Pacific Seafood BBQ House

Ph: (03) 9826 3838; Shop 1, 210 Toorak Rd, SOUTH YARRA 3141

chinese-seafood, $$ -
Open sun-Thu 11am-11pm fri-sat 11am-11.30pm; Licensed, BYO, Corkage $6 bottle; AE DC MC V, Seats inside 120
Chef Raymond Tang (7-11-07) Owner Gabriel Chan & Nam Lai (7-11-07)

Mietta's Review
This is an offshoot of Pacific House at 240 Victoria St Richmond (9427 8225). Like its elder sister it comes in the plain laminex version - functional, not flas, though it is a little smarter than it's sibling. But the food is what one comes for. Excellent Cantonese cooking with live fish, scallops and crustaceans dragged kicking from the tanks presented at the table and dispatched to the kitchen to re-appearsucculently steamed flavoured with ginger and soy. Prices are very reasonable.

Other published opinions

The Age Cheap Eats 2008 "No room? Of course there's room. Elbows in as the waiters nimbly roll out a circular tabletop to create more seating"

Age Good Food Guide 2008 Score: 13/20 "The 'brand' might have started downmarket on bustling Victoria Street but this lively South Yarra branch of Pacific House takes things up another notch with better produce, better decor and even a licence to serve alcohol"

The Age Cheap Eats 2007 "Crikey, it's Iron Chef South Yarra, cooking from a menu of 200 items for 100 people at a time. Burn a hole in your gold card ordering the mud crabs and lobsters that wave from the tanks on the back wall, or fill up cheap on generous entrees such as deep-fried eggplant stuffed with squeaky-fresh prawns, salty duck sang choy bao, or juicy scallops spiked with ginger and spring onion."

The Age Cheap Eats 2006 This place gets so busy it can literally be a struggle to get in the door. Superb seafood's the draw, either ordered off the menu or selected live from the tanks.

The Age Good Food Guide 2006 score 13/20 "In just a few years, this younger sibling of Victoria Street's Pacific House has made itself extremely popular with its no-nonsense BYO policy, its high turnover of fresh ingredients and an atmosphere of unrestrained feasting. Once you've climbed over the crowd at the door, relax with a soothing bowl of complimentary lotus soup and consider the endless options."

Herald Sun Stephen Downes 3/05/05 score 10/20 "The South Yarra version of Pacific Seafood BBQ House serves variable and hurried Cantonese tucker. Some of it is very good; other dishes so-so. Service tends to be similar. A limited wine list is very well-priced, and three whites and four reds are available by glass. (Two points have been deducted for the paper napkins.)"

The Age Good Food Guide 2005 "Pacific House, just over 12 months old and easily the best of a rare few, continues to pack them in, decimating dozens of ducks and raiding Bass Strait of giant crabs as it goes. Seafood is the superstar"

The Age Cheap Eats 2005 "THIS densely packed place boasts a bewilderingly long menu, further lenghtened by specials written in Chinese on colourful posters. Forget most of it and focus on the seafood"

The Age Cheap Eats 2004,Somewhere really special,'Ordered chaos a la Hong Kong pervades the newest Pacific House,a spacious upgrade of the Richmond original,with blue carpets,mirrored walls and sleek timber furniture.Pac House's mammoth menu covers the weird and the wonderful'

AGFG 2004, score 14/20, wide selection of vegetarian dishes, two courses for $25 or less

The Age, Agenda, 11/4/04,John Lethlean,'What you get are getting is super,big flavour food-particularly seafood-and wine prices that make bringing your own a marginal proposition by the time you consider corkage.'

Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide Australia 2004, Good vegetarian options,'It's a big noisy place with utilitarian fittings and tableware, a line of glossy roasted birds hanging in the window and live seafood tanks at the rear...pile in for well-rendered standards and lunch specials...Whatever you order will arrive quickly and without fuss.'

The Age, Sunday Life, 7/12/03, John Lethlean

The Age, Epicure, 9/9/2003, John Lethlean, Score 15/20

The Age, Sunday Life, 15/6/2003, Eat Streets, John Lethlean