Lorna Yee Dines at Bastille On Opening Night

About a month ago, chef Shannon Galusha invited me over to Bastille for a sneak peek at the restaurant build-out. Oh, how far they’ve come. Last night, Bastille opened its glass doors for the first time to the public at 4:30 p.m. My husband and I were there by 4:34 p.m., and claimed two of the last seats at that fabulous hand-carved, 45-foot long zinc top bar. 

Now before I go any further, I want to lay out there that this is not a formal review, but a gentle preview of Bastille’s food. Seattle magazine's Food & Dining Editor, Allison Austin Scheff, gives every restaurant a grace period of about a month before a first visit, a chance for the back-of-house and the front-of-house to sync up, a chance for the cooks to get used to working with one another at their stations, a chance for the servers to figure out the ticketing system. And yes, perhaps some feel that kinks like these should’ve been worked out on friends and family a night, a night where the restaurant is closed to the public and the food is free, but those controlled situations are vastly different from flinging open your doors and having tickets arrive at random. For these reasons, I don’t often dine out at a restaurant on opening night, much less judge them on their performance. Suffice it to say that Bastille performed the way most restaurants do on their first night—the waits for food and drink were fairly lengthy, the service a little harried, but I expect the first-night jitters to disappear and the service to improve dramatically when the talented team there finds their footing.

From 4:30 to 6 p.m. each day, Bastille offers happy hour, with beer specials and small plates ranging from $3-$6. We started with an order of the lamb burger ($6), grilled medium-rare and served on an ultra-crisp, toasted English muffin (billed on the menu as a lavash sesame bun—which, I assume will change) with a delicious, robustly-flavored harissa sauce, two plates of tender, plump Taylor Shellfish mussels ($6) cooked in butter, champagne, and leeks (which came with the frites, made with Kennebec potatoes and sprinkled with grey salt), and a silky chicken liver pate sandwich ($5). With the exception of the frites, which arrived oddly pale, the food that arrived was downright impeccable, and heads-and-shoulders above in quality what most restaurants are normally serving during Happy Hour, let alone on their opening night. (The cocktails are not discounted at this time, but my two favorites were the Cerise and La Rive Gauche.)

For 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. (or until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays), Bastille serves dinner, a fairly extensive menu that runs the gamut from rooftop salads, to falafel sandwiches, to small plates like the incredible grilled octopus ($10) with argan-oil marinated chickpeas I saw going out to a few tables (and kicked myself for not ordering), to classics like French onion soup. Mains range from $14 artisanal pasta with petite peas and parmesan butter, to $22 for the soupe de poisson (fish stew) with tomato and saffron fumet.

We ordered two small plates, the duck leg confit with lentils and lardons ($11) and the crispy pork belly with summer pole beans ($9); then, two mains: the much-anticipated half-rotisserie chicken, spun in Galusha’s “Cadillac of French rotisseries” ($17), and the soup de poisson ($22, though the menu online currently bills it at $20.) I found both the small plates tasty and well priced, the summer pole beans being especially sweet and crisp, dressed in a light wholegrain mustard vinaigrette that was the perfect, bracing foil to a fattier cut of meat. The mains were lacking—the chicken dry and came with  a heavily salted (or over-reduced) gravy, the fish stew contained unopened shellfish. Both dishes were ones chef Galusha seemed especially excited about when I spoke to him earlier this month, and so I trust both will indubitably improve. (And to be fair, these two dishes are much more time-sensitive than the confit and the pork belly, and perhaps held a little too long in the chaos of what looked to be an over-burdened kitchen.)

Last night, there were no fewer than six or seven people in the Bastille dining room, live-tweeting their experience via Twitter. Some found the lengthy waits unforgivable for a restaurant charging full-price; some found certain dishes lacking. (A restauranteur later expressed his uneasiness at this new, by-the-second reporting of a restaurant’s flaws when it’s barely out the gate.)

And since this is my first preview for Seattle Magazine, I feel the need to set my standard—not a standard that I think all Twitterers or food writers should follow, mind you, but my own. A number of people have likely labored many hours over the past year before a restaurant opens, sacrificing time with family, friends, and any modicum of a normal routine in their lives. For that reason, I believe a little forgiveness goes a long way.

So with that said, if you’ve been anxiously waiting for Bastille to open, and are willing to overlook the inevitable missteps every new restaurant goes through, then by all means belly up to that zinc bar and order yourself a big platter of those Taylor Shellfish mussels. But if you’re the type of person who wants to experience Bastille when it’s firing from all cylinders, when the cooks and the service staff have had a chance to find its groove, then perhaps waiting a few weeks wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Either way, chef Galusha will have the best lamb burger in town waiting for you.

Look for Allison Austin-Scheff's review of Bastille in the November issue of Seattle magazine.