TurF Kitsilano (KITS) — Restaurant in Vancouver

UPDATE in response to the comment below from "owner": While I can appreciate your policy in its entirety, it doesnt excuse the attitude and condescending behavior. Hopefully you and others reading this can understand that this review is purely about the way your owner conducted herself. Where there were plenty of opportunities to engage in a much more mature and civil discussion with solutions, you decided to respond in a way that is inappropriate for anyone working in the service industry - and that is my concern. Your response once again reemphasizes your inability to take responsibility and apologize for your behavior.

I'm all for supporting local, BIPOC and female owned businesses, which was one of the reasons why we came here. Unfortunately the owner has extremely poor customer service and was passive aggressive and condescending. Three of us came in to celebrate a friend's birthday. Since we knew they didnt sell cake at Turf and we brought a SMALL dessert to share after our meal. We all ordered food and coffee from Turf that was on our table when a staff member came by saying that we couldn't bring in outside food. We explained that the dessert needed to stay refrigerated or would go bad if we left it out. We decided to quickly finish it. The owner then came by and spoke to us in an extremely rude, humiliating and condescending manner, saying that it is unheard of to bring dessert from outside into ANY restaurant facility. While we understand this may be Turf's policy, we were unaware beforehand and would have appreciated having a civil conversation rather than being spoken to as though we hadn't already spent money there. She had the opportunity to offer fridge space to store our food, or handle it in another manner - none of which she did. Surprisingly, being a small business, she acted as though she didn't need business at all. When we later approached her to let her know that we did not appreciate how she spoke to us in a passive aggressive tone, she never apologized and instead said "oh, kind of like you're being right now?". Extremely disappointed. We will never come back here and will be sure to let...

Turf is definitely my comfort go-to spot for breakfast, lunch and dessert. The staffs are super friendly, and the environment is great. I love spending hours here to have delicious food while reading books quietly. (Reminder: this is a cafe without wifi)

Since I’m a frequent customer, I basically tried everything on the menu as well as the bakery selection.

The new menu is well-developed and have lots of exciting options including the protein pancake and shakshuka. The protein pancake is super fluffy with crispy touches from the granola. The sour lemon ricotta “cheese” and berry jam provide interesting balance to the dish. I was sad to know that turf no longer held my favourite French toast, but this pancake is a game changer. Shakshuka is also recommended. The soft, bouncy tofu inside makes it super interesting.

The “toasts” are things I will highly recommend. I have tried the mushroom + ricotta and edamame + kimchi. Never thought that roasted yam could make good match in replacement of regular toasts, but those toasts opened my eyes. For every toast dish, there is combination of different textures and flavours. Love their attempts to put edamame hummus with kimchi, and it has become my new favourite.

The vegan(and gluten free) bakery is what initially drew me to this place. Haven’t been exposed to vegan bakery before, so I was interested to try things different. I love their gluten free muffins. Those have slightly bouncy texture, and unlikely to the moist (aka oily) muffins that I have from other regular bakery. I also enjoy the fact that the muffins aren’t too sweet. The everyday cookies are also great. Though I’m team crispy cookies, the everyday cookies are the soft cookies that I love. I also love the granola bowl. The crunchy house made granola is topped with coconut yogurt, almond butter, chia pudding, berry compote, and...

This should be a 3-4 star review because the food is good, however, the customer service is up there with the worst I’ve ever experienced. My partner and I go to Turf often so this review is not based on a one off experience.

It often happens that we place our order and the staff forgets to fulfill it. We will then inquire, they realize they’ve dropped the ball, and then complete the order. It’s almost comical how many times this has happened. I think what I’m observing is people who generally (and genuinely) aren’t interested in helping guests. More so, they work at Turf because it’s the ‘cool’ place to be. The staff seem more into themselves than they are the guests.

I’ll also add that when the exercise studio is in use the music is not only too loud for the restaurant half of the space, it is probably doing harm to the studio participants. I work with audio for a living so this is not just an opinion. The sound levels are WAY too loud for the space which additionally makes the atmosphere and overall experience way less than desirable.

My recommendation would be for the ownership to have a hard sit down with their management team and look at how this energy may be filtering down from the top. Whether it’s hiring, training, or management policies and practices, there is no doubt that Turf is falling way short of leaving their guests feeling welcome, acknowledged, and valued. That said, we will be back because we like the food (when they get it right) and hopefully we will see the staff come together to create a better customer...