Dear Gus Snack Bar — Restaurant in Vancouver

I came on a Tuesday night, right after work and arrived at 4:30pm. They were offering their "happy hour" from 4-5pm and it was a fun menu.

I know their venue is a little bit small, but I had such a fantastic time with me and my friend on the wine and their food menu. I dove right into the place with a half carafe of their red wine for the night. Their house red wine is a bottle of Cerejeiras, from Portugal and it was a very comfy red. I could literally sit in front of the TV and finish this bottle easily. And when I saw down, I was offered a small plate of popcorn to start off the night. It was perfect and a great entry snack while having some wine. It felt like I have arrived home.

I look around the venue for a bit, and then looked at their offering. I loved the little menu, stamped and printed on a simple piece of paper. I heard so much about their house made bread with cultured butter, I had to order some to start off my night. Sitting right at bar, I kept seeing how busy they were and all the action of their tsuedo open kitchen. It is small, but a very strong one. You can see Chef Jorge going at it all night as he passes the food to the servers and the swift movement of him moving about. As I waited, I smelt the bread coming from the oven, with a good simple browning of the edges and a very soft, fluffy inside of each slice. I ate the first slice with some butter, and the emmaculate saltiness and savoury of the butter was amazing. It was creamy and perfectly doused with salt all over the plate. Simple but delicious. 4/5

Waiting for my friend arrived, I went ahead and ordered the pil pil prawns with smoked chili oil and garlic crunch. Once my friend had arrived and I poured him a glass of the red, we dove right into the shirmp. It was plated like a small mountain, and the chili oil looking like a bright red snow as it dripped down. I cut the prawn and smelled the smokiness of the chili oil, amazing. The perfectly cooked prawn was bouncy but yet not hard. And the chili oil is just carrying the whole plate. I wish I had some more of that bread to dip into that chili oil. 5/5

We then ordered their variation of the bagna cauda with seasonal veggies. Very simple but divine. Their Bagna cauda tasted like a variation of the chili oil, but made it creamy and a hint of paprika. Their seasonal veggies were endives, white beets and some brocolini. Love how the bagna cauda mixed well with the bitterness of each veggie. A good plate, but as the season changes, I hope their bagna cauda changes to match the veggies. 4/5

The last plate blew me away, the Ricotta Gnocchi is just spectacular. I love how each gnocchi is extremely pillowy and their butter base, confit garlic and lemon was the perfect cut to the flavours of the abundence snow of ricotta cheese on top. Would 100% recommend this gnocchi. 6/5

I had a fantastic visit and I love this place a lot. Will be adding this as a must visit spot in Vancouver and an amazing time was spent here. Thank you Tom and the staff here. Such a good little...

TLDR I would recommend it! There is street parking. The food is great, a tad on the pricy side. Service was impeccable.

A quaint little place hidden among commercial buildings. As they don't take reservations, get there a little bit early to join their waiting list.

Atmosphere Gave me kind of a small paris wine bar feeling. The design was well thought out, and the small space felt intimate but not intimidating. The blue paint accents bring a colour fun pop of colour. The bathroom is located further away from the actual wine bar. You have to use their fob to enter several doors into what looks like a commercial lobby. Not sure about accessibility, as there are a few steps, and the walkway in-between tables are very narrow.

Service I can not compliment our server enough! I can't remember her name, but she has short black hair and an amazing choice of accessories. She was patient, kind, and took the time to explain their menu to us. As someone who doesn't drink wine, I appreciate her recommendations.

Food If you are coming here for snacks and wine. With great conversation among friends, I think the food choices here are well thought out finger food. Small dishes, probably only to share between 2 people. Before warned that the larger issues are quite pricey. That is not to say that the food wasn't great it was delicious and plated impeccably! For my girlfriend and I, we had a total of 4 glasses of wine (her 3 me 1), daily cheese selection with pear puree, anchovies, pil pil shrimp, and the gnocchi My total was 80+ after tax and tip. Probably more for my friend due to the wine. In my opinion, the spot is definitely a great place to catch up with friends over drinks and snacks. It's more like an after dinner place. However, if you're thinking of dinner, you might have to order more dishes if you wish to satisfy your hunger. The food did take a tad longer than expected to arrive at our table. However, it might have been because they had a full house.

I'd recommend trying...

I wished I could rate the food separately so that I could give it 5 starts. Visited Dear Gus for a friend's birthday tonight and I was quite disappointed by the service. While I wouldn't say the service was poor, I think for an establishment like this, with the price I'm paying and the vibe they're trying to sell - the service I got was below par. We got more service and hospitality from the chef than we did from our server. The chef took down our orders, cooked it, served it, changed our plates, and even brought us utensils to eat.

Aside from seating us and pouring our wines, our server did not visit our table even once to check on how we were doing. They had a problem with their POS system mid-way through which I get it, they were trying to fix the situation. However, once the situation was fixed we saw our server greeting and helping other tables except ours. When I asked to have our waters filled, she only filled my friend's cup and left mine which was strange. So my friend had to ask the chef to fill the water for me shortly after. She never came to check our table or ask if our food was good, or if we wanted another glass of wine.

Honestly if I could have just tipped the chef, I would have. The food was excellent, beautifully served and perfectly delicious. You can tell he cares about the food he is making and whether the customers like what they're eating.

I'm not sure if it was an off day, or if they don't have assigned servers for tables or if the chef himself is also supposed to be a server but our server only showed up at the end asking if we wanted dessert and took our payment.

Overall the food made up for the lack of service and we both saw it as getting a personal omakase experience...