The Old Spaghetti Factory — Restaurant in Redlands

Haven't been here in a decade or more. From what I remember, we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for an inexpensive but quality meal out.

Things have changed.

The entrees were mostly in the $18 - $20 range and included soup and a scoop of ice cream. For $2 you could get a Caesar salad instead of soup.

We tried the chicken fettuccine and chicken marsala entrees. Both entrees were good. The marsala was served with a side of spaghetti. Instead of a sauce the spaghetti was covered in Mizithra Cheese & Brown Butter. I was equally surprised by the lack of a sauce and how much I enjoyed the side. It was very flavorful and a nice compliment to the chicken marsala.

I ordered the minestrone soup and my son the Caesar salad. My minestrone soup was actually just an Italian vegetable soup, no noodles, that was served luke warm. Although I would call it minestrone, I did like it.

My son asked me to taste his salad cause it didn't taste right to him. It was pretty bland, it looked like somebody in the kitchen opened a bag of salad from a grocery store and mixed it with a generic bottle of Caesar dressing. No croutons or grated cheese on top.

It took a couple of minutes to flag down a server, (or was he a busboy?) who eventually directed our waiter to our table. It actually provided some comic relief. The young man, wearing a black mask, black shirt and pants and no name tag, asked who was our waiter? "Well, we're not sure. Don't remember his name." "Oh, well what did he look like?". "Ah, he was about your height and he was wearing a black mask, black shirt and pants and no name tag".

In fairness to the wait staff, they were wearing their pandemic best and it was an extra busy, due to a local school's homecoming, Saturday night.

After a brief delay during which I saw our young staff member quizzing a couple more senior staff members, Kevin returned to our table and apologized profusely for the disappointment and inconvenience. And naturally offered to correct the situation. The replacement soups were hot enough to be acceptable, although still no noodles, much to my son's chagrin.

For dessert we opted for the vanilla ice cream. I considered trying the spumoni, but considering the soup and salad mishaps, thought better of it. The vanilla ice cream was good. Nothing special, just plain ol' vanilla.

The thing that was odd to me is that on our menu, which I'm assuming was an abbreviation of their full non-pandemic menu, all the dinner choices were listed under their 3 course meal section that included the salad and ice cream. Yet, on the right side of the menu which also included an attractive list of specialty non-alcoholic drink options, was a dessert section with items like cheesecake, tiramisu and chocolate...

Stopped in with two colleagues from work on a Thursday night for dinner; none of us had ever been here. It was a 20 minute wait for a table so we sat at the bar to kill time. I ordered a local (Hangar 24) beer and the bartender was very convivial and efficient. We were called to our table and we were seated and we waited to be served. And waited. And waited some more while we watched other tables that came after us get drinks and order their dinners. Still we waited. At one point my coworker said "Should I say something?" after about 20 minutes had passed. Finally our waitress appeared after covering two other tables first and took our orders. Since we had waited so long we knew drink and dinner orders already. We all ordered dinner items that came with soup, salad, bread and dessert. The waitress returned quickly with the two sodas my coworkers ordered but not my beer. After a few minutes she returned and asked if I had my beer yet and I said No. She returned saying that they were out of my choice which I thought weird because at the bar they had 3 taps dedicated to this beer. Apparently that's for show...they really didn't have any so I ordered something else. The meals came and we had no issue at all with the food - I ordered the angel hair pasta, my coworkers ordered linguini and lasagna. We all thought the sauces and cheeses were really tasty. We ordered the broccoli appetizer with Mizithra cheese and browned butter and it was very good. For dessert we had the spumoni. My coworkers had never had it and the waitress explained to them that it was a blend of pistachio, chocolate and cherry ice cream. They ordered it and when it arrived both were disappointed to find little or no chocolate - mine was OK but I thought it was too bad they couldn't have experienced the true dessert since neither had tried it before. All in all the food rated well, the bartender and waitress were really friendly, but service was super slow for no obvious reason. Since this was my first time I'd give it another shot in case this was...

I am a regular here and I normally love this place; but today their service was horrible. It started off bad and only got worse. The place was completely empty but for some strange reason, they took forever to seat us. When they finally did show us to out table, they tried to seat us a party of 3 in a very small table that should only be suitable for 2 people. We politely asked for a larger table, we figured since the place was empty, they would move us to another table right away, but of couse they made us wait some more. After we finally did get seated, they made us wait at least another 15 minutes to take our drink order. I was really irritated when I was our waitress taking an order from a table that sat down after us😠. When they finally did take our order, of course, mine came out wrong. I didnt want to create a scene so I politely let them know that I order spaghetti and not angel hair pasta. She apologized and took it back to remake it. By the time my order was corrected, everyone else was already done and to be honest, I was no longer hungry. The salad and bread I ate had settled, and the long wait had made me lose my appetite. I asked for the check and a To go box for the meal I did not get to enjoy. When the bill came, to my surprise, they had charged me twice for my order. When I told the waitress, instead of apologizing, she gave me some excuse and told me she would get it fixed. It was such a strange experience. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Oh and did I mention she never refilled our drinks. When I finally asked her for a refill for my daughters pink lemonade that was sitting at the edge of the table for 20 minutes, her reply was "its gonna be a minute" really? When the refill never came, we got up and left, but not before leaving her a 2 dollar tip. Such a terrible experience from a place that normally has...