The Old Spaghetti Factory — Restaurant in Rancho Cordova

Update: we came back a few times in 2025 after a 1-year hiatus and everything was great each time: the bread, salads, food, and ice cream were all as good as ever. Plus we had our best server ever (Sianna) on our most recent visit, and another of our servers (Alexander) was one of the best ever. We also appreciated them adding a 3rd flavor of ice cream (rainbow sherbet), which the kids enjoyed. I've decided to bump the rating to 4 stars but it's really 3.5 stars, given their prices. Previous review is below, with updated prices.

My extended family likes to come here, so I've been here a lot. They've really cut back on staff and the last few years the service has been pretty slow. Once on a Tuesday night we were seated for 30 minutes and still didn't have water or bread (and it took 10 minutes to get water after we had to ask for it). The staff isn't lazy... it's simply understaffed.

They've also increased prices about once per year since 2020 (most recently in fall 2025). The Manager's Special, which is just a plate of half-and-half spaghetti, a salad/soup, bread, and a scoop of ice cream, is now $21. I remember a decade ago when the Old Spaghetti Factory used to be a good value for the money.

That being said, the OSF is good at what it does. I would say that everything is decent, not great, which it seems is by design. They don't try to be the best, they try to be good enough for people to come back (and they do). The menu is mostly a series of combinations on the same few ingredients, which makes it easy on the kitchen. But most everything is pretty average, from the sauce to the soup to the salad. And sometimes at this location, the quality varies. On one visit, we got three loafs of bread: one was fresh, one was hard, and another was in between. Even the spumoni ice cream, which is quite good, is sometimes overly frozen or has ice chunks in it. But sometimes it's great.

At this point, I have tried most things on the menu. My favorite main dishes are the spaghetti vesuvius, the tortellini, and a half-and-half combo of the mizithra and meat sauce. Also really good is the pesto salad dressing, the bread (when it's fresh), and the ice cream (when it's soft).

Even though the place seems to always be busy and popular, I still think it deserves only 3...

Worst experience I've had in a long time going our to eat. We arrived and were told our table would be ready in 5 to 10 so we took a seat at the bar. Right after we sat down we got a text informing us that our table was ready, we stood in front of the staff for 5 min and we were not acknowledged once. We were then told that pur table was in fact not ready and to go back to the bar. We sat down and ordered our drinks and my fiance got a basil strawberry sparkling lemonade that was made very wrong and didn't contain basil, I mean how hard is that to figure out just looking at the drink. After we ordered our hostess came and got us and told us our table was ready again so we sit only to have her say sorry this table is reserved we are going to a different table only to discover that table was occupied already. We were then told to go back to the bar again and at this point it had been about 20 min in the restaurant. Another hostess cane to us 5 min later to take us to another table and yup you guessed it, reserved. We were finally seated at another table about 10 min later finally but we were already pissed. The food was sub par, the staff was meh at best but the most atrocious part was not once did a manager ever approach us to apologize or comp anything at all! I'm not one to ask but after you mess up that bad you should offer a free app, a free drink or free dessert. Needless to say we will never ever be back and I would start clear...

Just had dinner there (1/6/23) and just trying to get a table was awful. Front desk didn't know what they were doing or they weren't communicating so one would do something without letting the others know. We came in at 6:33PM and put our name on the wait list, wait time was said to be 15-20 minutes. We wait 30 minutes no problem except the people who came in after us are being called to be seated. Go to the front desk and it turns out someone removed my name from the list. Ok, they said they will add my name back and be given 1st priority. 30 minutes later that didn't happen as they were about to seat another group that came after we went up to the counter to get our name added again. I had to intervene and be like, "What's going on? We were supposed to be given priority and explain our situation again." Pretty sure they didn't even bother to add my name to the list again when I went to the counter the 2nd time. And before this debacle, they had done it to a different party who was waiting outside for the text message saying their table was ready. They had to come in and ask and were told they removed their name thinking they went home but they never sent the text, just called out from the desk. Whats the point of taking our number then? Only giving a 2 star because the food and our server was good and not at fault for the...