Best Restaurants with a Happy Hour in Dana Point / Monarch Beach

First time visiting Jack's for a birthday treat for lunch on a sunday afternoon. Service and greeting was excellent. The lunch prices and cocktail prices we're very reasonable and our food choices were delicious. Will definitely be back.

The location high atop Dana Pt Harbor was breathtaking with all the Christmas decorations glowing in the dark night sky. The atmosphere was very nice because we ate out on the patio and the gas heaters kept us toasty. The restaurant was super busy but with our reservation we didn’t have a wait. The appetizer of calamari was delicious and different than we’ve ever had anywhere else. The main dishes were a bit disappointing in that the seafood a la mere of black linguini and seafood was disappointing in that the seafood appeared to have all been cooked prior to the order being placed … it was dry and overcooked. The salmon was slightly overdone. The chocolate lava cake is definitely worth ordering ahead of time … yummy!

Great restaurant experience. Food is excellent. Been going here for years with groups and it never disappoints.

Christmas or New Year dinners at a restaurant are, by their very nature (i.e. a time everyone wants off and demand outstrips supply) going to be a compromise scenario. The experience here was surprisingly uncompromised. The service was fantastic, the appetizers (clam chowder, spinach salad, artichokes) were uniformly wonderful and generously proportioned, main courses were very good as well, although the prime rib wasn’t quite as well seasoned as one might expect, it too was cooked properly and properly proportioned. Don’t read that as a complaint, not on Christmas, nope, that was a minor compromise that did not diminish from a wonderful experience.

Absolutely amazing food, we were a group of 5 and we shared meals, everything we ordered was fantastic, especially the house made lobster ravioli !! My only suggestion would be to have a more extensive wine list, the live music was fabulous, really added to the ambiance