Pacific Seafood BBQ House

213 Lonsdale Street 

Melbourne, VIC 3000

So I woke up one morning with a hankerin’ for some tofu and roast meat, aka the staples of Cantonese food. And instead of trekking out to South Yarra, I decided to finally give the city branch of Pacific Seafood BBQ House a shot.

Though by and large the same restaurant, the CBD branch essentially the abridged version of the South Yarra restaurants, favouring stuff-on-rice/noodles and Hong Kong-styled cafe meals, instead of share dishes (though they have some of those too). Oh and they gave us our complimentary tea in tankards! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Mixed Roast on Rice ($12) - BBQ Sweet Pork/Roast Pork

Mixed Roast on Rice ($12) - BBQ Sweet Pork/Roast Pork

We got the best of both worlds with the Mixed Roast on Rice ($12), served haphazardly with a side of garlic-blanched vegetables. The BBQ sweet pork was succulent and gleamed with a sticky glaze; the roast pork on the other hand could’ve been a bit more tender, and wasn’t as fat and crisp as the one we had at the South Yarra branch but hey, roast pork. 

I can eat a lot of tofu, even when I’m not eating much of anything else. Ordered as both a stand-alone dish and a side to the roast meats, we dug eagerly into the Deep Fried Bean Curd with Five Spices Chilli ($18), which wasn’t so much flavoured with five-spice as copious amounts of fried garlic and onion. The tofu was tender and the seasoning intoxicatingly fragrant, but the batter, whilst crisp, got quite cloying after a while, especially in combination with the caramelised garlic. But then again, I doubt this dish was designed to be shared between two people.

As weird as this may sound, I actually really liked the vibe this restaurant carried. Though they played incorrigibly bad pop music in the background, and the decor was predictably bare-bones, I really enjoyed the casual, relaxed atmosphere. It reminded me of a place where high school kids in Hong Kong might gather for a quick meal after a long study session, even though I have experienced none of that firsthand. Except for the study; I’ve been doing an awful lot of study recently and I’m not even at uni anymore.

Rating: 12.5/20 – quick and easy.

This rating reflects my personal experience at the time of visit.