Subeez Cafe

I’ve had this bookmarked for years. Odd that I wait that long to give a five star review, but here it is. It looks like things may have imploded since then, but our breakfast here was pretty great. That surprises me, given I’m usually the food snob in the group. Maybe my Unilocal currency convertor favors Canadia?

Love this place. Been coming here for 15 years. Was a regular when i lived up there, but whenever I come back to vancity i check this place out. cool vibe, great service, nice drinks and menu and i like the dj booth uptop. Its one of those places that still has the great Vancouver vibe !

Terrible food. Terrible service. This place should close down.
Guess what, the omelette I ordered is «fried» and overcooked to a point it’s crispy. The coffee is lukewarm. The French toast is so chewy like it’s made of stale bread.
The chefs in the open kitchen are just chilling, laughing, and not really cooking. We waited for 30 mins to have a simple breakfast. Actually I’m gonna take back the word chef. They don’t know how to cook. Even my 5 year old can cook better than them.
Avoid this place like a plague. I wish I could put in negative stars.

Ended up here after finding out there was a 1 – 2 hour wait where we intended to get brunch. No big deal. But then it dawns on me that I’ve eaten here before, and all I can remember is the service wasn’t quite good.
It definitely took our server a while to meander over and take our drink order, probably a solid 10 minutes. But it’s brunch so we are all into some tea and coffee. Except our tea and coffee take so long to come it our meal actually gets to the table first. The eggs Benny I had was good, no complaints on quality of food. But the service just dragged, and when you are sitting with empty plates in front of you for an extended period of time, it gets old. No refills of coffee or hot water offered either.
Just meh. Decent food, bad service.

Went here with a friend last year for brunch on a Sunday. I saw that it got pretty decent ratings on Unilocal so I decided to venture out there. When I first sat down I was quite pleased with the size of the restaurant and the layout. I was placed on the 2^nd floor which is a few feet elevated off of the main floor.
My friend and I both had breakfast. The food was mediocre and so was the service. The price was average. It was a bit of a downer to me but this may partially my fault as I had high expectations given the reviews. Usually Unilocal reviews don’t let me down but unfortunately this time they did. I don’t think I will return.

Wow. Here’s where it gets truly crazy. The staff member I mentioned has been in touch with me to explain that they INTENTIONALLY ignored me and my guest, wasting our time that night because it looked like we were not happy with her mistakes. Excerpt from message:
«Can I just tell you that the reason I didn’t go back to you two and checkup was because from the looks on your faces, the placement of your plates, your body language etc, I could see you were both ready to explode and I will not go and put myself in a position where I could potentially be abused for $ 9 an hour…[several paragraphs about how she is really competent and how I probably wouldn’t like it if she reviewed me at my work] After all, I have had things like that happen, everyone makes mistakes, and mains and appetisers coming out at the same time is not the end of the world. When I could see how angry you two were, I decided not to subject myself to that, after all, if thats all it took to make you that mad, I didn’t know what I would encounter at the table.»
So the takeaway here is, if the server at Subeez makes a mistake (whether by ignorance or lack of training, whichever) and you notice, and you want to let her know about it, she will imagine a scenario in which you overreact (because she is a body language and face and plate placement psychology expert?) and use that as justification for intentionally ignoring you, to save herself the indignity of being told something was amiss, in what I repeat is an IMAGINARY SCENARIO, instead of trying to make it better, let alone letting you actually explain the problem? That’s just a complete failure to do the job, and crazy, and now pretending it was a mistake is off the table.
Oh, then she’ll message you several times on Unilocal to say how horrible you’re being because you wrote about the bad experience you had as a DIRECT RESULT of her making mistakes and then ignoring you.
I’m left wondering exactly what reaction besides telling the manager and writing a bad review on Unilocal could possibly have been expected after treatment like that.
Not to mention I want back the 10% tip I gave thinking it was an honest mistake. If I had known this was happening I’d have felt well within my rights to walk out. You don’t come into a restaurant to spend money, get ignored and then accused of abuse for doing nothing more than sitting there.

My friend and I were walking around downtown today and we were looking for a coffee shop to sit and talk a bit. We were around the area and we ended up at Subeez Café.
This place is a bit on the grimy side. Overall not an enjoyable experience. I had a coffee, a diet coke and a chocolate ganache cake. The coffee was simply awful! It was lukewarm and taste like it had been sitting in the coffee pot for a hour or two! Gross! The cake… I could barely eat half of it. It had this sick sweet taste that did not seem right.
Service was good and the hostess and waitress were both efficient and friendly but the food here leaves much to be desired! Given the free market environment that exists in Van City’s highly competitive restaurant and pub market I expect Subeez Café to die a miserable and speedy death!
I will not be back!

This is not the Subeez I remember…
A friend invited myself & another friend to grab some food as we watch live music.
We all order pretty basic dishes. They both ordered the chicken tenders w/​fries & I got their burger w/​fries.
The patty to the burger tasted burnt & the bacon was very salty… the bun was definitely not close to even being fresh. The fries serving were the bottom of the bag (tiny little fries). As for the chicken tenders, one my friends said his were dry & the other said his bland. Of everything served it was the single $ 5 lager.
It spacious in there which is good for those who want to have conversations over their food & refreshments; they can take seat off to the far corners away from the loud bar/​stage area.
Having the live music was enjoyable though and if you’re coming for drinks & the performance they you’ll have a great time and by the time you get hungry perhaps you’ll be tipsy enough not to realize the cheap pub-​type food.

what has become of you Subeez? where did the incredible fries go? where is the gravy with my chicken and brie? why is the statue of the old man covered up? why are we listening to AM radio hits? whose idea was it to cover the walls with children’s art? why am i sitting under a spotlight?
it is better to burn out than fade away. you are accomplishing both. i am going to miss you.

Terrible dining experience. Under staffed to the max. Our table got zero attention. One of us ordered lettuce wraps, and the lettuce was shredded. Wings looked fine, but we had enough when an actual bug crawled out from under someone’s burger and onto the table. Never finished the meal, owner assured us the health inspection was passed recently.
Didn’t finish/​start our meal, very disappointed. Meal was waived, paid for drinks.
Protip: Avoid.

We ducked in out of the rain and frankly, should have kept going. The good: friendly staff and reasonable prices. The bad: tasteless soup, undercooked steak replaced by an overcooked steak. The décor is nice but the creepy lighting scheme made the place look as if the power went out and the emergency floodlights came on. First and last visit.

Subeez is an odd bar.
It really doesn’t know what it is. Depending on where you sit you could get a drastically different vibe from the next person. This could be a selling point if it were intentional. Sadly it isn’t! It’s just a bit of a mish-​mash of different vibes — craft beer bar/​alternative bar/​yaletown eatery/​lounge — sadly it’s never convincingly any of these things.
The beer selection is decent, with some Portland craft selections that aren’t widely available in downtown. The food menu suffers from the same identity confusion as the décor.
There’s a few really nice servers that work here though.
All in all, you can only really recommend this as a place to grab a beer.

I got the Salmon Baguette and my fiancé got the Gorgonzola Burger. For mine, the creamy dill sauce kind of killed the sandwich – it didn’t really taste creamy or dill-​ish, and it covered the taste of the salmon. The fish was well cooked, and the sandwich was better after I scrapped off the sauce. A little pricey for OK flavour. The fries were good.
My fiancé really enjoyed his burger.
The 15% off for checking in on Unilocal was a nice surprise.
We went at night, and the lighting was awful – like being in a cave. We had to use our phone’s flashlights to see the menu.
We’d go back during lunch, and I’d order a different dish.

I’ve given this place a few chances and it was never great and this last time was absolutely the worst.
My boyfriend, my mum and dad (from England) and my brother (from Australia) and myself went to Subeez, whilst they were here visiting, for brunch.
My mum and I had the pulled pork hash which really was terrible! First of all it was barely warm and it looked very very unappetising on the plate, I think the words «cat puke» we’re mentioned. It tasted terrible the pulled pork had no taste at all had clearly not been marinated in anything or seasoned at all and the potatoes were cold and underdone, it was just so bad.
My boyfriend had the steak sandwich which was not great either, it was a bad cut of meat and my father and brother had there basic breakfast which was just okay.
When we complained about the hash to our waiter he didn’t even let me finish my explanation before jumping in with «they won’t be on the bill» they didn’t listen to what was wrong with the food at all and it seemed to me like they were very used to this kind of complaint. So one would think they might do something about it.
I might frequent this place just for a drink but probably not I DEFINITELY will never eat here again unless the place changes hands.

Went in for lunch on Friday with a party of 9 around 12:00pm. There were plenty of spots in the restaurant, so we were seated fairly quickly. I ordered one of the $ 5 Kolsch beer specials and the daily soup and sandwich combo — carrot ginger soup and pulled pork wrap.
The beer took almost 10 minutes to arrive after ordering it. Food wasn’t too much longer than that. The soup was pretty tasty. I found the pulled pork wrap was a bit lacking. A lot of oil came out of it and the pulled pork itself needed more flavour and sauce.
Server was accommodating and separated our bills for us. Overall, lunch took us about 1 hour 15 minutes — a bit longer than we had hoped and the food lacked a little something. Maybe I’ll come back for just a beer next time.

Officially never coming back here. It’s been hit and miss (mostly miss) for so long.
The ambience is cool and I think it has a lot of potential but it seems to be under bad management. I went on a Saturday at prime time and it was practically empty – that tells you a lot.
The service is consistently TERRIBLE. Takes them 10 mins to notice a new table, another 10 mins for water, another 15 til you see them again to order food. I am not even over exaggerating, my friend and I were flabbergasted.
Our food sat on the passthrough for almost ten minutes. It’s such a slap in the face to eat there. Servers preoccupied with themselves and each other. ALSO THE ART IS SO BAD OMG HOW EMBARASSING.
They won’t bat an eye at you if you’re just there for food and not drinks. IN SUM, AVOID.

Dear SUBEEZ,
I gave you a shot… Many shot I should say.
Now… IT’S OVER…
I will never coming back…
The food is fresh but the portion are small.
The beer and drinks are good but pricey.
Finally… The server EVERY TIME was looking overwhelmed.
Just too bad… Love the décor. Great location. Loud music.

OOF! This is a heartbreaker.
I’m downgrading my previous five-​star review to a lowly two stars. It’s a heartbreaker because I was a fan of Subeez like you could be a fan of a band you once loved. A band you’d listen to every night, perked up when you heard their name, and told everyone you knew how great they are even though it didn’t matter if they’d fall for them in the same way.
In some cases, you grow up, and you grow out of the music they once made. They don’t change, but you fade away, and they become just another item on the CD shelf.
In other cases, they had a string of great albums, but now they have a different lead singer, and they’ve just released a total piece of ear poison.
This is Subeez. I don’t know who they are now but it’s not working.
Things are different. Not better-​different. Subeez certainly wasn’t perfect before, but now the ugly lights have been turned up. The late night food menu is a fail. We tried to order three items from it, and none were available. No nachos? I could make this at home without even having the ingredients. In fact, the server told us that pretty much only the deep fried items could be ordered.
Having read all the recent reviews, I’m not the only disappointed one.
I certainly hope that the new owner is listening, and is willing to ask for Unilocal help. It’s fixable and we need Subeez back. Yes, part of the reason is my nostalgia for the way it became a second home for myself and many friends in the 90’s, but we also need a regular neighbourhood place that doesn’t suddenly disappear or commits Donnellycide.

Subeez Café has a eccentric, eclectic, quirky atmosphere. The space is huge and I can visualize a beer flowing sports bar instead of this teenage rebellion in the trenches to redefine oneself. Secretly I was hoping that the food would be outstanding like The Superior over on the Island — both defined by it’s flavors and unique style. Subeez Café however missed the mark by far. It is cafeteria quality at best. The service, on the other hand was friendly.
Chicken and Brie Sandwich 14: A soggy warm baguette was present with an ocean full of greasy oil, melted brie and garlic mayo. Slow roasted tomato were too wet and barely enough arugula to cover the surface. Served with a side of soggy fries, half wilted on the plate.
Subeez Café
Mushroom and Spinach Omelette 12: We ordered the Ham and Cheese omelette actually. The wrong order came and the waitress offered to replace the ham and cheese afterwards. The omelette itself was pretty standard with heavy salt and potato hash which weren’t nearly seasoned enough. The freshest thing on the place was the salad.
I’m hoping that Homer Street Café will soon open for lunch on the weekends, so I don’t have to compromise and make the same mistake of going across the street to torture my stomach. Not only were prices northwards of expensive, it wasn’t very good at all. I left with the feeling of extreme thirst and that I needed an immediate juice cleanse asap. Someone cold press some Kale to flush these toxins out please!
Honestly, if zero stars was available, I think I’d give them negative.

Subeez, Queen of inconsistent food and service. Seems I’m not alone in thinking so…
I like the space alot, the dripping candelabra, the local artsy-​ness, and its location, but the service and food are all over the place like a scatterbrained bimbo one taco short of a combination plate, yet they have some refined moments of excellent food and service, and I can’t figure out the right time of day or week to come in to get it right.
Had a decent time twice in a row recently so I believe it warrants three stars, but beware… this place can dive bomb on any given night. The staff are generally quite nice, but can be very forgetful.
The food on the menu to avoid that seems most vulnerable to a fast nose dive down to awful town:
–Truffle Mac and Cheese: often oily tasteless, not much squash, just some crappy pasta
–Nachos: crusty, sometimes can be pathetic no topping, dry little b*stards.
–Potato and Feta Springrolls: boring tasteless salted carb beasts
–Chicken and Brie Sandwich: salty, gloopy tomato bread on a bad day
–Sirloin Dinner: on an off night is tough chewy with boiled tasting sides like a bad family dinner at Aunt Bora’s (sorry Auntie!)
The menu items that seem to be immune to this phenomenon and are consistently tasty for me seem to be:
–White Bean Hummus: but hey, how can you mess that up?
— Shortrib Sliders: how can you deny a braised meat…
–Spinach and Quinoa salad: a monkey on a break from his typewriter could’nt **ck this up.
–Burgers and Sandwiches: all are mostly decent.
— The Jambalaya: Its no real Jambalaya but it will not anger your Q zone
–Red Rooibos Latte: actually one of the best I have ever had.
I will continue to visit Subeez as I do now, as a pre-​drinking, pre-​eating, pre-​concert, pre-​break up meet up spot.

Quelle petite phrase bouleversante au coeur d’un être?