Gus's

Gus's is something of a celebrity among cafes in the Canberra hospitality cosmos. It's reputation as fashionable and superior is often quickly communicated to newcomers and visitors to the city. It even has its own Wikipedia page, repeating the locally well-known battles of the original Gus-from-Vienna in establishing outdoor eating at his venue (the page also suggests that the original Gus has long moved on (presumably) to al fresco dining in the sky). However, it is the contention of the Always Hungrys that like most celebrities, it is usually a disappointing experience when they are encountered in person.

Whatever the merits of Gus's in the past, it is clearly now no longer a leader among Canberra's cafes. This decline is both relative - i.e. in part due to the existance of many superior alternatives - as well when simply compared to the Gus's of a couple years ago.

An analogy with major fast food chains might be fruitfully made. The menu is predictable - in this case, stock-in-trade Australasian cafe food (mushrooms on toast, wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce, generic pasta dishes, and so on). Often, it would appear that they are prepared without a noticebly high level of care. Further, to stretch Haywood's observation below that the only acceptable substitute for good beer is very cheap beer, the food is not particuarly cheap - being priced at standard Canberra cafe levels (i.e. you could eat at the apex of local daytime eating, Silo, in Kingston, for around the same money). In sum, as with major fast food chains, one is probably going to be served food that only the young and callow are likely to be uncritically satisfied with.

To be clear, this is not to suggest the current Gus's is any worse than an all-too-large number of Canberra cafes, rather, that you can probably do better.