I go to this restaurant usually on the weekends. It is always busy, but the wait is worth it. The cooks are super nice. They always greet me and sometimes they even give me free food. I love that. They are more concerned that the guest is happy than anything else. It is loud here, but it is part of the atmosphere. I love pretty much everything they put out. The one thing I love is that they come up with new drinks and dishes, they are asian infusion but still Japanese. I would deffinately refer this place to young couples who want to go out, have some drinks and Japanese tapas, and just have a good time.

Food: I had the bibimba...good ingredients, good value. This is a tapas restaurant and the prices for the dishes aren't that high considering the good quality of the foods.

Service: Very energetic, happy staff. We felt very welcomed.

Value: As mentioned above, everything was decently priced. The dishes range from around $5-10. If you aren't too hungry, $10 will fill you up fine.

Ambiance: The restaurant was very clean. We sat in the part of the restaurant where you have to take your shoes off. My legs started to hurt afterall...but I guess it's all part of the 'authentic' Japanese restaurant experience.

I will definitely return, and I encourage you to do so too!

I have no idea what it was that I had to eat since a friend ordered all the dishes but they were all quite tasty. The only thing I really didn't care for was the oden but everyone else around me seemed to enjoy it. I remember having a duck salad and I thought it was the best salad I've ever had. Gotta love the garlic chips on everything! Service was great. We went earlier in the evening so were seated within a few min. Servers were always around to take orders and clear plates when needed. I did feel little rushed though since the place a little small and we were seated by the doorway and people were staring. Sometimes the yelling can get a little loud but other than that, it was fine. I would def. return.

A gloomy November evening... searching for a place to impress a date without breaking the bank, I settled on Guu with Garlic. What a magical place, located on the corner of Robson and some unimportant street, we popped in at around 10pm on a Friday and the place was bumping. It was packed so we sat at the bar, staff were great... Now for the food....

The menu is amazing, other than barley being able to read the hand writing on the paper menu's, ordered some beer that came in a huge pitcher which was nice.

Tuna Tataki- So moist and fresh, amazing.
Ebi Mayo - Words can't describe
Beef Udon- Oh ever so tasty

This is the best restaurant in Vancouver, the quality and price point is unbeatable. Its hilarious morons pay 4 times as much at places like Tojo's.

Like all the other Guu's this place is popular for a reason, it serves delicious Japanese tapas in a lively, fun, crowded environment. There will be a wait unless you arrive when they open. I came here the other night and I fell in love with Guu again, its comfort food thats good for the soul. My favorite dishes include the pumpkin croquette, anything seafood here, especially the salmon carpaccio, the duck salad, their oden dishes especially the daikon, and anything that looks appealing to me from the fresh sheet which changes daily. Sitting at the bar is fun because you can see the chefs preparing the food, and you also start to interact with the people sitting around you, we started to compare notes on the food and ended up ordering new dishes that we hadn't thought of trying. Everyone I've brought to Guu ends up loving it.

This is one of my favorite places to go eat with friends. I don't usually like loud, crowded restaurants, but Guu is an exception. It was a busy night when I came here with 3 of my girlfriends for a night out on the weekend. As we entered, the staff welcomed us, and were told we had to wait a few minutes. This was alright, I was expecting it. We were then seated on the upper level, where shoes had to be taken off to sit at those cute little tables. Pretty tight space..and my legs got kind of cramped up after a while... haha, but.. well it was worth it and I love the energetic atmosphere. We ordered the kim chi udon, pork belly, tako-yaki, ebi mayo (my mouth is watering from the thought of it), tuna tataki, and the salmon carpaccio (beautiful presentation!). Food came about pretty quickly, 1-2 at a time. The waitresses are rushed as it is a very fast-paced restaurant, BUT they're very friendly and helpful. Overall we had a fun experience, and I can't wait to go back for my Guu fix!

Too many restaurant owners/operators have forgotten is that diners are looking for an experience when they go out for a meal and drop a big chunk of their daily salary on a restauraunt. The people who run Guu with Garlic define this brand of "experiential" dining.

We had a couple from Toronto and Los Angeles who were blown away by Guu - they said there was nothing comparable in their home towns - understandable in Hogtown, but hard to believe for L.A. But Vancouver is blessed with some great dining experiences - Guu is one of those.

Where to start? Orders are not only shouted out to kitchen staff, but are then repeated back - ostensibly to ensure the order has been heard, but it definitely adds to the ambiance.

The food is innovative - try the Tuna Tatake, the Salmon Carpacio, the deep fried egg "enrobé" with deep fried pumpkin or the Daikon salad - it's all prepared with aplomb with a dash of the irreverent.

The service is a little chaotic because it seems no one server is responsible for your table. We were sitting at the bar, so we didn't know whether we should order "directly" or through one of the servers - a slight issue in an otherwise great dining experience.

Bring your friends, your countrymen, your relatives from "out East" - for once Easterners won't have any superlatives to lob at you ;-)

A line-up outside the restaurant started at 5.25 pm on Friday, 5 minutes before it threw its doors open at 5.40, 10 minutes later than its stated opening hours.

Already the restaurant was quickly occupied with the bigger tables reserved. The only vacancies left for 2 of us was at the service area. Boy did we regret it.

Service was relatively prompt and we placed our orders quickly. The shrill and loud hollering of orders and the raucousness generated made the whole dining experience rather intolerable and uncomfortable - that said, it is typical of this genre of dining known as the "izakaya" experience.

We ordered tuna sashimi (French style), daikon salad, calamari, bamboo shoot, udon with perilla and seaweed topping, salmon cappachio and grilled soba.

The grilled soba looked quite "frightening" to me. The skin looked strangely colored and marbled. But to be fair, some parts of the mackeral (soba) tasted not bad -- the fishy fattiness which is supposed to be good for you. Uncovering the dish itself revealed lemon slices and fine whole dill twigs that was baked together with the fish.

However, the udon was the worst. Not sure what it was, but my partner said it tasted like soap ?! The udon had a starchy coating and tasted funny, like liquid detergent was used on some utensil which was not washed properly before our udon was cooked in it.

Unlike what another reviewer said earlier, both of us commented that the remaining dishes were NOT what we would "miss our planes" for. My intelligent palate detected the use of common Japanese mayo, and if Guu with garlic means literally sprinkling dehydrated fried garlic slivers on every single dish unimaginatively, then Guu garlic is something we can do without. To me, that was disappointing as i thought a culinary experience involving garlic would ingeniously work this wonderful stinking rose into each gastronomic piece of creation.

Price-wise, both my partner and I suspect that many of the foreign "students" who frequent this joint are the ones who could live off their parents back home.

This place is excellent. I've been frequenting this restaurant for about 3 years now. I always bring the out-of-towners here to showcase some of the international (Japanese) flavors in Vancity.

Guu with Garlic offers tapas size dishes - more on the traditional side of the Japanese cuisine. Still lots of raw fish, just prepared and presented differently from sushi. You will appreciate the artistic presentation of almost all of the dishes in this place - a great added feature without paying fine-dining coin.

Extremely high recommendation. Expect to line up (it's worth it).

We’re a couple of guys who tried to dine here a couple of Fridays ago and couldn’t find a chair or bench because the Guu was packed from the Tatami room to the open counter. I like the noisy atmosphere and the shunting of customers and staff. Great ambiance, like it’s one big happy intense food fight! We ordered a couple of Coke’s and sip on some beers and waited for our food’s arrival. Didn’t take long before the dishes landed onto our table. The food was so good that we just kept on ordering. Each time a certain dish agrees with our taste, we would order another. We order a total of ten dishes and ice cream for desert. The waitress caution us that a two persons meal should only consists of approximately five or six items. Well, we’re a couple of hungry and crazy guys! Here’s our order…. What else would you suggest?

*2 orders of Tori Karaage
*2 orders of Scallop steak
*2 orders of Salmon Carpaccio
*Avocado prawns
*Tuna Tataki
*Beef Carpaccio
*Deep Fried Calamari
*Green tea ice cream for desert.

I’ll happily return to Kitanoya Guu but with reinforcements! More people, more items to try! Reservations are definitely recommended.