My group of friends and I were looking for a place to eat near First Markham Place. My boyfriend and I are vegan so normally we tend to avoid Korean chain restaurants because of the lack of vegan options in the ones we've gone to in the past (before going vegan). However, my boyfriend decided it wouldn't hurt to ask an employee at The Owl of Minerva and she assured us that they DID have a few vegan options which is the reason we tried it out, in the first place.
The first thing that felt off was that for some reason, the employees were not very happy that we wanted to wait 10 minutes for our other two friends to arrive before we ordered. We went in around 8:30pm and they said they closed at 11:00pm so I don't understand why they felt the need to rush us to order.
The worst part of the whole experience was that the few vegan options the employee showed us from the menu when we first asked, suddenly could no longer be made vegan for whatever reason. In the beginning, she specifically said that we could substitute any beef with tofu but suddenly everyone was saying that we could not. What a disgusting scheme of luring us in! The only thing that we could order was the tofu vegetable soup which turned out to be small and watery.
Other things that just sealed the deal of us never returning was that the employees never ended up giving our two friends tea or water, nor did they bother offering to refill any cups. They were also extremely pushy about us paying the bill, as if they thought we were just going to simply walk out of there without paying. We were not a rowdy group and we certainly did not look like those type of people.
This whole restaurant and its staff was a complete mess and extremely unaccommodating to dietary restrictions. I have been to several other locations back before I went vegan and never have I had such unprofessional and disappointing service.