Italian 4th of July

First of all, I have to say yes, as the title says, we went there on the 4th of July. It was very busy, and the waits were long, but there isn't much that any restaurant could have done to help that; however, being told that we were 15 minutes away from seating on arrival, and being able to just look around myself and know that wasn't true (with no restaurant experience I might add) is a little insulting. It took us an hour and a half to be seated, which was fine for my fiance and I, I just would have like to have been told that up front. And it was clear that other guests felt the same. If anything makes a customer hard to deal with or a hosts job difficult, it's when you make a promise that even you know you can't keep. Once we finally got seated things got better, if only a little. Our waitress, we could tell was either very shy, or very worn out. Nice enough girl, but she practically mumbled her way through the presentation of the menu and that night's specials. If there was ever a night to be heard in the dining room by guests it was that night. Not only was it quite loud, but with how busy it was, I'm sure there was at least one menu item the kitchen was low on. If customers can't hear you push anything, then they won't order it. Beside the point, luckily my fiance caught enough of the conversation to fill me in. We both ordered spaghetti but got different kinds. She got the plain traditional (marinara) and I ordered the meat lovers, we both got the salad with ranch. First thing is first, the salad was delicious. Perfectly dressed, not soggy and not dry, and neatly presented in both cases. We both enjoyed the salad.

Next up is the spaghetti, they both came out together which was nice. Mine came with an Italian sausage and two meat balls; the way it was presented on my plate was almost obscene, use your imagination, I'm not going there. I would have figured they would have diced the sausage and mixed it in the sauce before serving besides leaving something that resemble genitalia on my plate, but I digress. After dicing up the sausage myself and mixing it in, the meat lover was actually quite good. Well seasoned, cooked beautifully, however I dared not mix in the meat balls with the amount of grease left under them on my plate, but they were not bad either. Her spaghetti, on the other hand, was quite dull and lifeless, though not very expensive. Her plate looked as if some one had poured half a jar of ragu on a massive pile of pasta. It was under sauced. When she tasted it, she told me it was bland. To give you a little back ground on her, she comes from a house where her step father is totally spice intolerant, a pinch of red pepper on a steak is too spicy for him. Consequently, the food there is BLAND. So for her to tell me the spaghetti was bland, I knew something wasn't right. I tried it, it was bland. Almost no seasoning at all, which was disappointing because mine had been so delicious despite the presentation. I had her try some of mine and she liked it quite a lot more. After that we received complementary ice cream. It was vanilla ice cream, nothing spectacular there, but it wasn't bad. All in all I would definitely be returning to the old spaghetti factory as it was only about 26 dollars for both our meals. Not bad for the price you pay, but some very simple steps can be taken to make this place the best around, and give guests that classy experience that they crave at a place like this.