Hey Lucy — Restaurant in Toronto

Not sure what this places deal is…. We came in to get drinks and food before the Taylor Swift concert because they had cute drink specials for the concert but they immediately seemed annoyed with us the second we entered. When we walked in no one greeted us and there was no sign telling us what to do for seating. Finally after asking politely twice for a table for two and being ignored by everyone we asked if it was “sit wherever” as most casual bars we are used to follow that seating. Finally a short haired woman with a nasty attitude finally bothered to stop her conversation with her coworker at the bar and looked at us with sneer and said “You can sit there.” And pointed to the most awkward table possible that was literally smushed into the narrow hallway the servers need to rush past to get to the kitchen ect. We sat anyways pretty surprised by the reaction neither of us has ever been treated that way in a service industry. We waited while she continued her conversation with the coworker for a very long time. We were confused if we order at the bar because it took a while for us to get waters or a drink order and no one seemed to be interested in helping us.

It all clicked when our server came over and I realized very quickly she was literally the only one in the entire restaurant actually working. I feel so horrible for this girl she has literally 6-8 tables while I watched multiple employees come in and chat at the bar with the nasty short haired while our wonderful waitress ran around the restaurant helping everyone. I have to assumed this short haired woman is the owner or manager because she felt powerful and entitled enough to not only be rude to customers but be on her phone and ignore customers or chatting with employees who are clearly on shift. Idk why she was there our experience would actually have been almost five stars if we had never had to interact with her. I thought maybe she was just a rude person but I’m not exactly sure why she was particularly rude to us as she seemed happy to greet and seat every person who came after us and would even stop her conversation at the bar to give our poor waitress yet another table while everyone sat around the bar chatting.

Could be racism could just be she felt we were idiots for not letting her finish her long conversation with the other employees. 🤷‍♀️Honestly not sure and at this point and really can’t care anymore. Eventually we watched the other employees begin to help our poor sever who was again THE ONLY PERSON BESIDE KITCHEN STAFF WORKING. She made the drinks, she took the orders, she served the food all while we watched multiple employees chatting at the bar watching her do everything. Please give that server as raise she was fantastic did everything right and was super kind! She does not deserve to be wrapped up the unprofessional behavior going on at this bar. I was even worried about writing this review as I didn’t want her to get wrapped into this as she was great and I usually don’t even write reviews unless I experience unprecedented poor service.

The vegan pizza was over priced but fine. You could go to mod or any other BYOP pizza for a fraction of the price for the same quality. Drinks were cute and good but on the pricey side. But like everyone in there service industry knows it doesn’t matter how good your drinks are if you treat customers badly.

Again we are so sorry to short haired woman for bothering to interrupt your very important and long conversation because we had audacity to have an overpriced mediocre lunch and give our money to “Hey Lucy’s” we promise we will never make that mistake again!!!!...

My wife and I ate at Hey Lucy this Saturday afternoon. I was under the impression that it was essentially an Italian restaurant, but I was gravely mistaken. My first tip-off was when I saw that most entrees were around 10 bucks. So, low price isn't necessarily a bad thing (who doesn't like a deal, right?), but it seemed suspiciously cheap. Anyway, I proceeded to order the Florentine calzone, while my wife got the shrimp fettuccine. The restaurant was pretty much empty and while waiting for our meals we could hear what sounded like quarrelling amongst the chefs/cooks. And instructions from the waiter to the cooks had to be repeated several times, so there seemed to be a distinct communication problem. This was worrying. Finally after some time had passed, my wife noticed that our food had been placed out by the cook staff, but the waiter(s) passed by it repeatedly without bringing it to us. After about 5-10 minutes, one of them finally took notice and brought it over. Like I said, the restaurant inside was almost empty, so I don't know why they took so long to simply set it on our table.

So finally I get my hands on my calzone, and the best way I can describe it is that it seemed to be a pre-made item, possibly frozen and re-heated in their oven (though not very hot because it sat there for nearly 10 minutes before reaching the table). It was supposed to have "double smoked bacon" or something like that, but that part seemed to be regular deli-like ham, cubed. Anyway, the whole thing was very un-fresh tasting, and it had a dollop of some tomato-like sauce on the side which was thin and watery. I had a bite of my wife's fettuccine and it was simply bad. It had no seasoning taste to it - it just seemed watery also, and over-cooked at that. She said that the little tomatoes that were part of the plate were good though, and the shrimp seemed "okay".

One redeeming aspect is that I got a side of sweet potato fries, and those were good (likely pre-made, frozen, but that doesn't really matter).

A couple different waiter/resses alternated on our table, but nobody bothered to ask us how the meal was/is (normal restaurant service). I fully expect it was because they knew that the food was poor. Have you ever been to a restaurant (I mean a typical western, not Chinese, etc) where the waiter doesn't come over after about 5 minutes to ask if everything is okay? I didn't think so.

Anyway, I still tipped 10%, even though it was a highly disappointing meal. We each only ate about half of our plates (finished the fries though!). We will not be returning.

PS. I will admit that given the price (as I mentioned, cheap), we shouldn't expect the world. But that's really a good excuse for such disorganization, poor food preparation, and service. So if you are looking for a restaurant to have a nice meal in, I suggest looking elsewhere. There are plenty of other options...

We chose this as it is close to theatres and had decent reviews. When we first arrived, we were denied seating at any of the empty low tables and only given a chance to sit at very high uncomfortable- looking seats or very cold tables by the door. It was freezing. Both the greeter and server were unfriendly, clearly not loving having to work in this place. Perhaps the owners or management might want to look at why two of your workers seem so unhappy? Service was not too bad in terms of length of time but after our first Appies came, the server did not come back at all to ask us how they were. I ordered bruschetta which was virtually impossible to eat. I ended up wearing almost everything from the bruschetta on the table, the plate, and on my new pants, and my new sweater which ended up with stains because the vehicle the chef had chosen for this bruschetta, was not manageable to eat. In fact, at one point , these three long garlic bread fingers just fell over and all of the tomato and onions, etc. just fell off. Plus it was very bland. There was not enough balsamic vinegar, or even olive oil or seasoning on the bruschetta so I was not happy with that, but could not complain, because, the server was nowhere in sight. But finally when she did come, I did express my concerns and she didn't look at me and didn't apologize- just looked like she could care less. It was funny because I had just said to my friend- "should I bother even saying to her because she's not going to care" and my friend said, "don't bother" and she was correct. When I asked the server to give the chef information- that they should choose a better vehicle for carrying the bruchetta, instead of customers wearing it, she didn't seem too interested :). Then came our main courses. My friend was happy with her ravioli but I had a very bland boring calzone. It tasted on par with a frozen calzone you might get from the grocery store with a very bland sauce. The server was again late coming back but at least she did come back at that point to ask how things were. I just said "fine" because by then, I knew that I wasn't going to come back for cranky service...