Aku Eats Oahu : a closer look : Old Spaghetti Factory, a closer look

Old Spaghetti Factory, a closer look

Greetings everyone!

7/10/08 - And what a great day it is! Yeah, I just cashed my stimulus check. But even besides that..... What a great day! Thank you Mr. Bush!

You'd figure wifey and I'd go splurge at Alan Wong's or Ruth's Chris, but nooo, we go to probably the cheapest American Chain Restaurant out there - Old Spaghetti Factory! I guess it's our way of showing restraint. After all, though twelve-hun-red is a good amount and we're both thankful for every penny of it, we all know how quickly an amount like that can vanish into thin air! One moment we're gloating over a fat bonus, and the next, it's scratch-your-head-time wondering where it all went, relieved only that we already applied for overdraft protection!

It is pretty darn cheap at the Old Spaghetti Factory, at least compared to other restaurants in it's genre - Ruby Tuesday's, Chili's, Bubba Gump, etc. Prices for spaghetti plates are mostly under $10, except for the Portuguese Sausage and Sicilian Meatball flavors. You can even combine two different sauces on a single plate for $9.95.

They seem to have expanded their non-spaghetti options here greatly, as you can see from the following pic. These, of course, are a bit more pricey, but still never go north of $15. And, mind you, to top it all off every meal comes complete with a soup or salad and a drink! Tough to beat that, for sure!

The biggest reason I'm so amazed at the prices is actually not because of the food, but because of the over-all design and structure of the place. Not only is it physically one of the biggest eateries out there, spanning several separate, cavernous-sized dining areas and two floors, but the decor is pretty amazing once you take the time to sit back and look around for a moment. The entire area showcases itself with an old-style presence, with large burgundy curtains, the deep, rich colors of mahogany-type woods, intricately-designed stair-cases, and basically coming rife with something you might see in an Audrey Hepburn movie, or even further back in time to an old Western or Victorian-era scene.

The original owner actually has a 25,000 square-foot warehouse where craftsmen work to re-furbish antiques and construct the huge amount of reproductions that go into each restaurant. Sure, Sam Choy has a boat in his dining room, but how about a bus-sized San Francisco streetcar?

Or this cool-looking staircase? Sorry for the dark pics - I'm such an amateur!

As for our meal, the kind waitress raved that the shrimp, spinach, and artichoke dip was to die for, but it was the olive tapenade, instead, that caught my eye. Wifey and I both consume a lot of olive oil and non-canned variety olives because we believe in the power of its heart-healthy fatty acids and other properties. Those people on the Mediterranean don't have long lives for nothing! Of course, not that we wouldn't be ordering watered-down, vinegary-canned stuff here, but we'd end up taking our chances instead of going with the relatively safe artichoke dip that every American Chain has.

The tapenade actually turned out decent. The olives weren't the super-soft variety found for a buck or two at the grocery store - they were firmer - but I still can't say if they were canned or not. It was diced and mixed with capers, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and some seasonings. The only bad thing was the "flatbread" it came with. I very much expected more of a soft, thin bread, hopefully nice and warm, but it came instead with something resembling large crackers! Oh, well.

Wifey went with a house salad with blue cheese dressing. As you can see, it was ve-ry standard - right out of a Costco-type bag. I just thought "remember the price, remember the price!" and all was well.

My starter was a brocolli cheese soup that was equally as impressive as the salad...

My, how I really wanted to jump on one of the non-spaghetti plates, maybe a jumbo crab ravioli, chicken parmigiana, or baked lasagna, but couldn't resist my standard order - spaghetti with mizithra cheese and browned butter! Mizithra is a soft cheese of Greek origin that resembles cottage or ricotta in texture, but the version they serve here at the Old Spaghetti Factory is an aged variety that is hard and crumbly. To me, it tastes almost like a kicked-up parmesan.

The look is very simple, with butter-soaked pasta noodles sprinked with mizithra, but the salty-cheesy flavor of this dish garners many fans far and wide, believe me.

After not coming here for a while, and with this current phase of economic uncertainties going on, I wondered if they would be able to continue the same level of value as they have in the past. When our plates arrived, they did seem to have shrunk just a wee, but it's been so long I can't really say for sure. It was still as good as ever, though, so no worries!

I normally order a combination of mizithra and a red sauce, usually meat or mushroom, but having never tried the clam sauce and it receiving high marks from our kind waitress, I decided to go white, instead.

It came with ample amounts of tiny little clams that held a decent texture and presence, unlike the almost dissolved-in-water clams found in some canned versions, and did carry a creamy-tasty flavor I enjoyed.

Wifey wondered why I didn't put this restaurant in the Italian section, as spaghetti is, after all, from Italy. I guess I could have put it there as well. However, like pizza, which also hails from the same region, spaghetti hits so close to home in the American psyche that it seemed the more obvious choice, at least in the world according to Aku. The atmosphere of the restaurant also played its part, coming very similiar to other American Chains in many ways.

Anyhow, wifey loves a good zesty-tangy marinara, something I never order. I don't know, maybe the tanginess of it all reminds me too much of the vinegared everything's at a deli or something. Who knows? I don't understand myself sometimes, either. But I'll probably always continue to reflect and try to unlock the secrets of exactly just what these hidden motivations and complexities are in my mind. It's an illness, maybe.

A word of warning to all you double-saucer's out there. When ordering a plate of mizithra and any kind of red sauce, don't mix the two together as much as possible - eat one at a time. It just doesn't work mixed, believe me (and wifey, too!). The butter and mizithra taste just gets lost in the heavier red sauce and the red sauce gets "watered down" and bland. Keep 'em separate and you'll be aaalll good!

I wish we had room for dessert, like say, a mud pie or chocolate mousse cake. They looked good on the menu, but you know how that goes...

If you haven't tried Old Spaghetti Factory yet, I think it's a good idea to go get yourself aquainted with the place. Not that the meals are spectacular, but as I reiterate again, the atmosphere pretty much is, and it's really hard to beat the dollar value for such a cool, comfortable surrounding. No, we're not even technically in a recession, but the gas prices alone are enough to have me searching for bargains. And I got a little four-cylinder, too!

Hope you all have a wonderful day and take care of yourselves till we meet again!

Aku

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