The Old Spaghetti Factory — Restaurant in Vancouver

I'm not one to write a bad review but our excperience last night was awful. I have always loved Speghetti Factory and have been coming here pretty much my whole life. When we arrived we were a party of 11 but I said 12 just in case a last min person showed up. I made sure we arrived before the rush hour at 4:30 to guarentee a table. The restaurant had people but it was not busy enough to say it was slammed. The reception lady blew me off, pretty much telling me that she could not seat my group because of the size and since I did not make a reservation, they were not staffed enough for our party. She said she can put me down on the wait list but we will be waiting a hour for a table for more staff to come in. I was shocked because of being turned away but told her to put me on the list and I will talk to my family. My aunt talked to her a bit later while waiting because we did have young children with us and all around us we were getting looks for them doing what young children do which were making it uncomfortable for everyone in my party. My aunt was fustrated because the reception girl did not make a move to help but kept repeating that there was nothing she could do. The manager was behind her and was setting us up a table while the reception girl just stood there repeating. While waiting I saw reception and a waiter, they had menus infront of there faces and were whispering to each other. I won't assume it was about us but it was extremely unprofessional whether it was the inconvenience of our party or about a issue at work. After 15 min the same waiter who was whispering took us to our table. Immediately I can see our new waiter looked tired and over worked. During the whole experience he did not recieve much help which caused the whole dinner to be slow. It took almost 20 min to recieve bread. And again I felt weird bringing our children because of the looks we were recieving from surrounding tables. Everyone was receiving their food and bread and our children were growing impatient. The wait was redicules. I talked to the manager and let him know my fustrations and I was told that he would make sure that our stuff would come out as soon as possible but honestly I did not feel like he cared. Shortly after we received our salads and bread. My My grandpa and uncle had ordered beers to go with dinner and did not recieve them until mid meal and even then only one of them received the beer they wanted. We were told they had to change the kag and that it will be out shortly. The waiter came out with a different beer 15 min later and said that the beer he wanted was out and handed him the substitute. My uncle took it knowing the whole experience was pretty much useless to argue. I ordered a drink (the basil lemonade) and did not recieve it until dessert. I had to ask for it 5 different times. Three times to the waiter, once to the manager and once to the bartender. When we received our bill I was fustrated to find that they had charged me for my drink because I barely had gotten to drink it before the bill came. We had also asked for bread 3 different times after the first time of getting bread and we never received it. The whole experience was over all horrible. We wernt excpecting anything free or to be compensated but it did not seem like we were not cared about and we were just a inconvenience. I apologized to the manager for not knowing to make a reservation but it did not make since to me because what would of happened if 10 groups of individual parties of two or three people came in. Would they turned them away and treat them like that because of lack of staffing? I made sure to tell the waiter we were not fustrated with him because we knew he was doing what he could. It was very clear he was doing what he could. Over all I am disappointed in...

This review marks the first restaurant appearance in Vancouver for my girlfriend Liz. She opted not to eat, but really loved the ambiance. It was so relaxing to her she couldn't stop talking about it the entire lunch.

Regarding the interior, my girlfriend really loved the decor. From the light fixtures to the fabric on the seats, she commented multiple times and gazed around in awe.

Of course, the trolley car was a big focal point for their opening. It seats roughly 20 people and really caught everybody’s eyes as they walked in.

I was also joined by my brother and we had plans to really get a good in depth look of this restaurant. We started off with a couple of appetizers: the toasted ravioli and fried calamari. We enjoyed both of them. They each had a good breading ratio and fried well. The pomodoro sauce that came with the calamari was a big hit with everyone; it had a nice, refreshing herbal flavor that had a great aftertaste.

We were also given complimentary bread. And the server was telling us about mizithra cheese & browned butter; it was a special they had. We were told it was a sweeter tasting cheese and popular among many guests. He ended up bringing us a sample dish of it. The bread was fresh but everybody was floored by how good the mizithra cheese & browned butter sampler was. It was sweet but light and not so heavy.

For our main meals, everything we had was a 3-course meal. It came with a soup or salad, the main dish and a vanilla or spumoni ice cream dessert.

The starters weren’t anything special. They appeared to be your basic salads with dressing. There wasn’t anything that really set it apart from your simple house salad from any other restaurant. The same could have been said for the minestrone soup.

For our main dish, we had the spicy spaghetti vesuvius, garlic shrimp fettuccine, and the pot pourri which was a sampler of their different spaghetti offerings (mizithra cheese & browned butter, meat, clam and marinara sauce).

The spicy spaghetti vesuvius wasn’t anywhere near as spicy as my brother was expecting. I tried a little bit of it and it was very mild; he would have loved a little more heat on it. The flavor was there, but the expectation of the rest wasn’t. He still felt it was a good meal, but nothing memorable. As for the fettucine and spaghetti sampler dishes, we had a similar experience in that it wasn’t anything to write home about. We were definitely satisfied with our meals and weren’t unhappy with it. Not much in the way of flavors that hit your palate, all fairly simple stuff.

If you go to the Old Spaghetti Factory expecting mind-blowing or over the top meals, stop yourself. I hate to say the word “good” but that really was the best way to describe our meals.

We all had the spumoni dessert which was pistachio cherry chocolate and loved every second of it. What we loved even more than that was the tiramisu. We liked the ratio of sponge to cream and well-balanced coffee and booze flavor. Just a great way to end our meal.

and another review ate by the bite.

Taylor Score -...

This is a nice, standard Italian restaurant. Although it is a chain, it was started in Portland in the 1960s and has expanded to many states as far east as Ohio. It has a fun atmosphere with vintage photographs and a full-sized trolly car complete with tables that you can dine in.

The host welcomed us when we arrived and told us it would be 5-10 minutes before we were seated. My wife gave him her name and he clarified the spelling then promptly forgot about us. When another hostess came back to the podium, she noticed us, inquired since we didn't appear on their list, and quickly found a table for us. The original host seated is and apologized for the wait numerous times as he went by. We were seated near the entrance and heard him make the same apology to numerous parties as he seated them. Despite this, our wait time was fairly reasonable.

All entrees come with a warm load of bread and butter for the table, soup or salad, the entree, and spumoni or vanilla ice cream.

I chose the spaghetti with meat sauce and my wife chose the spaghetti with mizithira, a house specialty. The bread is nice, hot from the oven. My wife had the minestrone and I had the salad with basalmic vinaigrette. Both were very tasty. Our entrees came and were more than ample portions with my wife taking some home. Both were quite tasty. The mizithira is unusual in an Italian restaurant but was quite good. It is one of their signature dishes.

We both finished our meals with spumoni which was quite good. A few chopped nuts and fruit in the mix would have made it even better, but we both enjoyed it.

Overall, we had a very good experience. Although we have been here on numerous occasions, this was our first time dining with just the two of us. I wouldn't choose this for a romantic dinner but it was very nice for dinner out. Our waiter was friendly, very pleasant, and treated us well. We will keep The Old Spaghetti Factory on our list of places...