Shame on you, Green Owl. As the only (?) vegetarian restaurant in Madison, you really seem to rely on that to bring people in, rather than your food. While I enjoyed my entree (the meatloaf sandwich), my side of crispy kale (which I had to pay extra for) arrived as a charred pile of powder. How dare you let that out of the kitchen, let alone serve it to a paying customer? And why/how are your desserts so awful? I generally will seek out/pay more for vegan desserts, as I find them to taste better than conventional desserts...and there are plenty of vegan bakeries out there to support this claim. My coconut cream pie was a pile of coconut, on top of a tasteless white paste, and appeared to have been shaped into a triangle to resemble a pie slice. Service was bad, but it appeared to be just our waitress. I didn't know there were specials (until I overheard the other servers telling their tables), and the worst is that on the back of the dessert menu was the Friday fish fry special, which I totally would have ordered had I known about it (yes I was there on a Friday night). \n\nMy suggestions:\n- Have 1 or 2 \"non-weird\" options, so carnivores feel comfortable joining their vegetarian dining companions here. Something along the lines of a \"normal\" pasta, mexican lasagna, etc where they wouldn't miss the meat. \n- Servers need direction. I didn't appreciate seeing my waitress walk out of the kitchen chewing a mouthful of food while I sat at my table waiting for food.\n- The dessert menu as it stands needs to be scrapped. If you need to bring in vegan desserts from another business, do it. Those desserts were a fail (I tried part of another one of the desserts and was not impressed).\n\nFood took forever to come out, which I'm willing to deal with but you should put something on the menu about that (there are tasteful ways of saying that the food takes time). The restaurant was not busy at the time.
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