Pacifico Pizzeria Ristorante

Meeting up with Whipping Girl for lunch in Downtown usually means good eats. Think of it. We could practically go to any restaurant in Downtown. That's quite the selection. However, it didn't work out this time around. Typical Vancouver weather. A torrential downpour of sorts kiboshed our grandiose plans for terrific eats. Rather, we simply went somewhere closeby to her office. We settled on Pacifico Pizzeria located in the former Downtown location of Lombardo's. For a lunch hour, the place was surprisingly empty. Was it the rain? Or was it some other reason? We would soon find out...

To get a sense of the menu, we decided to get 2 of the pizza lunch specials (which comes with a choice of mini-pizza with salad or soup). The first was the Margherita. When it arrived, we realized that it was not classic Neapolitan style pizza. Generally, that would not be an issue if the pizza was good for what it is, yet it was pretty disappointing. The crust was dry and tasteless, while the tomato sauce was pretty bland. We kept looking at each other in amazement. For a pizza joint, this was not exactly what we were expecting. Hey, maybe the Salsiccia would be better. After all, there was spicy Italian sausage, peppers and red onions at play. Well, it didn't turn out as we had hoped. It was also pretty mild considering all the toppings. Combined with the same flavourless dry crust, we didn't end up eating much of it. We really didn't even feel like packing it up to go.


Lastly, we had the Chicken Parmigiana with linguine from the regular menu. This was relatively more successful than the pizzas. The chicken was dry with a crisp exterior. The tomato sauce was light and very mild. As for the linguine, it was tossed in pomodoro sauce which was not bad being fresh, yet mild once again. Well, if you have been paying attention, that pretty much summed up our meal - uninspired flavours. We were actually pretty surprised how mediocre the food turned out to be. Maybe we're getting spoiled by all the new dynamic Neapolitan-style pizza joints opening up in town.

The Good:
- Comfortable open dining space
- The service we got was pretty good

The Bad:
- Food lacked flavour
- Pizza crust is bland and dry