Restaurant Review: Passionfish

This past Saturday, I had the chance to try out Passionfish, a restaurant offering Californian seafood fare that I read about in the Via magazine some time back. I happened to be in the Monterey area (again!) and thought that I would hunt down this place and give it a try.

Passionfish is located in downtown (if you can even call it that) Pacific Grove, on Lighthouse Ave. It doesn't look like much from the outside; I would say that it might have some character, at best. However, the food offered inside is another matter. The writer in Via gave it rave reviews -- saying that it's great food at inexpensive prices. The food is great, but the "inexpensive" part is a bit misleading. Well, for the quality and quantity of food that I got, I guess I might be paying a lot more elsewhere.

It seems like the restaurant is a pretty popular place. Fortunatly, we got there at 5pm, so the place was still fairly empty, and we didn't need a reservation. However, when we left around 7pm, the place was pretty full.

I got to try a bunch of different dishes... Pardon my slaughtering of the description. I'm doing the best I can based on memory. I just don't remember the names or the descriptions on the menu.
- Freshly baked (sourdough?) bread with some garlic cream/butter spread -- Truly evil combination.... we couldn't stop eating this!
- Seared ahi tuna with some wasabi slaw -- I (heart) tuna
- Crab and avocado salad with arugula and some citrus ginger vinaigrette -- Maybe a little too much vinaigrette, but it wasn't too salty... the crab and avocado was excellent
- Halibut with pesto sauce, and some noodles and veggies with a hint of coconut milk -- It was really, really fresh! Even better tasting than the hirame sashimi I've been eating at Sushi O Sushi. I didn't really need a knife to cut it.
- Sea scallops, along with some risotto on a bed of some bitter veggie -- So yummy and almost to-die-for. Sweet and juicy. The down side was that it was 3 scallops (and side risotto and veggies) for $23. It was almost as bad as the $20 that I once paid for 2 giant scallops at Summer Shack in Cambridge/Boston. It was really really good though, so I was still happy.
- Chamomile creme brulee -- At this point, I was starting to feel like I had a little too much food. The creme brulee was really good too, and probably too much for one person. You would need at least 2 or 3 people to handle this, since it's not that small.

We may have over-ordered a bit, since we were expecting the dishes to be tiny. However, their portions were pretty decent, so I was pretty full with just an appetizer and entree, and some bread of course. The food was very tasty and the fish was fresh. I think the quality/freshness of the fish was probably better than the sashimi-grade stuff you get at Japanese restaurants. The dessert was simply overkill. Again, I expected the dessert portion to be tiny, so I was pleasantly surprised. I would be happy if that were my last meal. =)

Passionfish is supposed to have a really good wine list, offering great wines with very little mark-up on the prices. However, we didn't feel like any alcohol then, so maybe next time. I don't rate restaurants and don't know how anyway, so I won't even try. The Zagat ratings for the food is 25 (out of 30), which I would have to agree with. I'd have to say that Passionfish is probably my favorite non-Asian restaurant in the Bay Area.