The Old Spaghetti Factory

Amazing and fast service with simple yet high quality food is what you will recieve when stopping in at this place.
We go here for family dine out nights quite a bit. We can take our family of 6 here and leave stuffed for about 60 – 65 bucks, with tip 75 – 80.
From the time you walk in until you leave you are attended to by the servers steady from drink top ups to desert, the service is outstanding and the restaurant is always very clean.
The meals are also quickly whipped up with no waiting around for it to show up, no matter what it is you may order that they offer on the menu.
Sure its only pasta for the most part, but they nail every dish every time.
This is where we will bring out of town family for a great meal as they can seat in large numbers. Plus its ultra affordable.

Had a bad first impression and almost walked out when we were waiting for a table and I sat at the bar to get a drink while I waited. I was ignored by no minimum of 5 waiters who were making drinks. They looked busy but they weren’t. No one apologized for ignoring me or even acknowledged me! However, we were seated right before I walked out and our waitress was wonderful. The food was delicious and we had a wonderful meal.

Good old family restaurant, been around forever.
I wouldn’t say its the best Italian restaurant in Calgary but consistent.
Our service was great, but the place wasn’t very busy for a Monday night.
Great place to take the family, as it is kid friendly.

The Old Spaghetti factory is okay.
I came here a little over a month ago way back in early September and my pasta was pretty good. The french onion soup is good. But there’s nothing that really wows you about this place and I don’t think I’d be dying to come back or anything.
The service is the real downside to this place, it’s not very good. Our waiter wasn’t warm or friendly and honestly seemed like there were a billion different places he’d rather be than there. Which is understandable, everyone wants to go home, but the least you can do is hide it, ya know? Maybe he was just having a bad day.
+ Food is decent
Wait time is alright. I thought with the fact it wasn’t all that busy and it was super quiet in the restaurant, service could’ve gone faster. Prices are alright.
— Bleh service

Horrible service! I was seated and shortly afterwards placed my order. My appetizer was brought out in a few minutes and then I was basically ignored by the entire staff for 30 minutes. I got up to try to find a manager, and found my waitress chatting it up at the bar. I spoke to the manager briefly but at that point was so frustrated, I decided to leave without eating. I visit Calgary on a regular basis and will be sure not to return to this restaurant.
Horrible customer service!!!
MLB

Unfortunately this is ‘the place ’ when it comes to our office lunches. I’ve been trying very hard to understand why. The pasta is horrible, the service very slow. It takes them about half an hour just to get the order, then the food comes out 10 minutes before we need to leave. I will never understand how this place and Olive Garden can be so popular places. Horrible.

We were a large group for work and I have no idea who chose this place.
You dread coming here just by looking at the name, Chuck E Cheese comes to mind.
Everyone was let down, I tried my best to steer clear of the pasta and my rack of ribs still came with a dollop of pasta.
Yes, I had pasta with ribs!!!
The prices were not even that great, but they throw a bunch of warm bread (really the only decent thing), as well as soup (watery) and salad (iceberg from a bag) ‚
You could spend about $ 10 – 20 here, which is the only saving grace.
Service was ok, I knew our large group would be overwhelming to most wait staff

I haven’t eaten at The Old Spaghetti Factory for the longest time. My last visit has to be at least 10 year ago. We recently had lunch there on a Sunday and ordered from their lunch menu. The prices are quite reasonable as it includes tea or coffee, salad or soup, and ice-​cream. I ordered a roast beef sandwich if I remember correctly. Our order took a while ot arrive as we had a large group of people. Our server kept us topped up on drinks while we waited, which was nice. The roast beef in my sandwich was disappointing… it was quiteway over cooked and nearly not edible. If the food had been good, I would have given it a four-​star rating. It’s too bad.

Nourriture très médiocre, digne d’une cantine. Les raviolis né ressemblent à rien, mal cuits, farce sans goût (comme des raviolis de mauvaise qualité de supermarché), sauce ni bonne ni mauvaise. Rapport qualité prix très mauvais. Service qui vous donne l’addition et qui enlève vos assiettes quand vous êtes encore entrain de manger… Et le pire, je vous écris cet avis depuis ma toilette… À éviter absolument.

I’ve been here 2 times with the exact same dining experience. To get acknowledged by the hostesses is very rare in a timely manner. The service is always lacking and always seems that we are forgotten, or they are just plain slow and don’t care. The food has always been below average with lukewarm or cold entrees. It only seems the only time the server comes around is to take your order, which took a really long time for them to show up in the first place. To pay the bill is another story as your server is never around.
If you want fairly cheap mediocre food with poor service that your in no hurry, go here but parking is horrible as it’s downtown and disorganized uncaring staff, you could do better elsewhere.

This Old Spaghetti Factory is located at Eau Claire Market. It is really busy, or at least seems really busy. My friend and I went here for supper because it’s across the street from our hotel and was easy to get to. My friend’s leg is a bit broken, so this was more of a convenience factor than anything.
One thing I find weird about all the Old Spaghetti Factories I’ve been to is how you either have to go up a flight of stairs, or a down a flight of stairs to get to the restaurant. What’s up with that? Like really, it’s odd.
Moving on we got a table right away, next to a giant group table. It was loud, but it’s Old Spaghetti factory and that’s to be expected. Our server, this young kid who looked about 10 (although he was probably 14, and I’m just sounding like an old lady) was awesome. Seriously awesome. Cracking jokes, really friendly.
The food at Old Spaghetti is okay. I got this spaghetti dish with brown butter and mizithra cheese. There’s no meat in this dish, but it’s quite rich and was very filling. It was very salty though, not sure if that’s just the cheese or if there’s extra salt in the dish. Either way it was good, but way too salty for my taste.
The food is okay. Our server was awesome. The atmosphere is a bit too chaotic and noisy than I normally like, but for being there when I needed some food this was all right.

Our server was very pleasant and kept coming back a few times. Food here isn’t the best but it’s cheap and plentiful. Most of their entrees give you unlimited bread, a well sized salad or soup and the main course. Oh yeah, there’s also a dessert included (ice cream). It’s mostly great for families and it won’t break the bank.

I thought our waiter’s Herculean effort would lift a pretty bad experience here to two stars, but this was easily my worst dining experience in a week-​long trip to Calgary.
First, the place seemed very understaffed. Waiters were hurrying from table to table, and were nice enough to let us know they were incredibly busy and service would likely be slower than normal, but the surprise was that there were several vacant tables. Even without being full, the restaurant didn’t seem to have enough people working to attend to everyone in a timely manner.
The menu didn’t give any hint as to what items were vegan or could be made vegan. Seeing very little, we opted for the spaghetti and marinara sauce. Despite this incredibly simple order, and our friend having chicken and spaghetti, we faced a really long wait. Our server apologized for the long wait, but obviously it wasn’t their fault.
When we got our food, it was incredibly bland and seemed very processed. The salad equally seemed to be like a iceberg lettuce mix you’d buy from the store. The food was all-​around disappointing, and it wasn’t even at a reasonable price.
Our server did their best, but with my terrible food (in my opinion) and such a long wait, I have to give this the one star it deserves.
I do wish they would abolish tipping though, just read this paragraph:
Studies have shown that tipping is not an effective incentive for performance in servers. It also creates an environment in which people of color, young people, old people, women, and foreigners tend to get worse service than white males. In a tip-​based system, nonwhite servers make less than their white peers for equal work. Consider also the power imbalance between tippers, who are typically male, and servers, 70 percent of whom are female, and consider that the restaurant industry generates five times the average number of sexual harassment claims per worker. And that in many instances employers have allegedly misused tip credits, which let owners pay servers less than minimum wage if tipping makes up the difference.
Citations for those claims can be found here:

Ok my four star rating for this restaurant is likely a little soft. However this is also the cheapest full service restaurant in downtown Calgary. The challenge Calgary has is that the only food choices downtown are fast food, and pretentious haute cuisine. The spaghetti factory is the ONLY mid priced restaurant I’ve found near my workplace and hotel.
I was there twice this week once for the chorizo manicotti and the lunch sized lasagna. The manicotti was decent. The lasagna was about mediocre. Par for the course.
For dinner, the service was great. I Had a server who was helpful and chatty, and the hostess looked like my wife’s best friend.
For the lunch, the restaurant was pretty full so service was a little slow. But I was there with a couple of regulars, so our drinks were kept full, and fresh bread was plentiful.

This restaurant will close soon to make way for another office tower. No word on a new location yet.
Saturday night at the Old Spaghetti Factory was great reward for my daughter who stuck with me while I did a bit of weekend work in my downtown office. Our four-​course meals, plus a beer for me, came to $ 30 plus tip. That’s great value, even if the food is a bit uninspired.

Just came back from the OSF… it was my first time in this restaurant. I ordered the Lasagna (mama’s recipe) with the Caesar Salad to start. Hold on right there, maybe I should start from the VERY beginning.
My boyfriend and I walk through the door, we are the first in line for a table, it takes the greeter girl a few mins to see if there is a table ready for us. We are led to our table, my boyfriend finds a spaghetti noodle on his chair from the previous people. We sit, and we sit, and we sit. About 10 mins go by and we are just starting to get ready to get up and leave when our waitress comes over to take our order (with the bread in hand). As I said, I ordered the Lasagna, with Caesar salad and a coke. My boyfriend orders the spicy chorizo penne and a honey ale. We only have to wait about 5 mins or so to actually get our food. My b/f’s meal… the only thing that was really wrong with it was not enough sausage in it and he discovered that his fork was dirty about ½ way through.
My meal? Well let’s start with the salad. When she brought it over to me she brought the coke at the same time. Puts the coke on the table then goes to put the salad down, a croûton falls into my pop (she goes to get me another) while I am eating my «Caesar salad» (just lettuce with dressing and a little «fresh» parmesan) I look and notice there doesn’t seem to be any dressing on the salad, well that’s because it’s all SUPER watery and is sitting at the bottom of the plate. So I put that aside and go to eat my «mama’s» lasagna.
What a mistake that turned out to be. The menu description is «Layer upon layer of pasta, meat sauce and three different cheeses» Well it really is only layer upon layer. There were only 2 layers. Around the outside the noodles were hard and crunchy and the middle was just a pile of mush. I didn’t eat very much and ran out of coke about ½ way through the meal. When the server came over to ask if we were done (she didn’t come over at all during us eating the meal to see how everything was), she noticed I didn’t eat very much of my food so she asked if everything was ok. I told her frankly that it tasted horrible.
She said she would speak with the manager to see if we could have it taken off the bill. The manager then came over to us and offered a $ 10 off coupon for our next visit and said that he had taken the lasagna off the bill. We proceeded to tell him that we would definitely not be back and advised him of all the other horrible things that had gone wrong prior to the lasagna. He also said not to order the lasagna when you go there as they make it for the kids so there is no spices in it so it’s very bland (I did not order off the kids menu).
He tried making excuses about how his servers are all new and blah blah blah… I won’t even get into the 15 mins discussion we had with him about everything and all the excuses he made. He did take care of the whole bill at the end of it all.
The jist of everything above? DON’T BOTHER GOING to the OSF. If you do, apparently go on Friday night’s and say you are a friend of Joe and he will personally take care of you (or that’s what he told us anyways). We will not being going back though, that’s for sure.

Once upon a time I went on a really bad date to the Old Spaghetti Factory with a boy who wanted to show me authentic Italian food. If by «authentic» he meant that it was equivalent to buying dry pasta and a bottle of sauce from the grocery store, he was right. Needless to say, there wasn’t a 2^nd date. Last week I returned to the Old Spaghetti Factory after a 6 or 7 year absence and I’m not surprised to see that nothing has changed.
The atmosphere screams «family restaurant» in the worst kind of way (though I’ll be the first to admit, I was tempted to ask for crayons to draw on my menu) and the food couldn’t be more mediocre if it tried. I suppose I can get behind the «choose your own adventure» format they follow. Ordering an entrée also entitles you to your choice of starters and desserts but don’t get too excited! It’s really just salad and ice cream.
The service itself was nothing special. Granted, I did go here on New Years Eve and the place was packed, but then again when isn’t this restaurant full?
Overall I was unimpressed and underwhelmed. Hopefully I can go another 6 or 7 years before I get dragged here again. And to the kid who took me here as a teenager: I sincerely hope you’ve found a more «authentic» restaurant to take your dates to when you want to show off your Italian heritage!

As Chef Ramsay would say, I wouldn’t serve this s*it to a dog. A place with this name should make their pasta from scratch, but they don’t. Perhaps their sauce is made from scratch? Nope. There is nothing authentic about this place. It’s lazy cooking, lazy owners, and lazy front of house staff. The food is crap to say it nicely. Bland, undercooked and boring. The servers I had on both occasions I was here were slow and more interested in their phones than their customers. If you want good Italian food, go to an Italian restaurant. The Old Spaghetti Factory is the McDonald’s of the Italian food scene.

The Old Spaghetti Factory is close to my Company’s Canadian Mother Ship (Shell Centre) and is a convenient place for a fairly quick and no-​nonsense Lunch. I’ve been here several times over the years and have neither been disappointed or wowed. Some might argue that this is the definition of consistency and that’s what some people want when they visit a new City. That’s fine for Lunch, but in a City such as Calgary, there’s too many good place to eat within a decent walk for me want to come here for Dinner.
The other trick on business trips is trying not to eat too much at a single sitting. After all, there’s work to do in the PM. The Old Spaghetti Factory can certainly provide a big meal, but they also offer a soup and salad combination that has worked well for me.

Review number three for spaghetti and meatballs. The last time I went to the OSF was 10 years ago, and I had not gone back because that experience was painful with bad service and food. So when a friend suggested it last week, I was open to giving it another chance.
We went in and were seated right away, but our server didn’t show up for 10 minutes even though it was not that busy. He finally arrived, and gave us our complimentary bread and took both our drink and food order. Friendly, so that’s a plus. Our drinks arrived five minutes later so I was happy, thinking maybe this experience would be good. Thirty minutes later, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Onto the food — the french onion soup was very bland, the beef broth was not robust at all. The spaghetti and meatballs were also pretty tasteless, with the meatballs being mostly filler so they were moist at least. One bright spot was the spumoni ice cream at the end, pistachio flavor was the best.
So, overall, can’t blame the server for the wait on the food or the quality. He was friendly and helpful when he finally showed up. But, based on the food itself, I probably won’t return for another few years.

This review started out as a 4 star in my head at the beginning of my visit but ended up at 2.
We walked into the joint early on a Sunday evening, no lineup, got seated in the lounge (our request — they have comfy couches!) right away.
The meal deal is great — soup/​salad + bread + meal + ice cream + coffee/​tea? I’m sold!
Drink service was pretty quick off the draw, but the server ended up having to come back & ask me again what I ordered about 10 minutes later, which was a bit odd. The person I was with wasn’t sure what he wanted right away, and had to flag someone down about 20 minutes later to (finally) order his drink.
After ordering our meals, we received our appetizers no problem. But in the middle of eating, our server came by and asked us (again!) what our meals had been? Even odder. Why weren’t these things written down or entered into the system right away?
I got the Red thai chicken curry. The sauce was amazing — if it had been served over rice, it would have been PERFECT. I loved it. And maybe a bit more kick but I can overlook that. Served with fettuccini, though, didn’t do it justice. Even my dining partner agreed (as I’m not a pasta person so I needed a second opinion).
However, service degraded after this. We were left to our own devices for what felt like forever, and then finally our server directed someone else to pack up our meals. He asked if we wanted the bill before asking whether we wanted ice cream and coffee/​tea. Brought 2 bills (both identical — we only paid 1!) There were no water refills throughout the entire meal.
After waiting 15 or 20 mins, I had to get up & stand next to the payment machine & flag down our server to actually pay (via credit card).
And, to finish off the evening, I had the pleasure of watching 2 servers (ours included) get into a fight about meals & who was busier that evening. Not exactly mature. Take your disagreements into the back, not right in front of your customers.
Doesn’t really make me want to come back. The food was alright but the service turned me off.