Guud Fuud at Guu

Despite being a huge fan of izakayas, I've been very loyal to Hapa Izakaya's three locations. Deciding to veture outside of the chain, we headed to Guu on Thurlow before catching a show at the Vogue Theatre on Granville.

The above are their chopstick covers...nice touch and  quite cute. It's one of the things that many Asian restaurants do, a little quirky and whimsical. It's similar to the various comical coasters that you find in many bars and lounges.

We ordered a starter of Marinated Eggplant, topped with crispy fried garlic chips. We expected this dish to be warm, so we were slightly taken aback when it arrived almost immediately, and although not exactly cold, it was more cold than warm. Nice flavours and very tender, just not what we expected.

Looking at the fresh sheet, they had fresh amaebi today! It's one of my favourites and I always try to order it when it's fresh. Served on a bed of shaved daikon with some shiso leaves. See the bright eyes of the heads...we will see them again... 

Now, after the cold and cool dishes we had, I was craving something hot. So we decided to order the grilled salmon cheek. That was bound to be hot, right? The dish arrived with the cheek exposed, but the photo doesn't look quite as good, does it?

So we flipped this baby around and now there you go, what a pretty smile! :)

We had one more dish to finish up the meal. It's the takoyaki, something I had actually discovered this at Richmond Night Market years ago. These are little Japanese dumpling with diced octopus, mixed with batter and tempura bits and green onion. Then, it's topped off with some okonomiyaki sauce, ponzu, mayonnaise, and katsuobushi, thin wispy dried fish shavings, which waft in the wind, really pretty.

See, remember those amaebi heads? We asked for them to be deep fried once we had finished with their bodies and here they are again. You can eat these whole, just like little prawn crackers. No waste at all!

The meal ends with two frozen grapes - a green one and a red one. Kind of cute and unexpected.

If you work near Guu and want to try it for lunch, take note that their lunch menu is very different, mostly grilled saba and sanma, various BBQ meats, and the usual Katsudon and Chicken Karaage. To really get the full experience, you really should try Guu at night.