Ada C.
Yelp
i was surprised to have found this restaurant from the Miyako group so my friends and i were pretty interested and decided to give it a try. Frankly, El Pacifico was just like Mambo, food-wise and price-wise, but much more nicely decorated with big screen TV's, a full bar, and pub-like lighting. Located on Hillcroft by Renwick, its target customers were obviously the Hispanic.
The menu included a number of sushi rolls but not much in sashimi/ sushi selections. If you had seen the restaurant website, the menu posted online was outdated and NOT TRUE because the menu actually used at the restaurant was totally different as all items were marked up by $2.00 from Miso soup to seafood combo, and some items such as oysters on half shells and Yaki Udon (stir-fried udon noodles) were even missing! (Note: Raw oysters and Yaki Udon were some of the items that attracted me to the restaurant *sighs*)
Anyways, speaking of the foods and service, it was worth 2.5 to 3 stars overall. We order two seafood combos (3 items for $16.95 and 2 items for $11.95) served with toasts, fried rice and french fries. The shrimp and Tilapia tempura were good probably because I personally loved the crispy tempura batter a lot; however, the shrimp scampi was kinda dry (Mambo had done much better in the scampi). The shrimp fried rice and french fries on the sides were yummy! The grilled shrimp and fish on a friend's combo platter seemed just okay since he did not say anything about the foods (no compliment or complaint). The best thing that everyone of us enjoyed was the seafood cocktail with a crab leg (small bowl for $7.95) that was very delicious and well presented :)
A girlfriend ordered two sushi rolls that looked pretty good and the sushi roll menu was exactly like Miyako's, meaning that they were nothing special or impressive. She also wanted the chopped scallop sushi but the server said something like the sushi bar had no sushi or something like that.....I got myself the Baked Miso Tilapia served with avocado maki rolls and fried rice & veggie, of which everything tasted not bad. But, my entree was delayed by at least 30 minutes, and finally came to our table while my friends were almost done with their foods.....so, i assumed it took 30 minutes just to bake that one little piece of fish?! GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!
Service was a serious problem here! First of all, most of the servers spoke very limited English. They were nice young ladies trying to do the jobs right by coming over to our booth a couple of times asking if everything was fine; yet, when we actually asked for something, they did not understand what they were asking for and just brought us the wrong things repeatedly. For example, i asked for Tempura dipping sauce, and this lady brought me some Ranch and said it was the only sauce she could find in the kitchen (ehhhh......OK, that's fine. i liked Ranch, too, but it just didn't really go well with the Tempura....) And then we asked another lady for Wasabi for the sushi, but she brought over the Teriyaki sauce!! We had to throw out all kinds of simple adjectives to describe what Wasabi looked like and Yesh! she finally got it and brought us the right thing, a cube of Wasabi paste. Then, we asked for a dipping saucer for the Wasabi and soy sauce; to make our request more understandable, we pointed to one of the saucers on the table and asked if she could bring us another saucer, but she misunderstood our request and got us extra Teriyaki sauce.
Lastly, we asked the server to split the check, but she did not split it right so we asked if she could fix it and redo the checks; however, she said no, she didn't wanna do that, because if she had to ask the manager to redo the checks, the manager might think she was stupid (huh?!?!? alright, whatever! so, we had to split the checks on our own).
I don't see myself going back to El Pacifico. If I want inexpensive seafood, imma head to Mambo just 2 blocks down the street on Hillcroft x Bellaire. Mambo serves better foods and has smarter servers :)
