Cafe Pacific is an upscale seafood restaurant in the very affluent Highland Park Village shopping center in North Dallas. It has a very clubby and formal atmosphere, and reservations are essential. We arrived in plenty of time for our reservation, so we browsed around the outdoor shopping center before entering the restaurant.
Cafe Pacific specializes in seafood, so I wouldn't go there for a steak. There are many great steak places in Dallas. For seafood and chicken dishes on special occassions, Cafe Pacific is hard to beat, unless you are on a low to medium budget.
Cafe Pacific has a full bar, and we enjoyed drinks after we were promptly seated. The servers have an amazing level of attention to detail. They brought out unusual complementary fried julienned sweet potatos that were nice to snack on.
Their menu has a selection of appetizers ($5-$12), entrees ($14-$32), and desserts ($5). We started with great mixed green salads ($5). After that I had their Corn Crusted Snapper ($22), which is a huge piece of baked fish covered with corn breading and corn chowder, served with mixed vegetables (I also bought a side of asparagus), and it was great. My wife had filet of sole almondine ($20), which was another huge piece of baked fish garnished with almonds, served with green beans. Since it was a special occassion, we followed with desserts. I had a chocolate cake special ($7) and my wife had a key lime tart ($6) and both were very delicious.
Cafe Pacific is a very nice place for special occassions. The atmosphere is very formal, but our table was kind of small and not very private from conversations from the next tables. This allowed me to observe their baked sea bass being served. It is apparently a specialty, and looked incredible.
Cafe Pacific is located in the Highland Park Village shopping center (for the well-moneyed) at the southwest corner of Preston Road and Mockingbird in North Dallas. Their phone number is 214-526-1170.