What’s downtime like for the guy who cooks at the hottest new French restaurant in town? “Last week on my day off, I literally got a call saying, ‘The wall is on fire. What do I do?’” says Shannon Galusha, chef at Bastille in Ballard. Wow, sounds relaxing.

On top of that, there is fatherhood. Galusha (whose previous toque post was at now-shuttered Veil) has a 14-month-old son with wife Lynn. And someone has to feed the cats.

Here, a day off with chef Shannon Galusha.

Since I work 100-120 hours per week, my wife is basically a single mom. So whenever I have time off, I help out by pre-cooking food for her—lime-chicken Thai soup or smoked pork for tacos. Then there is my “Honey Do” list. I have to scoop the cat box, hang a baby gate, and of course clean the kitchen top-to-bottom.
I get up around 6 or 6:30am. The cats are hungry and walking all over my face. The other big thing is getting my son Jack breakfast, usually Kefir, a cultured milk drink. Then there are his cereal bars and fruit leathers in apricot or strawberry. We try to give him a lot of fruits and grains in the morning.
We all go run errands in Issaquah, we buu groceries at PCC or Trader Joe’s and stop by Home Depot. And during that time I probably get like 20 calls and 30 emails related to the restaurant.
Later, we cook. Sunday has traditionally been our night for dinner with friends. Lynn is a really good cook. The crowd favorites are usually “roach-coach” [slang for street vendors in Mexico] Pastori tacos or Oaxaca-style food. Pastori comes from the Yucatan peninsula. The Roach coaches there have gyro-like chicken rotating on a hanging spit with a big chunk of pineapple above, allowing the juice to drip down into the meat. We went to Isla Las Mujeres for our honeymoon, and ate at this roach coach every day. Finally I got up the guts to ask the guy about his chicken. He marinated it in beer, cinnamon, onion, and dried chiles. Then the chicken is braised up for a long time. When we make them, we do a heavily charred chicken that’s different, but good.
Another thing we like to do on Sundays is go to the Ballard farmers market. I always visit Ishmael at Turkish Lavash Bread Company. Jeremy Faber of Foraged and Found Edibles always has mushrooms and other seasonal finds—right now he has wild arugula and huckleberries. And I always buy flowers for my wife, usually Gerbera daisies with herbs mixed in.