حانة The Steady Cafe &

Fun little spot but it is now closed

Best venue for Drunken Cinema! Will be missed.

We arrived at approximately 10:50AM on a Sunday. When we entered there was one table of three that appeared to have ordered, one table of three yet to order, and one woman who appeared to be waiting for someone before ordering. One would not expect to wait an hour for food under these circumstances. It took a few minutes for the menus, which was the first warning. Sometime around the time the waiter came to take our order, which was a good 10 minutes after we showed up, he whispered something to the table who had ordered before we got there, which seemed like some kind of muted apology for the slow service (I'm guessing). At no time did he say anything to anyone else. He took our order and asked if we just wanted drinks of food, even though we'd been there for at least 10 minutes (possibly 15) without having been spoken to. (By this point many, many more people had showed up causing everything to slow to a crawl.) We ordered to Caesars and two standard menu items with no substitutions or special requests or anything that could have possibly complicated the order. It took 20+ minutes for the Caesars to show up and it turned out they were sitting on the bar for an unknown time (I wasn't facing the bar). What were they doing in those 20 minutes? Fidgeting, as far as we could tell. There seemed to be some issue with the computer they used to process orders as the two servers were huddled around it every time I looked over my shoulder to wonder where our drinks were. There were three people working and at no point did anyone say to us that they were under-staffed or anything like that. They were middling, standard Caesars and this wouldn't have bothered us had they showed up in a reasonable amount of time. But $7 for a mediocre Caesar that you wait nearly half an hour for seems problematic to me. (By the way, the people next to us, who had ordered before we got there, got their drinks with their meal, which is probably what the waiter was apologizing for.) Our food came a good 45 minutes after we got there. However, my order was wrong. The waiter said that he'd fix it in a moment. A few minutes later, he promised "3 minutes," which seemed absurd given the situation, but we humoured him. 10 minutes later, when my girlfriend was finished her brunch and when he came over and realized we still didn't have my food, we asked for the bill. We had been there for an hour. Meanwhile, at the table next to us, the people who ordered before us had to ask for their bill well after they finished their food and that food was still sitting on their table 20 minutes later, when we left without me having eaten. We told the women sitting there, waiting for the food to be cleared, that we had been there an hour and that I hadn't eaten yet and they left too, which seemed like a smart idea given that they were a group that was supposed to be 9. Maybe we caught them on a bad day, but they didn't tell us that. (Is it so hard to tell us they're under-staffed? Seriously.) Maybe it's because they're closing soon. But I can't say that I've ever had a poorer brunch experience in Toronto. Everywhere else I've had slow service at brunch in the city, the drinks were not slow and at least we were offered an explanation as to why. Don't bother.