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Cafe Pacifica

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Idler
Idler
First Reviewer
4 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
1
Review
4
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Editor Pick

Cafe Pacifica

  • January 9, 2006
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Idler from Poolesville, Maryland
Cafe Pacifica

Café Pacifica is a chic, intimate restaurant set in an attractive stucco building on San Diego Avenue in Old Town. Parking is something of an issue in Old Town, and this restaurant provides valet parking for $5, but we parked up a few blocks away, later thankful for the little constitutional our walk back to the car provided after the meal.

The décor of the restaurant can be described as hip beach casual, with romantic low lighting (actually, it was so dim I had a little trouble reading the menu), and an interesting choice of blues music playing discretely in the background, something like early Muddy Waters.

The waiters are suave pros. Dressed in white shirts, black pants, and ties, two waiters seamlessly handled the room we were seated in. Thankfully, they gave us lots of time to peruse the tantalizing menu.

After much deliberation, I ordered the special of the evening: escolar (a type of firm white fish I was unfamiliar with) encrusted with poppy seeds and a subtle curry sauce. It came with fingerling potatoes, baby arugula, and crispy won-ton "wraps"of beet, carrots, and cabbage cut into artistic wedges.

The first bite of the fish was one of those "WOW"moments. What a marriage of flavors! The escolar was very buttery tasting, firm, and flaky. The slight crunch of the poppy seeds and light curry seasoning were the perfect foil to the fish’s texture and flavor. I had ordered the recommended wine to go with this dish, a Viognier, and that, too, was a good marriage of flavors.

Jack didn’t order an entrée. Instead, he opted for a cup of freshly made clam chowder, an appetizer of crab croquets in a savory sauce, and a corn and blue crab salad served in a wonton bowl. The latter was a little too sesame tasting, we thought, overwhelming the delicate flavor of crab. Greg had a Caesar salad followed by bouillabaisse. A very generous portion of sourdough bread was served with our food, excellent for sopping up whatever sauce remained on our plates.

My entrée so impressed and intrigued me that I looked up "escolar" on the Internet after we returned to our hotel that evening. Much to my dismay, I found one of the top entries that popped up was a warning by the Food Standards Agency that escolar "if not prepared properly or if eaten in large quantities has a laxative effect causing stomach cramps and diarrhoea." Alarmed, I researched further and found that escolar had been dubbed the "Ex-Lax fish" by some critics. Whether I’m not sensitive to escolar’s "indigestible" oils or whether, as some maintain, the fish causes no distress if properly prepared, I’ll never know, but I experienced no aftereffects. Chances are, though, if I ate at Café Pacifica again, I’d make a more pointed inquiry about any dish I was unfamiliar with.

From journal Christmas in San Diego

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