Since it was dinner time and we were in downtown, J suggested we go to The Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown. I’m not a  big fan of the family chain restaurant since I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with the food, but J insisted that they had some great salad, so I decided to give it another shot. The place is definitely a family restaurant, and since we went for an early dinner, we were seated immediately. The Gastown location is said to be haunted too which makes everything a little more spooky! In the middle of the restaurant is an electric trolley. It is said that a train conductor died in a crash years ago and that people have seen his ghostly figure in pictures. Kind of creepy, since we were seated right next to the trolley.

Classic Sourdough Bread with Whipped Garlic and Plain Butter

All items that you order that are under the “It’s all included” menu include some bread, soup or salad and dessert. To start off, we were given the Classic Sourdough Bread with Whipped Garlic and Plain Butter. This was decent and I especially liked the Whipped Garlic.

Crisp Green Salad with Low-Fat Sesame Dressing

J chose the Crisp Green Salad with Low-Fat Sesame Dressing, since he said the dressing was really good the last time he had it. I took a bite and it definitely was pretty good. The dressing was sort of a vinaigrette based dressing with a hint of sesame flavour.

Clam Chowder

As for myself, I chose a soup isntead of the salad. You normally get a Minestrone Soup, but I chose to add $2.25 to substitute for a Clam Chowder. It was thick and creamy, but I’ve definitely had better Clam Chowder. It was just alright.

Pot-Pourri Spaghetti with Meat, Mushroom and Clam Sauce

And onto our entrees, we got of course some spaghetti! Since I couldn’t decide which sauce to get, I ended up getting the Pot-Pourri Spaghetti, which included all three of their most popular sauces. The last time I had spaghetti here, it was just watery and disgusting. This time, it wasn’t watery, but it still wasn’t any better. The meat sauce wasn’t anything special and I swear I could just buy the sauce off the shelf. The mushroom sauce tasted pretty much like the meat sauce except with mushrooms. The only sauce that I thought was decent was the clam sauce which actually had many pieces of clams in it.

Spaghetti with Spicy Meat Sauce

As for J, he got the Spaghetti with Spicy Meat Sauce. This too, wasn’t any good. The sauce  wasn’t flavourful and you could just taste the spaghetti with a hint of spice to it. Anyone could have made this dish.

Spumoni Ice Cream

For dessert, J got the Spunomi Ice Cream, which was a mixture of pistachio, chocolate and vanilla. I thought it tasted extremely weird and wasn’t a big fan of it.

Vanilla Ice Cream

For myself, I got the Vanilla Ice Cream. I’m usually a big fan of ice cream, and will literally eat any ice cream no matter how full I am, but I only took a few spoons of this. I was just dissatisfied with my meal and the ice cream wasn’t even good.

Overall, we were pretty disappointed with our meal. The food is decently priced with all the items that are included in your meal, but the quality just isn’t up to par. We left with half our dishes finished cause it was that bad.