Guu Garden

I go to Guu regularly and am a fan. Unfortunately this is our second time that was ridiculously disappointing.
It took about 15 minutes before we saw a server. We had to call her over and she gave us a ‘what?’ Bad day maybe.
Food came and it was disappointing. The lobster croquets had no lobster, the salmon was over seasoned, and our French toast was soggy and raw. We were told the whole batch of French toast would be like that, so it’s probably not made to order or fresh. I don’t know who thought it would be OK to serve that…
We constantly had to ask for service and no-​one came around. Everything from missing napkins, cutlery, to the bill — we had to ask for it all and each time took a long time…
We weren’t the only ones this night that looked frustrated either…

Lemme start by saying that this would have been a 4 star to 5 star review — the food here is reliable. Always know what your gonna get. It’s good.
BUT…The service today was awful. Non existent. Kinda brutal actually.
They messed up our order twice, I just kept the dishes. What’s the point telling them they brought the wrong dish. No screaming hello today or goodbye. Didn’t come by to clear dishes once. Did not replace side plates or ask If I wanted another beer which I finished halfway through dinner. AND since I walked there I probably would have had 3. If you do that save yourself the time and order yourself a pitcher.
I am pretty disappointed because the service at the guu chain is pretty much on point. But the last few times I have been here its been like this. I’m afraid to say it. This will be my last visit to this location.

I’ve only come here for lunch but I always enjoy their food. I keep forgetting that you can pre-​order on the phone to get a discount on your lunch so I haven’t tried it out to see how it works yet. I really like their Wagyu Beef Rice Burger; the flavors are great, the beef patty is juicy. I also like the wasabi mayo salad dressing on the avocado shrimp salad and the deep-​fried green beans that go with the lunch set. Its a huge lunch set and the price is good ($ 12, if you pre-​order, it’ll be even better at $ 10).
The only drawback is the friendly but slow service. Maybe pre-​ordering will help move things along faster but don’t expect a quick in-​and-​out lunch. If you only have an hour lunchbreak, this is not the place to go.
Also its located on the 3^rd floor and walking up those stairs is kind of annoying. If there’s an elevator to take me up there, I haven’t found it yet.

Food, atmosphere are great although my absolute favorite Guu is the one in Gastown.
Since they are always busy, at times, the service lacks. Because this is tapas place if the order comes later or have to wait for server to order more dishes it is really hard not to ger irritated having small dishes. I think they need more staff or staff who can check back customers every often.

I have been here enough times over the years that I feel justified in giving such a low star rating. Why do I keep coming back, you ask? Don’t worry, I never leave without asking myself the same question and the answer is just that the location is very convenient so when we don’t feel like going very far, this place wins by default.
The food is good though, which is why is gets three stars and not one. The karrage, ebi mayo and bimbibap are always on our table (I’m sure I spelled all of that wrong, but you know what I mean)…but the SERVICE! Oh my goodness, seriously, it on average takes at least 10 minutes after being seated for someone to come to the table by this time I am usually starving and ready to climb the walls! Food slow coming, no follow up if we require our drinks replenished, and SO LONG after the meal is done to get the bill. I’ve never considered a «dine and dash» except when I go here, it really takes that long.
Maybe if you were to order all your drinks and food all together and asked for the bill right away it would be more tolerable.

Awesome little gem of a restaurant, I didn’t even know it existed until last night. We were grabbing a quick bite before a movie and wanted to pop into Gyu-​Kaku but their wait time was about an hour. Noticed the signs for Guu Garden and thought we’d check them out. It’s located on the roof of that little strip up the stairs. The restaurant has a great atmosphere including the «zashiki style» tables where you take your shoes off and sit in this mini bench /​garden area. Those were full and the outdoor patio was wet from the rain so we sat at the bar. The menu (printed on wood) is pretty diverse and what we only found out after we ordered is the secondary hand-​written menu. Try and track them both down before ordering.
I got the ribs and avacado/​prawn salad, my wife got the kim-​chi and we split the tempura prawns. We had mixed feeling on the kim-​chi but it’s the first time either of us had it and just took a shot at it. The rest of the food was amazing.
Really want to draw attention to the cocktail menu. We had a fair bit of extra time so we worked our way down the list. Just to note, these aren’t serious mixologist fare cocktails but they were a lot of fun. Things like a sake ice cream float in melon liquor or a mojito with ramnue which I just learned is like Japanese flavored soda that comes in a bottle where you pop a marble into the neck of the bottle with a little plastic plug. Cool beans. Don’t know what the marble does but it was fun to jingle it around the bottle.
The chef working across the bar from us was on top of everything and chatted with us for a bit. Servers were really nice but a little hard to track down when you need them.
I’d be going back there for sure.

My happiest moment of the day is lunch time! yay! I’m so excited to try new food every time I decide to eat out for lunch. And last Tuesday (I believe…) I discovered that Guu Garden is only a minute away from my office! Because my sense of direction is ridiculously poor I turned on my Goole map and still got lost, took me more than 15 minutes to get there. Anyways, Guu Garden is located on the top of Gyu-​Kaku and Relish pub (my next lunch destination). It’s a bit strange layout but still nice to have some sunshine outside the office. They also have a little cute garden in their patio as their name claims to be.
Guu Garden offers a discount when customers order at least 30 minutes before they eat in. It’s actually really good for both of us as customers don’t need to wait while kitchen doesn’t get crazily busy during lunch hours. Back to food, I ordered one of their famous lunch bentos, the Izakaya Bento ($ 15.8) — discount price: $ 14.8. It looked amazingly appetizing, pretty and filling! It consists of 13 different food items — Bang Bang G Salad, Saba Aburi Oshizushi, Sweet Potato Salad, Ingen Fries, Ebi Mayo, Chicken Karaage, Cauliflower Karaage, Edamame, Tuna Tataki, Nagaimo Yam, Annin Tofu, Brown Rice and Miso Soup — in total of 13 different dishes!
The bento looked really different from regular Japanese bentos I’ve used to have. Their dishes included really famous izakaya items, and the healthy brown rice and miso soup were the bonus!
I like to start my meal with some light food like this Bang Bang G Salad! It consisted of chicken breast, onions, cucumber and jelly fish with some sesame dressings. Refreshing, light, tasty, and had an interesting texture as well — soft and chewy all at the same time. I enjoyed it!
Saba Aburi Oshisuzhi was pretty good too! The brown sushi rice was cooked and seasoned perfectly and the saba was seared just enough. Good quality saba too.
Sweet potato salad was pretty good too, but the better ones were those tempura!
Ingen Fries (Deep-​fried tempura battered green beans) and Cauliflower Karaage were good enough to the point where I could become a vegetarian and still be alive… Of course, the next bites of chicken karaage and ebi mayo turned this idea down.
Not much to talk about edamame, but tuna tataki with Guu’s signature garlic chips was really good. I liked its smoky flavours with green onions.
Finally I finished with this little cute Annin Tofu (Soft, jellied dessert — not containing tofu but apricot kernel, agar and sugar). Personally don’t like jello or jelly, but the flavour was pretty good.
Overall, I loved their bento so much. It’s definitely worth your buck! I will definitely come back for their other lunch items :)
PROS
+ Lovely tasty cute bento boxes
+ Discount for pre-​order (eat-​in only)
+ Courteous waitresses
+ Well-​portioned & well-​priced
CONS
— Washrooms
RATING
Food 4.0÷5.0
Ambience 3.5÷5.0
Service 4.0÷5.0
Price $$
Address: 888 Nelson Street, Vancouver
Phone number: 604−899−0855
Hours of Operation:
Monday to Friday 1130am-​230pm & 530pm-​midnight
Saturday to Sunday 12pm-​3pm & 530pm to 1230am
Guu Garden Official Website & Menu

Frozen Kirin. Top tastes like beer slushy, and bottom is just regular. Won’t pay $ 10 for this again. I like to come here for lunch and enjoy the bento boxes. I like the special menu each day for dinner. It would be good to post that somewhere so people can look it up. Food is solid, won’t be wow’ed.

With the location so hidden, I would have thought it would be better. The food is ok, a bit esoteric. Service is not fast but not as bad as some of the other reviews said. The location has potential, but it feels like the management aren’t that interested in taking full advantage of it. A bit on the expensive side.

Came here today for a business lunch and we were seated on the patio. This is by far the most interesting Guu location I’ve been to in terms of food.
I ordered a very simple dish, the beef curry udon. You can’t really mess this up and it was up the par with other curry udons I’ve had, other than a little skimpy with the beef. Oh well, it was decent. It came with a half boiled egg which was an interesting addition. For $ 10 it was just average. I’ve had much better lunch specials at Guu Thurlow.
Now the interesting things came with what the other women ordered. The bento boxes as well as other lunch sets came with this white pudding like thing. Someone said it tasted like an almond/​tapioca pudding sort of thing. Someone who had the chicken set that came with the tartar sauce said it was very different from other sauces she’s had before.
All in all, a lot of similar comments about the food not being bad, but not anything memorable either. The service was also lacking in some areas. One lady wanted another copy of her receipt since the one that printed got jammed and there was a lot of confusion with out server and she said she didn’t know how to print out a copy. She had to go inside and get help with that. It also took me walking into the restaurant every time we needed something. I had to go in and flag down a server to take our orders, and again to settle up our bill. However, given it was a beautiful sunny Friday, we were all in good spirits and had a pretty good time.

I’ve been to multiple Guu locations. First time at this location. The food was good; not spectacular. The service on the other hand was less than… service? At first I wondered if the servers understood English as it took a long time for them to come over to take our orders after we told them we were ready to order. The ambience is good. We came for lunch on a weekend so it was fairly dead, but I imagine it being a popular spot during the weekdays for happy hour or dinner. I hope the management improves the quality of the service — it could really be a good place to dine.

We initially planned to go to Gyu kaku, but we ended up going upstairs to Guu garden becuase of the 45 minutes wait time. However, the experience we had were pretty disappointing. I wish we could have waited for Gyu kaku, the food at Guu Garden was not as good as expected.
They are always out of Mochi Tofu bag which I have never got to try it. Yesterday was not an exception. So we ordered:
Oden — Daikon Radish + Fluffy Fish Cake — is the best of our meal
Ebi Mayo
Bang Bang G
Gyu Tongue Chazuke
Gyu Karubi
Salmon Oshi-​Sushi
humm, maybe not our taste. sorry ²⁄₅.

It can be a frustrating experience to go to a restaurant that’s basically slammed and find they are short-​staffed. Like the last time I went to Jamjar. Can it be that management genuinely did not expect it to be so busy?
Just home from Guu Garden this evening. Got there shortly after 7.30 pm and there was a slowly increasing lineup. Even after 9pm, new patrons were trickling in.
The staff were non-​stop scurrying around. Our poor sweetheart server Seiko (?) was nevertheless unfailingly polite and patient. Not once did she look impatient or fail to give us service with a smile. I felt bad that all I could offer her was a few kind words slipped in whenever she came by, and a decent tip at the end.
There’s a note on the faux wood menus that reads, «It is not rude to yell out ‘sumimasen!’ [excuse me] calling your server at Izakaya», but we didn’t try it.
Also, despite the restaurant being so busy, none of our dishes looked like rush jobs or that any corners had been cut. This is the sort of service I really like about the better Japanese restaurants — it’s perfect or they don’t give it to you.
So, kudos to the servers and boo to management that let them get yelled at by impatient patrons. To give management the benefit of the doubt, I am going to assume that they just couldn’t hire enough people for Canada Day.
With so many patrons, service was understandably slow. We eventually flagged down a server to take our order, which trickled in tapas style. Fortunately most of us were in a here-​have-​a-​bite-​of-​this sharing mood. The «fine print» on the menu (at least the online one) does say, «Food will be served when cooked, in traditional izakaya style».
Anyway, the restaurant has a lovely «rooftop» feel. We were seated outside, which turned out fine as the day was cooling already.
TIP: You can order bowls of rice ($ 1.50?).
So, while the portions can vary from smallish to moderate, you can «supersize» it into a filling meal by simply ordering a bowl of rice.
That said, a lot of the menu is under $ 10 and you could put together an okay meal with a couple of orders.
Bang Bang G ($ 6.80) chicken breast, onion, cucumber, and jellyfish salad with sesame dressing
— With a name like that, of course I ordered it. I was told that it was a Korean dish. That was the explanation that came back when I asked the male server who brought the cash machine around to us.
— Medium-​light sized salad, which is good for the price, especially considering the mix of ingredients. Portion for price is good.
— This was actually fresh and quite tasty. I think the jelly fish could have been even better if colder, like when served as a cold appetizer in a Chinese restaurant.
Lemon-​marinated tuna with Honey Dew ($ 10.50)
— Decent portion for price. Everything on the plate looked fresh.
— This was one of the daily specials, so you might not see it again. Interesting for also using slices of honeydew for the contrast of sour lemon dressing with sweet melon, and to also give it a refreshing taste.
Gin Kama ($ 7 small, $ 12 large) grilled ginger-​soy marinated black cod cheek
— Slightly fishy tasting. Otherwise, fantastic.
— Sweet sauce seared right on.
— Fish cheek — the most tender meat.
Gyu Karubi ($ 9 small, $ 16 large) grilled beef short ribs with house garlic sweet soy sauce, green onion, and garlic chips on top
— If you consider only the grilling of the short ribs, I think Kibo Sushi gives you a slightly superior taste through their grilling. But they difference isn’t enough to top the superior overall value for your money you get here at Guu Garden.
— Is this tasty? Yes it is. A very safe choice if you don’t know what to order.
Ton Toro ($ 8 small, $ 14 large) sea salt grilled pork cheek with yuzu ponzu
— If you don’t already know, each slice is mostly fat with a token amount of meat.
— Fairly tasty all on its own. Probably even better with the sauce which I forgot to try when my friend let me sample her dish.
Fresh Orange Juice ($ 3)
— Had a lot of pulp in it – definitely came from a real orange crushed on site. Did not look like Tropicana.
— Glass seemed to have a lot of ice in it, but at $ 3, it is already cheaper than just about every restaurant that is giving you what is probably Tropicana or Oasis.

My friends and I had a horrible and comical experience at Guu Garden. Our dinner was messed up several times — 3 of us got our dinner 35 minutes later, while 2 other guests got their dinner 50 minutes later due to errors and confusion from the server’s part. When the waitress gave the 2 guests their late 50 minute dinner, she told them, «Please hurry and finish it in 30 minutes, we have others waiting for your table. Restaurant is full.» My friend replied in shock, «I have to hurry up my dinner based on your mistake?» The waitress replied, «Sorry.» My friend replied, «Saying sorry isn’t going to solve this problem. Can’t you do something about this? We just got our dinner…» She replied, «No, sorry.»
So we had no choice but to inhale our dinner quickly. My husband and I gave 10% tip instead of our usual 15 — 18% tip, (but even at 10%, I felt was too generous for this, we should have just not tipped), and 2 of my guests wrote $ 0.01 tip on their credit card receipt to make a strong statement. At one point, I thought we should have just all gotten up, leave the food on the table and walk off. Next time, I will suggest we do that if caught in this predicament again.
A lot happened at this restaurant last night. I’ll write the entire story when I have more time, since I’m on the go right now. It will be leave you surprised or laughing when you hear the whole story of them mindf*cking with us over our dinner and pouring hot watery soup into our rice bowls when the menu had stated the rice bowl comes with soup served on the side. Quite one of the most ridiculous experience I’ve had since my other horrible dinner at Bistro Sakana in Yaletown. I truly hope this isn’t a trending issue of nonchalant managers and inconsiderate staff in Japanese restaurants in Downtown Vancouver.
I will never come back again. I will be emailing the management the entire story when I complete this review so they are aware of what happened last night. Not sure if we were just stuck with a new waitress with poor decision-​making, or just a series of unfortunate luck at our table.

I love the overall ambiance of this place as it’s very traditional and quaint. It definitely reminds me of when I used to live in Japan and I love how they have authentic lowered floor tables that you can find at a typical Japanese bar (izakaya)
My only qualm with this restaurant is that the wait times can get insanely long sometimes (over an hour without reservation on the weekends) so make sure to book ahead! The oden is really good here and I would definitely recommend the mochi pouch. I would say that I have tried the majority of the dishes here and I enjoyed probably 80% of them. My favorite Guu is still the gastown (otokomae) location but it’s nice that Guu Garden opens for both lunch and dinner!

The food is good, the service is sometimes lacking.
I would come back if I were in the area but too much choice in the area to make it a real regular stop (which would be 4-​stars) for me.

One of my favourite Japanese restaurants in Vancouver. I used to come here at least every week, but maybe about once a month now. Great place for groups and drinks. I would give the food 5 stars, but loses 1 star purely because if the restaurant is packed, or even half full, your food order will take forever. I highly recommend coming for lunch and getting the «Kids Bento». You get an assortment of food (beef, egg, rice, takoyaki, croquette, miso soup) and it will be enough food to feed any adult.

The quality of the food used to be great but now it’s going downhill. Did they cut the cost of the ingredients? The kimchi ishi yaki bibimbap was salty and the meat they use were small and dry. I also ordered Saba sushi but it tasted a little bit fishy…
On the bright side, the kabocha pudding was really good so next time if i end up visiting, i will be ordering only dessert and drinks…

Nothing short of fabulous food here. To me, this place is the coolest guu in Vancouver. Overlooking the courts, you get a decent lunch and sake for like 30++. Totally worth it!
Everything is yummy here. What’s outstanding is the beef tongue rice and soup. The beef is done perfectly. The lamb carpaccio is delish too. And I absolutely enjoyed the tuna yukke. If only they would serve the salmon yukke and beef yakiudon here, guu garden would be my everyday occurrence. This is how fab they are. Major love to this spot.

The pickled root veg they serve prior to my drinks was well received (by my super empty stomach!) and kept from getting hangry (hungry-​angry) at my servers. As it was Saturday, a drink was in order (cuz happy hour is whenever I decide it to be muhahahaha). I was surprised at how clear the Sake Sangria was, only to be totally overwhelmed by the bright bursts of infused citrus balanced perfectly with the refreshing sake, the perfect way to start the meal.
Isakaya bento consists of chicken and cauliflower karage, edamame, tuna tataki, and ebi mayo… All you need to know is– the amount and caliber of the food at the price point offered is more than fair. I am a completely satisfied customer and strongly recommends this place to whoever is looking for a corner in downtown to catch up with the girls for a quick lunch after work.