Vancouver's best-kept restaurant secrets

Directly from the Bastille Press Release:

OUT OF THE RECESSION COMES INNOVATIVE NEW GROWTH IN OLD BALLARD
Bastille Café & Bar at forefront of growing national trend of rooftop gardens

The New York Times recently reported on the trend to create rooftop gardens in urban areas where space is at a premium. Chefs, schools, community organizations and private citizens are greening their roofs and growing local produce for themselves and their communities, all above the hustle and bustle of city life.

Restaurateurs and business partners, James Weimann (Pesos, May Restaurant and Lounge, Talarico’s, Triangle Tavern, El Camino) and Deming Maclise (Caffè Fiorè), have installed Seattle’s first commercial rooftop garden on the roof of Bastille Café & Bar located at 5307 Ballard Avenue which opens on Monday, June 29, 2009.  The restaurant phone number is (206) 453-5014 and the website will be located at www.bastilleseattle.com.  Bastille Café & Bar will be open 7 days a week from 4:30 pm – 10:00 pm., with dinner service beginning at 5:30 pm.  Brunch will be served on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 am-3:00 pm, and late-night dining will be available until 1:00 am.

Bastille’s roof has been transformed and seriously reinforced to contain a 2,500 sq ft. working rooftop garden, 500-square foot of which is currently being used. A garden on the roof will provide the freshest, most local produce a restaurant could hope for, and sourcing local food helps keep food costs low, a necessity in today’s economic climate.

The inaugural harvest from Bastille’s 12 raised beds include two varieties of arugula, four to five varieties of lettuce, chives, dill, fennel, basil, tarragon, chervil, lovage, peppercress, rosemary and lavender.

With Bastille, Weimann and Maclise have combined their extensive expertise to create a restaurant that blends value-oriented, appetite-satisfying French comfort food, with sustainable, fresh and local produce - two things that Seattleites value in a dining experience.

The current garden at 12 beds and 500 square feet contains 15 yards of soil that weighs 15,000 pounds.

Bastille expects to triple the roof top garden space within the next year

The garden is maintained by Colin McCrate of Seattle Urban Farm Company (urbanfarmco.com)

Bastille’s menu includes Salade a Toit (Rooftop greens in hazelnut vinaigrette, $8) featuring exclusively rooftop garden-grown produce

Executive Chef Shannon Galusha has culinary experience from the French Laundry in Yountville, California, Campagne restaurant in the Pike Place Market, Michel Rostang’s Rue Balzac in Paris, France, and Seattle’s Veil restaurant.

The building that houses Bastille is 85 years old and was a Machinist shop for 50 years. It has been re-imagined as a French café and bar replete with reclaimed found object décor sourced from Paris, Chicago and the Pacific Northwest.

Bastille Café & Bar will provide nearly 60 new jobs to the community ranging from hourly dishwashers to management level salaried positions.

Directly from the Pressure Cooker Press Release

I’m writing to let you know about the opening of an excellent documentary at the Northwest Film Forum on July 10th. PRESSURE COOKER, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker is the story of Three seniors at Philadelphia’s Frankford High, who find an unlikely champion in Culinary Arts teacher Wilma Stephenson. A legend in the school system, Mrs. Stephenson’s hilariously blunt boot-camp method is validated by years of scholarship success that’s taken countless students from the city’s working-class neighborhoods to the top culinary schools in the country. And under her fierce direction, the usual distractions of high school are swept aside as Erica, Dudley and Fatoumata prepare to achieve beyond what anyone else expects from them.