The Old Spaghetti Factory

My husband and I have been avid fans of the ‘Olé Spaghetti Factory for over 20 years. In fact the downtown Seattle venue was our first date!
We decided to go out for dinner last night and thought the Spaghetti Factory sounded good. We have gone to the Lynnwood restaurant before but it’s been over a year.
The place was packed (it was on Sunday, ⁶⁄₂₆) which we expected. Went up to put our name in and they wanted a cell phone number so they could text us when our table was ready. I had not brought my cell phone in and even if I had, I don’t think I want to have my cell phone number hanging out for whoever to see. The hostess frowned when I said I didn’t have my cell phone, and said, «well, here», sarcastically and handed us a pager.
Our wait wasn’t bad and the hostess lead us to our table, which was one in the middle of the large back room. There were several booths adjacent to our table and I asked if we could sit there, she looked frightened, like no one had ever asked to sit somewhere else, and when she hesitated I said, is that a different section? She assured us it was (of course it wasn’t as we saw the same waiter we had waiting on all the booths).
On to ordering. Our waiter was pleasant enough but very slow. He finally came to take our order and off he went. Fifteen to twenty minutes later we were served our salads and our bread. The salads were full of HUGE chunks of wilted iceberg lettuce (not romaine) that had to be cut in order to be eaten. Dressing (creamy pesto) was good. The garlic «butter» was horrible and we saw the manager, called her over and asked her what was in the blue little dish — she immediately said oh, that’s garlic butter. I asked if there was any butter in the product and she couldn’t answer, we complained about the lack of garlic and she said «Oh, we don’t actually make it here, it’s a Sysco product so maybe that tub didn’t have much garlic». I asked if there was even any cream in the product and she replied, I don’t know but it’s called Garlic Spread. Do not try to pass off butter as oil and flavoring, call it what it is, Garlic SPREAD.
My dinner, manager’s special with clam sauce and mizithra cheese was hot and tasted good. My husband’s dinner, on the other hand, spinach tortellini with «alfredo» sauce came with a very little amount of said sauce and was sub-​par.
Our spumoni ice cream was wonderful!!!
The restaurant has cut too many corners which has accounted for the quality of their food plummeting in our opinion. We are sad to say goodbye to an old favorite. I wish they were like they use to be, fun, wonderful food and fantastic service.
Michele

Had good food and a amazing waiter named Devin he brought all of our food out in a flash.

I always get the manager special which is two items brown butter mizithra
cheese and clam sauce with spaghetti noodles. The salad is delicious with the creamy pesto dressing and the bread is freshly baked. This is a great place to take family or just yourself and the staff does a great job. I would recommend this place to everyone. Spumoni ice cream at the end of the meal polishes it off. Love it!

First of all we ordered a Coke it was no carbonation it was horrible second of all the Caesar salad was just a bag of salad that they got from the grocery store third of all the meat sauce was like they just opened up a can of Chef Boyardee and threw it in my plates the parmesan cheese was terrible! And summaries for some reason the ice cream with terrible I don’t know how you screw up ice cream but they managed to do so the wine was great but that’s only because it came out of a bottle!

I have Nothing good to say about this place! This was Awful! The food was far from Par, the waitstaff seemed short… More so the food was so not good!

I like this place even people only gave out 3 stars. 3 courses meal with reasonable price. This is a good place for a relax dinner.

You know you’re in trouble when you ask about baked spaghetti and the manager looks at you funny. You have baked lasagna so what’s not to understand about baked spaghetti?
Disappointed with the food over the years. Seems like the taste and quality have dipped. Coffee and tea aren’t free with your meal anymore.
Think I’m done with Old Spaghetti Factory now.

Gross gross gross. Multiple people I know including myself have gotten food poisoning from this location specifically! Please don’t come here!

Went in with my date. She picked the place. I have been to other locations and always had good food and service.
Upon walking in I was really wondering how the experience would be. NOBODY was smiling or looked even slightly happy. The front desk, waitresses, man who showed us our table, only a single waiter smiled and was upbeat. WOW.
I told her I have very low expectations of this place.
We were supposed to have a group of people, but nobody showed up, so it was just two of us at the large table.
Ryann was our waitress. She did an AMAZING job! Our drinks were fast, accurate, refilled our water, brought more napkins, the appetizer and salads were quick, and our dinners arrived within 15 minutes. She did not make a single mistake. Every time she walked by she asked how we were, if the food was good, and if we needed anything.
She did everything absolutely flawless. I was and still am amazed! My date even mentioned how much of a rock star she was.
Always polite, smiling, very friendly, and made sure we were happy.
Food was plentiful, really good, cooked very well, and our entire experience was nice. She brought us several boxes for take home food and gave us ice cream.
Very good experience. I wish all food service staff were this good.

Service is fair but the only thing this place has is cool décor. Food is awful. I make better spaghetti. It was nasty. Never coming back. Chicken Marsala disgusting. It didn’t even look appetizing. The one tasty item was shrimp scampi…

My husband called in a pick up order. Upon arriving he was told he would be helped in a few minutes. After several minutes, he asked for help again. Then found out our food had been sitting behind the host stand the entire time, getting cold. He paid, and came home. We opened our dinner to see that the entire order was COMPLETELY WRONG and COLD! I called and had to explain three different times that our order was wrong, and yes I had a receipt that stated the correct order as if I was a moron and just ordered the wrong food and was mad. Then I was told I had to speak to a manager. After several minutes on hold, the manager did apologize and offered to refund our money, which I did appreciate. I couldn’t quite understand why the first person couldn’t say «oh let me take care of that for you, come right back.» My husband had to drive back to return the wrong food, was refunded our money, and then come home again with the correct food, which took over an hour, after a long day at work and already sitting in traffic. We were all disappointed with our experience, especially our starving and cranky toddler.

Great for large groups and party’s.

I love pasta there an people are real nice. Their Alfredo sauce is my absolute favorite! Nobody makes a sauce that can compare to that. Not only is the food delicious the environment is always family friendly and I leave with a smile

This is my first review … But I feel so strongly about our experience last night I had to write!
In one word «. Terrific»
From the service in the bar followed by a well executed birthday party for 30… The food came out all together on time hot, timely and correct’ our party was for my 87 year old mom in law and ages ranged from 12 months up…
I could not say enough about this restaurant I highly recommend it! Ifs it’s a party of two or a party of 30… I cannot wait to go back… My mom in law was on cloud nine!

Very dissatisfied.
Went to a party event there last night. The mood was good, but the food was average. For the salad, they put the dressing on the salad, which displeased me because some people may not like the dressing or even having dressing on their salad. The fettuccine alfredo was okay, but had to add salt to it to give it a boost in flavor. What frustrated me the most was that they are very unorganized when it comes to paying bills. Everybody at the event had to pay their own bills, but the servers first gave everybody their bills and then collected everyone’s, without knowing who paid what. When they came back to return the bills to everyone, it was very chaotic. I asked for my bill twice, saying what I had and how much I paid for, but never got it back. I also had to leave before I was able to get my bill back. I basically lost $ 20 when my change was about $ 10.

Always been a personal favorite of mine in cali. Glad to say the seattle branch is just as good. Sausage in my spaghetti was a tad undercooked but otherwise, everything was pasta perfect. Nice, spacious place but disabled ramp was a bit awkward.

My daughter turned ten, so it was movie and dinner night out. Where did she want to go for food? OSF!
Well, we didn’t have to wait long at all to be seated, but then again, we arrived at 4 pm. We had a good time, but nothing really that memorable. Here is a summary:
Pros: Price is low for a family of six. My wallet stayed in one piece.
Atmosphere is good, I like the dark wood and 19^th century vibe.
Cons: Traffic around this area of Lynnwood is horrendous! Plan time for driving and parking challenges. When the waiter says «It is gluten free because all the ingredients are artificial», you know why the prices are low.

My bf usually chooses the Spaghetti factory as his go-​to place for birthday/​large group dinners. I think the value for the meal is there, your entrée comes with soup or salad and a small scoop of ice cream. I like to try different things but haven’t found a favorite. The side order of broccoli is pretty good and very large! Bf only orders fettuccine alfredo.

Disappointed!
Since moving to Stanwood a couple of years ago, I was excited to try The Old Spaghetti Factory in Alderwood, after having had great food and service at one in Cali. The atmosphere was nice, but it sort of ended there. The server was so focused on trying to sell the special drinks that she didn’t explain the menu, which we found a bit confusing. The sour dough bread was so hard on the outside (or the knife was dull), we had difficulty cutting the bread. I don’t really understand restaurants serving an uncut loaf of bread anyway. The salad (extra charge if you want Romaine lettuce), was mediocre. The salad dressing was uniquely good.
Our main courses were lasagna and tortellini. Nothing special there. After they were served, our server pretty much ignored us. We asked for tiramisu for dessert, and they do not serve it at this location. Whoever heard of an Italian restaurant who doesn’t have tiramisu? The waitress brought out a complementary ice cream for my grandson, and neglected to tell us that everyone can have one (we discovered this as we were leaving. She also did not bring a spoon with the ice cream, even though our table was obviously cleared of plates and silverware, so we had to dig one out of our diaper bag.
The devil is in the details I guess, but a spoon with ice cream was the topping on the cake, which I wish could have been tiramisu. This meal was expensive for some stale bread, a so-​so bowl of Romaine, and a square of lasagna.

If you’ve been here before, you know what to expect. Relatively good value with an excellent kids menu of Pasta. Over the years, I feel like there are variations in the quality of Spaghetti Factory, depending on location – this one is good. Service can be a mixed bag. Seems like they hire young servers, who maybe need a bit more training, especially surrounding awareness of basic needs (like water refill). The last server, however, provided us good service.
The Mizithra sauce is amazing. The spumoni in delicious. The wait is always lengthy, but now they’ve implemented text-​message alerts, so you can go outside and not feel like you’ll miss your table.
If you want good spaghetti, good value and quality atmosphere, then this place is great. Much better and more consistent than Macaroni Grill and great for kids.