Pacific Lighthouse Restaurant

Worse is 1 to Best is 5Food: 4.5Service: 3Wait Time: 4Cleanliness: 3.5Atmosphere: 4Price: 30-40 average per personParking: YesPayment: cash & credit cards Overall: 4 out of 5, highly recommended to try

I was a bit scared to try on Xmas, given some other reviews, but I was super happy with the service, value, and delicious variety of food! It took a bit long to get our orders out but they were pretty full, and we'd ordered a LOT. If you're familiar with dimsum and understand their "system", it makes sense. We did over-order (a group of 10) and they graciously accepted our request to halt the last remaining dishes, taking them off the bill. Bonus for being one of the few dimsum places you're able to make a reservation for a group!

The dim sum was pretty good, not stellar but very good. Some of the skins on the steamed dumplings were kind of thick and the soup dumplings were not worthwhile as they were mushy and broke easily spilling the soup. But everything else was very good, the taro puffs, the siu mai, pea sprouts shrimp dumplings, the pork rolls wrapped in tofu skins, to mention a few. The dumplings and the servings were very large, which was nice.This restaurant sits on the marina with a beautiful view of the water and the boats. It is truly a lovely place to eat. The service was good in terms of the servers, but the manager is kind of grumpy and abrupt. A great thing about this place is it's huge parking lot with ample parking. This is a nice place to bring a group of people because the setting is so nice.

Beautiful location with parking! You order by checking off a menu and giving it to the server. Pretty solid dim sum, comes out fresh and hot. Workers here are nice but can peer pressure you to get some dishes lol. Nonetheless we had a good time here and the food was delicious!

I've come here once for a dinner party and another time for dimsum. The location is a bit hidden away but this allows it to have a large parking lot and a nice view of the water between alameda and oakland. The place is especially nice during the day since they have large windows inside for a nice view and ample amount of natural sunlight. The interior is fairly large which allows it to be a nice spot for large events.As for the food, I would say that most of it is fairly average overall. The dimsum comes out nice and hot with some items tasting great such as their har gow while others felt slightly lacking such as their tripe. Their dinner banquet food was pretty good overall. I enjoyed their fried shrimp balls and sea bass quite a bit. For the area, it's a solid banquet spot.

No matter how delicious the food was, it cannot make up for terrible service. We came in and had a free 1/2 chicken coupon and ordered in addition 4 entrees. We were promptly seated and waited and waited. We presented our coupon to the waitstaff and our order was taken along righ the coupon. I asked for a pot of hot water as the caffeine in the hot tea keeps me awake at night. The remainder of our desk had hot tea. My hot water never showed up. In addition we wanted cold water too and when we asked for a refill the gentleman in the suit rolled his eyes and reluctantly refilled our water glasses. The wait staff came by again and asked if we had the chicken coupon and again I told them they took it with the order. When our bill came, I pointed out we were charged for the half chicken. She took the bill back and now a new man brings the bill back with just a total amount. With nothing ever noted about removing the charge for the 1/2 chicken. When I asked him he yells back that he took it off and uses his had to shoo me away.

Went for a wedding. Didn't like any of the food provided..I like the common, "regular" Chinese food like chow mein and broccoli beef, so all those fancy seafood dishes were not for me. I ordered chicken pan fried noodle - it cost me $25. The most expensive Chinese food I've had. It was just chicken and mushroom..wish it was the regular veggies like carrots, broccoli, etc. It was a big portion and good for sharing. Parking lot is small and the spaces are pretty tight. I'm from out of town so it was a journey to get here. It had nice views of the marina, but they blocked the seating by the windows off when I came. To me, that defeats the purpose of the place.. I was disappointed and wouldn't return for a regular visit.

I've been to Pacific Lighthouse maybe 6 or 7 times previously for lunch and dinner events. This time, my husband and I were having dinner with 8 friends (4 couples). We pre-ordered our 10 dishes with the restaurant. However, there were lots of traffic issues going on in the Bay Area. The big one for us was that the Alameda tube was closed down (Webster Street entrance) due to an accident in the tunnel. We had to re-route to get to 23rd Street to get to Alameda...along with everyone else so the traffic just crawled. It took 1 hour 40 minutes from Oakland Chinatown Webster Street to arrive at the restaurant.All of us do not live in Alameda. So while we were waiting for everyone to arrive, we were asked if we'd like to have the house soup. We said yes. Afterwards, a few friends said the soup was not complimentary the way it is at other Chinese restaurants. It turned out that the soup cost us $30. I feel the waiter should have told us up front that the house soup was not complimentary as I'm sure he knows most Chinese restaurants don't charge for the house soup so most customers would assume it was free. Otherwise, we might have wanted to order a different soup from the menu.Out of the dishes we ordered, I liked the Peking duck, salt & pepper chicken wings, salted fish with pork patty, pea sprouts with garlic, dry saute string beans, pan fried noodles with pork, mushrooms, and bean sprouts, cod fish with black bean sauce, and beef cubes with XO sauce. I didn't eat the saute oysters with ginger/scallion as I don't like oysters. I also didn't care for the salted eggs pumpkin. The pumpkin is okay. I just don't like the salted eggs that coated the pumpkin. Regarding the salted fish pork patty, it was delicious but the pork patty was on the tough side instead of being tender.Our group felt there should have been more cod fish in the dish. They also felt the same way about the oysters which they said had too much onions. Otherwise, the food portion of the other dishes fed all 10 of us. The dishes were all single order.The price was $75 per couple which included tax and tip. It would have been $70 if the soup wasn't added. We all felt the price of dinner was reasonable.Considering the size of the restaurant, there weren't very many patrons for a Friday night. There were maybe 10 tables filled at most. The restaurant has maybe up to 60 tables in the 2 main rooms.

Not the best but not the greatest. Yes, there are some days where service is really lacking but for the most part, they hold themselves down pretty well. They have such a big space that's good for venues such as birthdays or weddings. One of my favorite dishes has to be the fried lobster pieces paired along with their noodles or their soups!

Came here for a large birthday dinner last night and everyone was happy with the food and the view! We had one of the standard banquet menus and they were very generous with the portions. I believe the banquet menu is supposed to serve 10 - we had 9 hungry adults at our table and everyone was very full by the end of dinner and there was still a lot of leftovers to take home. A couple of my favorites from the menu - Guilin Deep Fried Shrimp Ball (super yummy), Braised Whole Abalone With Shitake Mushrooms (always a favorite and the flavor was good!), Smoked Sea Bass (they were very generous with the portions on this one), and Sun Dried Scallop Egg White Fried Rice (also very generous with the portions)! The food came out pretty quickly. I see a lot of reviews saying the service is terrible but the times I've been here, we've had no issues. The waiters have been friendly and responsive! Also parking is easy because there's the lot right outside!