Latest visit: Oct 2024
First visit: Mar 2002 (Lynwood, WA)
Founded: 1969
HQ: Portland, OR
Locations: ~40 in the US and 15 in Canada. Mostly in the west.
It's now Monday and time to pick up Mrs. RJG from the airport after spending time with her family in Arizona. We'd agreed before she left that we would dine at the Old Spaghetti Factory on the way home. They opened here a couple of years ago, and we'd been meaning to try it again, but we're rarely down this way together at meal time.
The Old Spaghetti Factory comes from the same era as The Spaghetti Warehouse, which is what we had growing up in DFW. The concepts are similar. This was from the time when theme restaurants were all the rage. It wasn't enough to cook you a good meal, you had to have another reason to go. So the theme would usually appeal to families looking for more to do than just eat. Back then, adventurous cooking wasn't yet in the cards. As such, The Old Spaghetti Factory offers up basic red sauce Italian fare.
If the premise of your restaurant is nothing more than standard Italian, then you better at least take care of business. And on my three visits to The Old Spaghetti Factory I feel like they succeeded on that front. While they certainly do offer more than spaghetti, we both dived into the basics. I ordered a plate of spaghetti with Italian sausage and meatballs, and Mrs. RJG went with similar. We both really enjoyed the sausage, which possessed a distinct flavor. I was more keen on the meatballs which were very firm, and needed a knife to cut them with. Not the meatballs of my youth (that I continue to seek), but very good all the same. The "regular" spaghetti was cooked to perfection I thought, though Mrs. RJG felt it could have been more al dente. All meals come with a soup or salad, as well as spumoni or vanilla ice cream at the end. We each opted for the salad with the balsamic vinaigrette, and the flavor was great though the iceberg lettuce was a bit on the expired side. The ice cream was excellent, hard to screw that up. We each had one beer, though the taps are perfunctory for this area.
I thought the meal was very good, the Mrs. not as much though admittedly she was a bit tired too. I'm game for coming back, but it won't be part of the RJG rotation.
As you can see, my first visit was well over 22 years ago. At that point I was traveling for business in Seattle, and afterward, I wanted to treat my Official Aunt and Uncle out for dinner. Both are no longer alive, Aunt just passed away a month ago and Uncle back in 2007. My uncle loved the local smoke filled taverns (though he didn't smoke) that dotted the area since they moved to that part of Washington in 1970. He was bemoaning the fact that restaurants such as The Old Spaghetti Factory had replaced his hideaways. My aunt was thrilled that they were going away lol. In any case, said uncle loved this restaurant, so there was a silver lining.
I had thought before writing this entry that the above was my only prior visit to The Old Spaghetti Factory. This is where the spreadsheet comes in handy. I had forgotten that Mrs. RJG and I dined here one night while visiting the beautiful resort town of Banff in Alberta back in the summer of 2013. Yet another undocumented RJG trip, though we had a blast (and great food). We enjoyed our meal there as well and I recall we sat next to an open window with a cool crisp breeze coming through (felt great to our overheated Texas arms). The Canadian branch of The Old Spaghetti Factory is a separate entity for legal reasons (different websites for example), but they are the same company essentially.
3/20/02; 7/16/13; 10/28/24 (new entry)
Lynwood, WA; Banff, AB; Colorado Springs
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