By Diana (Foodology),
Special to The Post

Vancouverites are celebrating the end of summer by cooling off with frozen beer. Earlier in July, Guu Garden and Guu Richmond began serving Ichiban Frozen beer.
What is frozen beer? The foam is frozen at -5ºC, which creates a unique texture and keeps beer cold for 30 minutes. Imagine a slushie that tastes like beer foam. It comes in mini size and pint size.
The mini frozen beer was quite expensive – we could get their Mega Sapporo for $9, which contains a litre of beer. To accompany our frozen beer, we ordered several of Guu’s signature food.
Ebi Mayo (large $16) are prawn tempura with a chili mayo sauce. If you have a group of about 4 or 5 people, it’s best to order the large so there is enough to go around. It is one of the popular dishes and you can’t go wrong. The Chicken Karaage (Large $12) is one of my favourite dishes. It is deep fried to perfection and comes with a side of garlic mayo. The Green Bean Fries (Small $5) has green bean tempura with a side of Japanese mayo and it is surprisingly very good.
Cheese Oden features a few pieces of deep fried cheese. This item was also surprisingly good. The cheese and the light and yummy broth worked well together. The Salmon Oshi Sushi ($9.80) is shaped into a block and has a Cajun seared sockeye salmon sushi with sliced onion and ponzu on top. When compared to Miku, this dish falls flat.
Gyu Tongue Chazuke ($6.80) has beef tongue steak on rice topped with green onion, fried seaweed and wasabi. A kanto-dashi broth is poured on top. The tongue wasn’t very good and tasted bland and flavourless. I think if they grilled the tongue and added salt and pepper, it would taste a lot better.
The Miso Calamari (small $6) has deep fried ume marinated squid with a black haccho miso sauce. It tasted okay, but it was average calamari. Unagi Nuku-Sushi ($7.80) is served in a bamboo steamer. It has sushi rice, barbeque eel, sliced omelet, and is topped with dried seaweed and a side of sansho pepper. The presentation is cute, but it all tasted quite bland. Tuna Tataki ($7.80) is a customer favourite, and has lightly seared sashimi with sliced garlic, scallions, garlic chips and yuzu ponzu sauce. The Cauliflower Karaage (small $6) has konbu marinated cauliflower with a side of Japanese Mayo. It tasted okay, but it still can’t compare to Nuba’s amazing cauliflower.
Overall, Guu Garden’s menu has changed over the years, but there are still staple items on the menu that are good, particularly the Tuna Tataki, green bean fries, oden, chicken karaage, ebi mayo, and of course the beer.  

Foodology is a top ranked food blogger on UrbanSpoon. These are the tales of her dine-out experiences. Read more at www.foodology.ca.
 

We Rate Guu Garden: 3.5/5

M101-888 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC
www.guu-izakaya.com