographical in spots, was at times a tricky match with circumspect Seattle. The critic endured his own fair share of criticism during his tenure at the Weekly.

Sheehan addressed these dissenters generally in his goodbye post: "For you haters? I’m going to miss each and every one of you most of all. You kept things interesting. You stood as proof, for better or for worse, that Seattle has a live and vibrant food scene full of both strong opinions and half-literate dimwits."

Love him or hate him, Sheehan has certainly kept things interesting in his own right. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from him in the future. The guy has a way of making himself heard.