I can still remember being 10 years old and going to The Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown for the first time with my parents. There known for serving up tons of pasta for a great price with the addition of your own personal loaf of bread accompanied by whipped garlic butter, your choice of soup or green salad, coffee or tea and a bowl of spumoni ice cream-that’s the thing I remembered most from being a kid and coming here.

Now the old spaghetti factory has turned more tourist destination than local joint but can that be a bad thing-let’s find out shall we.  I used to think the restaurant was unique till I was down south in Atlanta and walked past one on the way to eat some killer Mexican food at Rosa Mexicano, it was filled with whimsical antiques and decorative items like velvet armchairs, vintage-looking fringed lamps and booths made from iron bedsteads filled the dining room.

Coming back here was like walking back in time-it’s just the same as when I was here as a kid, I was greeted and seated really quickly and the restaurant was packed with family’s finishing lunch so my server took a bit to get over to me and take my order-no big deal because it gave me some time to check out the newspaper style menu

Complementary bread and whipped garlic butter & regular butter.  This is a staple of the Old Spaghetti factory, the bread here isn’t as good as the bread basket at other places-the bread here is really dense but the whipped butter is really good.  I wonder how much bread is thrown away on weekly basis seeing the volume they do?

Garden Salad with Creamy Italian Dressing.  The choice of minestrone soup or salad is given with every meal and I think I should have gone with the soup, you can also upgrade your salad to a Cesar or a french onion soup for a couple bucks more.  The salad was right out of the fridge cold and the iceberg lettuce was kinda lame, the dressing was nice and tart.

The Managers Favorite-choice of 2 sauces in one plate for $10.95.  I went with the classic meat sauce and something I have never heard of-Mizithra Cheese from Greece, it was supposed to be a sauce of browned butter and the cheese but it was more like regular buttered noodles with yummy cheese which is all good in the end.  The meat sauce on the other hand was just of-they rinse the pasta here which makes it impossible for the sauce to stick to so I was left with sauce on top of noodles that ended up being sopped up with that bread.

Spumoni Ice Cream.  The classic Old Spaghetti Factory spumoni ice cream, this was a nice treat at the end of the meal and was pretty good.

Your meal also comes with coffee or tea but I passed, at the end of the day all this was $12.25 after taxes and I was a full foodie so you do get value for dollar here, I’ll be back to have a plate of the Greek cheese pasta again soon.  They also offer a gluten free menu.