Pacifico - New Haven, CT

Pacifico in New Haven, CT - one of two restaurants I visited this past week, here's the review:

The evening started off a bit strange, a Monday night in New Haven, CT (Yale), but the place looked deserted. In fact, one of my compatriots even asked whether the place was open, it looked very dark from the outside.

Anyways, we entered the place and it was fairly empty - but have no fear, management did not anticipate that at all (they even made it two stories!). Fairly empty also mean practically no one at the bar (I counted one person, I don't know if that includes the bartender). So we walk upstairs and have a seat at our table for 10. The wait staff was kind and we began our orders.

I'm no wine connoisseur, but Marcelo from Epicurean Musings is. He placed an order for a fruity non-Chardonnay, and what do they bring, well, I'm actually not going to answer that, you know the purpose of this blog is to speak the truth, right?

So we end up ordering some appetizers for the table: fresh Oysters, spicy Guacamole, Beef Empanadas, and Lobster Quesadillas.

The Oysters were a hit, for me at least, and especially when combine with their red sauce - I didn't get to ask what it was. The Empanadas were also good, though I felt the beef lacked a little bit of flavor - Pacifico probably thought they were high class and could use "premium beef"....that usually means no fat, which in turns means limited taste. But, it was still "ok".

Then there was the guacamole. Ugh. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as delivered (soon to be a recurring theme here). Spiciness was no where close to the taste of the guac, it was rather bland. In fact, the bottled water I'm drinking now has more spiciness than the guac!!

Then there was the Lobster Quesadilla. It wasn't as bad as the Guac, but it was too cheesy and creamy, and (of all things) too much guacamole. I don't abhor these things per se, but the level of those accoutrements made me think they were trying to compensate for something. They were. The lack of lobster. The quality of lobster was good, but it wasn't there in quantity. I guess that's a typical trick the restaurant biz does. "Let's fool them with the limited amount of specialty in the dish and add more cheap stuff". I can't be fooled with that.

Drinks and appetizers = 5-6.5

I then ordered the Chilean Sea Bass. Originally it was supposed to be a full fish, but I requested them to filet it and pan fry.

Admittedly, I'm not a chef, but I do cook a lot, and fatty white fish is something I'm pretty good at (you'll get the point in a minute).

I got my perfectly filleted fish with a goat cheese salad on the side of the plate (rather odd, I would have probably placed the fish on the salad, not have a side of salad). I then looked at the food more carefully. Both myself and Marcelo, who on my right, got the sea bass. Something looked awfully weird. It was PERFECTLY filleted. I mean perfectly. How does that happen on both of them. There were no tears or other signs of manual knife skills in place. How could Pacifico afford should a good chef (or sous chef) when no one even comes to the place on a Monday (and also when the food isn't that good, really...read on). I don't think it was ever a whole fish, they just plan on most people asking for it filleted (I wouldn't call myself a conspiracy theorist, but more like a realist).

The salad was good, not too oily, the goat cheese was beautifully warm and blended with the greens quite nicely.

But, ugh...the sea bass. Really? Super bland. There was no taste to the fish, which is surprising given how fatty a meat it is. In fact, the rub the put on the fish and oils in which they cooked it made the Sea bass taste almost like vegetable oil. Practically no taste. I further checked my senses when I proceeded to the extremes of the fish, where there was more skin and less meat. I would have expected a stronger showing of flavor there due to the amount of time and soaking the skin would have compared to the meat.

Ugh. Quite frankly, I can't even talk about this anymore it was so disappointing.

In fact, I think it was so bad, not one person in the group of 10 even got dessert.

So my rating, you ask? Appetizers: 5-6, Main Course 4.5-5.5, Service, 5.

Total Rating: 5-5.5

Good eatings all