Pacific Paradise Asian Bistro — Restaurant in Albuquerque

This restaurant used to be a Mexican seafood restaurant; I'm not sure when it changed hands and became Pacific Paradise. However, my husband and I were pleasantly surprised about the restaurant. Very nice decor inside with a Hawaiian theme. They have booths and tables. The servers are exceptional. We were greeted the minute we walked in and were sat at a table, as all the booths were taken up at the time.

They have a number of excellent dishes from several countries. The menu was five pages front and back and then there was also a sushi list that you could order from. They also offer a number of alcoholic drinks as well as sake.

The silverware is rolled up with a pair of nice black chopsticks. On the table, there was soy sauce and also a lighter salt soy sauce.

My husband and I could not decide what to order as everything looked great. We each did an appetizer and shared both of them, which our server was more than happy to help us with. Our lunch entree we got the Hawaiian crispy shrimp as well as the shrimp and asparagus. We also shared both of those they were delicious. In the end, we definitely wanted desert. They have fried ice cream, fried bananas, chocolate lava cake and a couple other items. We chose the fried ice cream and the fried bananas and split it between us. My husband preferred the fried ice cream over the fried bananas; however, I thought they were both very good and could not make a decision of which I liked better.

The servers were clean and neat. The inside of the restaurant was very clean and the lighting was wonderful. The restrooms were very nice. They had a baby changing table in the women's restroom. The only thing I did not like about the women's restroom was the low lighting. I needed some extra light as I took insulin and it was difficult to see well. However, the ambiance in the restrooms was really nice as well.

We definitely recommend Pacific Paradise and will be taking my husband's parents there soon. Great...

We tried Pacific Paradise on a weekday evening.

We were sat quickly and were greeted by our server, who was friendly. There’s both booth and table seating, all of which is indoors. There are menus for non-sushi items, then a 8.5x11” paper menu for sushi which the diner can mark with a pencil.

We each got a small cup of soup: the miso and a chicken and corn egg-drop. Both were bland and uninteresting; we’ve had better elsewhere. I’d give them a 2/5.

The Japanese steamed dumplings were good; we both decided we’d get them again if we returned. I’d give them a 4/5.

I wanted the coconut fried rice, but the coconut is the pre-shredded, dried, and bagged kind instead of fresh and seared, so I opted for the pineapple fried rice instead. It had a good savory-sweet flavor to it, and both the tofu (you can order whichever protein you want) and pineapple were finely chopped, which I enjoyed. I haven’t run across that in a Thai fried rice before, and I’ve had a lot of those dishes. I added raisins to the entree because otherwise the contents would have been pretty paltry with just eggs and the protein. I would have liked to have seen green onions, onions, cashews - anything - added to the mix. The flavor and serving size was a 4/5.

My dining companion got the crispy Hawaiian chicken and said he would not get it again. We both agreed it was bland. He gave it a 2/5.

Our server said anything on the menu can be made bespoke, and adding raisins to my dish was no issue. Some restaurants take umbrage at modified orders, but Pacific Paradise is fine with it.

Overall I’d give the restaurant a 3/5. The soup was bland, but my entree was flavorful, if lacking multiple ingredients. I’d give Pacific Paradise another try, but it wouldn’t be my...

Oh no! What happened here? Pacific Paradise used to be one of my favorite restaurants for Asian food in Albuquerque. I was so looking forward to eating there last weekend because I remembered they had the best soups, stir fry shrimp, wontons, etc. I didn't realize they are under new ownership from about a year ago and was blindsided by how poor the food is now. It went from one of the best in town to awful. Our party of three had to wait almost 45 minutes for a table. By the time we got sat it took another 20 minutes to get food.

We were informed by our excellent waitress that the kitchen was short staffed. I completely understand how it is because I used to work in the industry. By the way our server was absolutely excellent and delivered some of the best customer service she could under the circumstances. We left her a big tip because she was trying her absolute best!

I could go into many details about the food but I will just summarize that it was bad. The soup was room temp and not good like before, fried rice tasted like something from a high school cafeteria, the entrées were served on cold plates like from a salad bar, and the lettuce wraps appetizer was unbelievably bad. How do you mess up lettuce wraps? We sent them back.

Maybe they were just having an off night, but it was certainly sad to experience a really good restaurant go down in quality so much. I really hope they turn things around because I would love to try them again, even under the new ownership and given the...