The Old Spaghetti Factory (Calgary) — Restaurant in Calgary

booked a reservation here for 14 of us. they said they can do it for the time we want! great! we arrive and it seems there was one family who was just taking extra long. i’ve worked in a restaurant before and know this can happen, so we were super patient. however they did tell us it would only be 5 more minutes, about 5 times. when i worked in a restaurant we would only let a table sit there if they knew there would be a reso coming up and they had to be out by then.

when we were finally seated, we were given this long table. very confusing, we finally realized we were only given 12 chairs and missing 2. we had to find extra chairs ourselves and move them.

the hostess did apologize for the wait, and said they would give us 3 free appetizers for the inconvenience. the appetizers were honestly the best part of the meal. the mussels in that soup was tasty, the spin dip was hot and cheesy (although the pita was a little salty at times) it went well with the free bread they give you

our soups/salads arrived, then servers immediately came by with our entrees. they said “ohh did you just get your soups??” so they went back with the entrees. after we were done they brought the entrees back out. they just have been sitting there or maybe they were struggling with making 14 entrees at the same time, cause most of our pastas were all overdone, almost soggy. when i would take a fork to my tortellini it would immediately fall apart. one friend had calamari for their meal, it was so overcooked i could taste the burnt crisp.

dessert was good, ice cream is included. after we paid (18% gratuity automatically added for everyone) it was really tough to get anyone’s attention for a few more drink refills. we are not ones to cause a scene so we never said anything, but we were quite disappointed with the wait time, quality of our pastas, spacing of time between courses, and attentiveness, all to then have to give 18% in the end.

i went to the one in banff a few months ago, ordered the exact same thing and it was amazing. so it is either an issue with this location, or they really struggle to accommodate large parties. in that case, they should have said no when we called to ask if they can. the only way i’d try this place again is with a much smaller party to see if that makes a difference, otherwise we will choose elsewhere next time we plan any celebrations sadly

overall, the entrees was 3 stars and edible, appetizers were 5 stars, servers were 4 stars overall. it is a good value with most meals starting around $20 and includes soup or salad, entree and ice cream…. and supposedly tea or coffee, but we were never even...

This really pains me to write such an awful review however I am a district manager specialized in customer service and I would personally appreciate this feedback to avoid loosing customers since this story has already been told numerous times. We were in town having a business dinner on Friday which the topic was mainly on customer service. The first problem was the waitress was constantly interrupting every 2 min to ask us to take away a plate or if the meal was good, the prob was she would just rush up to table and interject while we were deep in conversation with no manners. She just came to the table and blurted out whatever. She prob came to our table 20 times in an hour rushing us. Then she got our orders messed up and when we let her know that the orders were messed up she simply shrugged her shoulders and walked away with no apology or solution. The steak I ordered was Medium Rare and I got a over cooked steak and my coworker got my steak medium rare and not medium well so that was the first prob. The appetizers were over cooked The lettuce that was in the ceaser salad was browning and wilted and the pasta that came as a side was undercooked and hard. The hostess then came to us and asked us how our meal was and I explained the issues, her response was jaw dropping . She told us that the lettuce was like that all week so rather than having no salad all the customers were getting this wilted and it was not her fault since the truck was late with the fresh lettuce. She then went on to say that the kitchen staff was overwhelmed since a party of 14 came in after us and they all ordered steak so they were "Sweating over our food in the kitchen" so they messed up our order. She said the restaurant was busy so that is another reason why our food was the way it was. She then offered me a coupon ........?????? no apology just deflection and throwing the staff under the bus. I was blown away. It was a good example for my team to see what not to do. She then gave me a discount of 25 percent off the bill. This should of been a no charge meal. I understand things go wrong no one is perfect however this situation was horrible and I will not return to this restaurant or remove this review unless there is some ownership on how we were serviced here. Again I hate to be this person but it was just wild how this was handled and the only positive out of this experience was a live example of customer service gone bad for my new managers...

I waited a week to give someone in management an opportunity to reply to my comments as per the guest feedback option on the website, but no one did. So I guess I’ll leave my comments here.

My family and I arrived at 2:26pm for a 2:30 reservation. Took 6 minutes to even be acknowledged by anyone in the building and at least two people saw us.

Counted 4 tables in the restaurant at that time. This was by far the slowest dining experience I’ve ever had. Took almost 40 minutes to receive my wife’s coffee. About the same amount of time for our starter salads. There was 2 servers and a host on plus I’m assuming who appeared to be a manager as there was a person that made a brief 20 second appearance on the floor and disappeared for the rest of our visit.

An hour and 50 minutes is unacceptable for this type of dining experience at this time of day with that amount of staff on. I completely understand the current circumstances in which we live in and the stress of running a business as I run one myself, but there’s no excuse for the slow service and acknowledgment with one front of house person available for each table that was there.

The server was nice, but couldn’t answer most simple questions without saying he’d have to check (sauce substitutions) and when I ordered a side of broccoli with our appetizer’s, he appeared to not know that was option. Everything was just slow. Refills, appetizers brought out spread apart. No quality check from a manager. Bread was brought out a few times which felt like it was to appease us but it was only warm at best once. Went to wash our hands at the end of the meal and the paper towel dispenser was empty.

The manager asked if we were celebrating anything when he took my reservation on the phone and I told him it was my wife’s birthday. We weren’t expecting anything on the house, but why ask if you’re not going to at least acknowledge it with a simple “happy birthday”. I still believe it was good from a price point of view, but regardless of that, service still needs to be ”good” at the minimum but this missed the mark completely.

Will not return and I definitely won’t...