Fine Dining - The Haunting of The Old Spaghetti Factory

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Michael & Garrett review The Old Spaghetti Factory The most mediocre dinner so far takes a sharp turn when the boys discover the place is super haunted An interview with special guest, Paranormal Investigator/Psychic/Author Jeff Dwyer Michael raises some eyebrows when the You Must Bowl forces him to bring a pineapple to dinner and insist it’s his son Michael & Garrett tell you all about why they nicknamed the guy sitting across from them “Milk Steve the Cream Lord” JUB offers to bust ghosts 7 year-old Julian reviews the kids menu in this week’s Munchkin Menu Musings Will Michael go 3-0 against Garrett in The Headline Game?   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Old Spaghetti Factory stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a 5-star review on iTunes. We read every one!   The Search Continues: next time on Fine Dining we dine at Island’s Fine Burgers & Drinks! If you have ever worked for Island’s and have a story to share, or if you’d like us to hear your child’s review of the Island’s kids’ menu, send it to [e-mail].

Hi there, and welcome back to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I am your host, Michael Ornelas. And I'm your other host, Garrett Zwerk. And together we are Fine Dining, and we are here to try and find you that perfect 5.00 experience out of 10. These are gonna be the familiar restaurants

that you all grew up on. We're talking about Applebee's, Chili's, Red Robin, Olive Garden. You know the ones. We are going to these places because we have a little bit of home associated with them, right? This is the place where you find out

your uncle's having another kid. Yeah, Garrett and I are both Midwestern born guys who ended up out in Los Angeles, a place with a little bit too bougie of a food scene. And so we are trying to kind of get back to our roots and enjoy the familiar places, the chain restaurants. Like I want a place where I don't want to feel like I have to be on my best

just to sit down and have a burger. Exactly. Come on. We want a place that we can walk into in like sweat shorts, like sweat pants, but basically shorts. Yeah. And we won't look out of place. We want these places that will welcome us with open arms, knowing exactly that they don't care too deeply about us,

but we don't care too deeply about them. It is purely transactional, like a prostitute. Yes. Outback is a prostitute. Yeah. What I do need to say is so far, we're three episodes into the podcast and things have not gone the way I expected. I have gotten to pick all three of our restaurants

because I'm terrible at the game. You're terrible at the headline game, which we play at the end of the episode. Stay tuned to determine who gets to pick the next weeks. And watch me lose again. And for three weeks now, I have failed to bring you a place that is perfectly mediocre.

It's a spoiler a little bit, but I don't think the old spaghetti factory is going to end up in that four to six range. I think it'll be outside of it. Outback exceeded our expectations, Buffalo Wild Wings fell. It dripped way below. Dripped short of our expectations.

Old spaghetti factory I thought was kind of going in that mediocre direction until the end brought us a pretty eventful twist, which we'll get into. It was a good one. But join us, won't you? Our table is ready. Your table is ready, follow me.

Have you tried our chicken breast? Serving pancakes and rips, I recommend the spaghetti. We're here to satisfy, not to impress. Your table is ready, complimentary butter and bread. These walls have growth signs. Knit, knack, cowboy hat, good luck, cat, autographed guitar, some crap from your city. Behold the trash key of mediocrity.

Fine dining, just fine dining, fine dining. Two ledgers on the sign are shining. Neon flickering, irregular timing. Identify the perfect vibe. Palatine, fine dining. First impressions. The parking lot was huge. Oh my gosh, huge.

The building used to be a school. It was built in 1909 for grades, I think, two through eight. And they had a fancy sign out front that said the Old Spaghetti Factory. That was perfect for posing in front of with my son. Juicy Junior. So if you didn't listen to last week's episode, Buffalo Wild Wings didn't quite score

within the four to six mediocre range. And as a result, I faced a consequence. So I drew from the you must bowl and it told me that I must bring a pineapple with me to dinner and ask for a booster seat with it and treat it like it's my son. And I committed to that. Oh yeah, 100%.

I put super glued, I gorilla glued googly eyes to a pineapple and I went to a Hollywood professional hair and wig store and I bought a fake beard slash handle bar mustache to imitate what I looked like and brought it with us to the Old Spaghetti Factory. So how much did your prop cost? Like $85 somewhere in there. Jesus.

Just for a pineapple that looked like me and went bad within four or five days. But I hate best tasting pineapple of your life. You're a psychopath. Garrett sliced off his face and served it to me. And you can check that out on our TikTok at Fine Dining Podcast. You can see pictures of Juicy

at Fine Dining Podcast on Instagram as well. That's right. We're on Instagram at Fine Dining Podcast. We're on TikTok at Fine Dining Podcast. And you can email us whatever you want. Fine Dining Podcast at gmail.com. We might regret that. But I don't know.

Maybe we won't. I'm just going to say, Michael loves me more than Juicy. That's what you told him in his final moments. Well, he's not here anymore to listen. R.I.P. Juicy. Love me. Artwork done by the incredible Andrea Touchrup.

Go get them now. We had a reservation which Garrett made. He got a ton of joy of calling in advance. Yes, I made sure to get a reservation for us and one child with a booster seat, also with the option of a high chair or a swing chair. We need to make sure Juicy is safe. So we got the booster chair

and the hostess kind of uncomfortably walked us to our seat and had to make a stopover to grab the booster seat. First time she saw a grown man walk in with a pineapple with eyes and a beard. Come on. Yeah, we're in Hollywood, baby. This happens every day. This is a daily occurrence.

And so we sat down at our table. I put Juicy in the booster seat. We got a kid's menu and some crayons in front of him. And we were stuck right in the middle of that train car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to sit inside the train car, which was kind of, once we walked in, the only real thing to notice.

Oh yeah, exactly. It's kind of a wide open area and train car. And we didn't know kind of the extent of the history of this place, but that'll come up pretty shortly. But for now, let's dive into the first of our three categories, which just to remind you, we will rate places based on their atmosphere, their service and their food.

So let's talk about the atmosphere for a bit. Atmosphere. Too hot. I was worried this was going to be another Bdubs experience. Except that was too cold. You're basically just like a delicate little flower who can only, you can only bloom in the right conditions. Give me a temperature from 69 to 74 and I'm good.

You are a fussy little boy. I am a fussy little boy. This is this week's fussy little boy moment brought to you by Garrett being. A fussy little boy. A fussy little boy. So we walk in, there's a giant train car in the middle. That has like facts written on the top of it.

We ate inside of it. So we were able to see all of these things. And I kind of told you about the town and the surrounding areas. I'm like, oh, here's the racetrack. And then outside of that, there is a giant map of the world on the wall. There are flags hanging from the ceiling from a bunch of different states,

presumably states that have old spaghetti factory locations in them because there weren't 50. No, definitely not. It was more one of those 17 spices, 20 jar moments. Exactly. The lighting wasn't quite as bright, but it also wasn't as dark as we've come to expect from most Italian restaurants, typically.

And as it turns out, we were in the old auditorium. That's the thing. Once I found out it used to be a school, it didn't seem so weird. No, it all made sense. Okay, high ceilings. Okay, well, this was an auditorium, so the giant map on the wall.

Ah, geography lesson. Exactly. So this place, to me, atmospherically was pretty mediocre. Other than you have a big train car in the middle, which is just kind of neat. But it wasn't a place who's like decor I would ever like copy if I wanted to make a super cool room in my home

or anything like that. Yeah, no, not at all. Like even at this point, I'm just feeling mediocre about it. It's not until much later where this drastically changed. Something truly psychotic ended up happening because while we were getting toward the end of our meal, I was feeling very mediocre about the whole experience, which, again, that's what we're looking for.

So I was like, oh, we found a place that I think is gonna be closer to 5.0. But we wanted some more. We wanted to, you know, just discover the breadth of what this place has to offer. And Garrett looked on Yelp and discovered a review that said the manager gave us a tour. So what did I do?

You asked. I asked her hostess for a tour. Which is crazy. If you were at a Chili's and you asked your waitress like, hey, can I get a tour of the place? They'd be like, what are you talking about? There's a bathroom and then there's the restaurant. But dude, she was excited for it.

Well, the thing that should have been a red flag to me was she didn't sound like it was weird to her. No, she had done this before. And so that's when, you know, I kind of get on high alert. And so she's showing us around the place and since it did used to be a school, she's showing us like this was like the teacher's lounge. There's a music room.

Oh, there's kindergarten. There's some original blackboards, supposedly. This is the office where the principal hung himself. Oh, out of nowhere. You just dropped that on us? Like, what are you talking about? She's like, oh, you didn't know that this place was haunted? I thought that's why you wanted the tour.

No, I just read it on Yelp and we're doing a podcast. Yeah, we had no idea that this place is just crawling with hella ghosts. Like there's a tree nearby, the Duarte hanging trees nearby where they used to hang and execute criminals. Yeah. And like the hostess who gave us the tour said she doesn't like to go down in the basement because there's shadows that belong to things that she can't see and stuff moves around.

And it's like, get out while you can't. Why? Like she also said she wasn't into it. She's not like digging the supernatural vibe. So why is she exposing herself to? I am genuinely like ghost freak me out. I love it. I've lived in a haunted house.

I like to think my first ghost experience. I was a child. I saw Abraham Lincoln full top hat and all creepily staring in my bedroom window. That's truly wild. Yeah. And I'm on the second floor so it's either a petto or a ghost. It's one of the two.

Why not both? It's a ghost petto. It could have just been a guy who was like dressed like Abraham Lincoln. We don't know definitively that it was Honest Abe. I guess it's true. I'm sure the same prop store where you got the beard they also sell a top hat. Exactly.

So the hostess kind of concludes our tour and it just made this place so much more interesting. And I would say that the ghost hunting element of it alone puts it outside of mediocre territory because it adds some spice that we did not expect. Oh, 100%. I even remember noticing walking through the bar. There's a cold, oppressive energy that only lifts

when you walk into the next room. It's there. It's light. You can almost feel centuries of children playing. It's honestly horrifying. So if you look it up, the old spaghetti factory in Duarte, California, if you're into ghosts, that is a place you can visit. And I regret supposedly the bathrooms downstairs are super haunted.

Yeah? I didn't get to use them and I didn't know that until we got home and I did research. I was pissed. And yeah. So this experience kind of took a turn. I was ready to just nope my way out of there. I am not all about ghosts.

I was ready to set up a cot, do an overnight investigation. Got my EMF detector. Come on, let's go. So this has kind of warped our input on the entire experience. But here to talk more about the haunting of the old spaghetti factory, we have a special guest for you. All right. With us, we have Jeff Dwyer.

Hey, Jeff, thanks for joining us. You've described yourself on your website as a paranormal investigator, writer, researcher, and psychic. How would you best describe what this looks like in practice? Well, it sounds like a lot and it really is a lot. But I do paranormal research. People often contact me with questions about their home or business and they're wondering if there might be something related to the history

of the place that could be paranormal. So I'll research that. I do paranormal investigations in homes and businesses and historical places. Period on ghost adventures and several other paranormal TV shows with that. I do describe myself as a psychic because I do have psychic abilities and I use those in my paranormal investigation. I supplement that with some of the technical devices that people may have seen on TV, like infrared video recorders and audio recorders and things like that.

But my main focus is to go into a place and use my psychic abilities to detect the presence of a ghost and maybe even to communicate. Interesting. So the reason that we've brought you on is for the old spaghetti factory. We were just sitting there enjoying our meals oblivious to the fact that we could have been haunted at any second. It wasn't until after the meal when we asked for a tour that the hostess dropped the bombshell on us that the principal hung himself in his office

and that she avoids the basement because she constantly sees shadows that she can't source. What went down there? What are we missing and do we need to be worried that the ghosts followed us home or anything like that? Well, first of all, people should know that none of the paranormal activity at the spaghetti factory is malevolent. It's not going to harm you. People have not been attacked, touched, pushed or otherwise harmed at this place. These things go on and they usually last a second or two.

You even wonder what did I see or what did I hear? And then you're just kind of left wondering and not certain that you've experienced anything ghostly. So no one's going to go into this place and get harmed in any way. The rumor about the principal who hung himself is at this point still a rumor because none of the research that people have done, including myself, have turned up any evidence that somebody actually did this. In fact, the records show that the principal is at the school when the building was a school. We're all female, but it's likely that this person, if someone, a male did commit suicide,

might have been a staff member, custodian, caretaker, somebody like that, who may have done something very inappropriate and he decided to end his life. I have seen some story. There's a hanging tree in Duarte. Do you think supposedly near that old spaghetti factory? Do you know of any link? I'm not sure that there's a link there because most of the paranormal activity at the Duarte spaghetti factory really centers on children.

And I think that's because the place was a school, but there was a school that predated it on the same location. And this school burned in 1908. And there's no official records of children dying in the fire, but it's very likely that children had to be rescued and many were probably traumatized. And they may have something to do with the paranormal activity going on in the current building. And the spaghetti factory opened it, I think, in 1993 as a restaurant. Okay, so I was wondering, have you ever had any attachment experiences,

anything oppression, possession related? Yes, I have personally. When we filmed Ghost Adventures on Alcatraz Island, we were out there three nights. And generally I do a cleansing ritual before I leave a place, especially with our malevolent spirits as there are on Alcatraz. But when I left one night, I was tired. It was about four in the morning, so I didn't do it. And as I drove home, I heard a growling from the backseat of my car.

I thought maybe my imagination is just running away with me. But once I got home, I slept a bit and I noticed later that the growling was in my bedroom. And I captured some of this on audio recording. If you could see my face right now. Of the two of us, I'm the one who's way more spooked by this kind of stuff. Garrett's like, you know, he's just interested. Yeah, and I'm just terrified, so that's kind of our dynamic. Do you still have the sound recording of that?

Yeah, I've got it done, and I could probably send it to you. The lights are pretty, aren't they? In order to communicate, though, you have to let go of it so that we can ask you to turn them on and turn them off. But this thing, and I tried to tease it a little bit. I had a K2 meter, which Ghost Hunters use. It's a electromagnetic field detector and it has flashing lights on. So I tried to tease this guy by saying, don't you think the lights are real pretty? And he really growled at me.

Wow, that's scary. You're interacting with the spirit. How do you know if a spirit can see you and what's it like when you see them? Very often when I see spirits, they're partial apparitions. I've seen a few whole body apparitions in Sonoma and a few other places. But generally they're partial apparitions. You'll see just like waist up or something like that. Some people reported seeing only from the knees down.

So every time my girlfriend leaves her shoes at the bottom of the stairs, it might be Ghosts doing it because she swears that she's not leaving them there and it's just a pair of footwear. Ghosts do move things around to get attention. Sometimes they have so little energy that all they can do is move your shoes or pull the tie off the doorknob that you left hanging there or something like that. That's all they can do because they have so little energy to manifest on our environment. How do you know when a ghost can see you and what's your favorite method to draw a reaction? You can tell when they turn and look right at you, sometimes they'll make gestures. They will point or wave at you to come forward or go away. I hate the sound of that.

There's a directed gesture and virtually eye contact. Then you know that they see you. If you want to get their attention, you can use what we call trigger devices, which could be anything really simple. Like a ball you'd leave on the floor and you would roll it out onto the floor and see if the ghost will move it after it comes to a stop. You'll see if the ghost will move it. Sometimes we use more definitive trigger devices like if I'm investigating a home where a suicide took place and let's say somebody used an antique weapon. I'll bring into the home a replica of an antique weapon and leave it on the table and invite the ghost to contact it. Sometimes it's really simple.

You can leave a deck of cards out with four aces on top and leave it out overnight. You come to look at it in the morning. You find the aces shoveled through the deck. That's a trigger device that has attracted the interest of somebody who might have been a card player, for instance. What is up with the old spaghetti factory having multiple haunted locations? I know you said there's one up by you. I've heard that there's one in St. Louis. I think Garrett, you said there was one in Arizona.

Yeah, I think Phoenix. We've got just a lot of hauntings at old spaghetti factories. Is there any link between them or is it just that they happen to be in historic buildings that have these histories and it's kind of a big coincidence? Well, I think there's some traits about the motif of the spaghetti factory, which I find really charming. It's delightfully charming and a little bit eerie, but in a real charming way. All of these places have an antique kind of atmosphere. They're trying to create an atmosphere that may be reminiscent of the 1930s, for instance. And they bring in Tiffany-style light fixtures and stained glass dividers between tables and many of them have old brick walls that were remnants of a former building.

They have ornate carpets, paintings on the walls of 19th century people and events and things of that sort. Plus, in the middle of every main dining room of all 26 locations, they have a trolley car or a cable car. And many of these are renovated from the 1930s, 1940s. So you've got a lot of features in there that have attracted the interest of ghosts. Many ghosts might be attracted to something that is reminiscent of furniture, for instance, that they knew when they were alive. So they're attracted to it. So we're going to end up finding an age where millennial ghosts are being attracted to their iPhones and you play TikTok and that starts to attract ghosts? There may become a time when a cell phone might be a real good trigger object because a lot of people, as we know, just can't live without them.

What's your recommendation to people who are afraid of ghosts? Obviously not referring to myself because I'm super brave and unshakable, but hypothetically, if I were scared of ghosts, how would I ghostproof my life? Well, first of all, people need to realize that about 80 to 85% of paranormal events that we think are a ghostly encounter are not a ghostly encounter. And I'm speaking of something we call imprints, particularly intense repetitive emotional experiences that people have when alive can lay down on the environment, much like an audio signal is put on a magnetic tape. The emotional event, the energy of that emotional event is embedded on the electromagnetic field of the environment and it can be quite durable lasting a century or more. So a lot of these things that we see, maybe see a partial apparition or hear a sound or feel a cold spot or a thickened atmosphere, those things may be imprints and not ghostly. But if you encounter a ghost, you should realize that most ghosts are not malevolent. Many of them are clumsy and may break glasses, for instance, and slam doors merely to get attention. That may be how they became ghosts in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, they just want to get attention because many of them have a hard time developing the energy to manifest in our environment. And maybe all they can do is slam a door and that may scare people quite a bit, but it's not something that's intended to harm people. So there's no need to try and avoid them? I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I've had quite a few encounters and the only one I say that I mentioned that's been a little bit scary was that fella about home from Alcatraz. But everything else has been just fascinating, a little freaky at times, but not harmful. Michael, didn't you have a question about object possession? Can ghosts possess an inanimate object like a pineapple with googly eyes or someone's salad or anything like that? Or do they just kind of interact with the environment and they don't possess things, they can only possess people? Or can they even possess people? Is that more demonic?

Ghosts can possess people, but generally what we're talking about is that inanimate objects, particularly antiques, can come with a spirit attached to it. Definitely. And many ghost hunters go to antique stores when looking for ghosts. And people who buy antiques may inadvertently bring home a spirit in addition to that antique candelabra or whatever else they found at the store. So I was wondering for all of our amateur ghost hunters at home, what easily accessible tools would you recommend to them? I would recommend putting out some trigger objects. Those are the easiest things if you're thinking that maybe you have a spirit in your home. And I mentioned earlier the deck of cards with four aces on top. Another thing that I've used a lot with great success is put two stacks of pennies, ten pennies each.

And what you may find when you come back hours later is one of those stacks could be knocked over or rearranged while the other is still standing. And this is an important distinction I used at the Myrtles in Louisiana. If the stack is still standing, that indicates that there wasn't a movement of a building or a puff of wind or something like that that disturbed the coins. So one stack is knocked over and the other is still standing. That may be the indication of a ghost. But you can put out other things too. People put out glasses of water and come spilled in the morning. If you want to step up a little bit and become a little technical, you can go down to Best Buys and buy one of those little tiny digital recorders that run for 24 hours. And you can turn it on and you can leave it in your home while you go to work or while you're away for the weekend. And just see if you pick up the sound of footsteps walking around, doors opening and closing, things of that sort.

That's a real easy technical way to do this. Can only a certain type of person pursue quote unquote ghost hunting or paranormal? Are there some people who just don't have that connection and they're just kind of wasting their time or is it something you can hone? Where does it stand in that spectrum? Can you hone it or is it natural or is it somewhere in between? Yeah, you can hone it. Yeah, definitely. All of us have some type of psychic ability to perceive paranormal activity, including ghosts. We all have some of that. Some people have very little and these are the people who will go to the Queen Mary or Alcatraz Island and come away saying, I never experienced anything there at all. Yet there are others who have a great, greatly developed sense of perception and they can go to these places and readily experience paranormal activity.

They may experience paranormal activity in many locations because they're very receptive to picking up and perceiving the presence of a ghost. And there's just a whole bunch of people in between where it might be just intermittent and just occasional. But you can develop your abilities and one of my books is all about developing your psychic abilities to experience the paranormal. What's that book called? You can definitely do that. It's called Psychic. Use your psychic abilities to experience the paranormal and it's on Amazon. It's entirely devoted to developing our abilities to perceive paranormal activity, whether it's ghostly or imprints. Amazing. Do you have any other books or projects that you want to promote? Well, I have a book that covers everything. It's called The Art and Science of Paranormal Investigation.

And this is also on Amazon and this covers everything from the technical methodologies all the way up to the psychic methodologies. And there's information in there about how to research the historical background of a haunted location. And there was a spin-off to that book. After I wrote it, I decided that I'll focus on crime scenes. So I have a CSI, paranormal CSI book out there as well. So people want to investigate crime scenes. That sounds cool. Yeah. Wow. I'm buying that. Awesome. I've got one last question for you before we jump off.

Who is your favorite ghost in pop culture? Yeah, there is one actually. And it's in the movie Ghost. It's where Patrick Swayze's ghost is in the subway train and he's all despondent because he's not able to manifest on our environment to let his girlfriend know that he's there. But inside that train is this fellow, I forget the actor's name all of a sudden, but he's a tall guy with kind of bald hair and bald head. And he teaches Patrick Swayze how to generate the energy to move a moving can in the subway station. And that fellow is really portraying what ghosts have to do. And I thought he was great in that scene. It's a short scene that it really portrays what ghosts are really like.

I had a feeling when I asked you that you would have a very specific answer to that and you did not disappoint. Awesome. Yeah, really appreciate you joining us here. Thank you very much. Thanks guys. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye. Alright, so ghost aside, there's more to the atmosphere. There is the people sitting next to us. They were special. We have a fun nickname. Milk Steve.

Milk Steve, the cream king. The cream lord. Cream lord, milk Steve. Milk Steve, cream lord. I have never seen someone who wants so much dairy in one place. First of all, he orders a full glass of whole milk with his meal. And his meal is fettuccine alfredo, which is also very creamy. And then he criticizes his wife or fiance or girlfriend or whoever he was there with for not also getting the fettuccine alfredo.

But she did thankfully get extra ranch on the side to douse her entire salad. Oh no, no, no, no. She didn't douse the salad in ranch. She dunked the salad in ranch. She would take forkfuls of dry salad and literally just like slam it into this side pool of ranch dressing. And I have never seen wetter salad. I wish you could all see my face right now. The whole table was just moist. Their entire meal, their entire palate was just moist as hell. I guess we learned you can eat a salad like chicken nuggets.

And he had, that's funny, and he had the audacity to look over at me like I'm weird for having a pineapple son. So he turns around, he's like, what is that pineapple for? I was like, that's my son. And then I don't answer anything else. And I take a scoop of minestrone and I try and feed it to Juicy, which because he's a pineapple, he does not eat. And then I just turn back to him and I go, he's being fussy. And the guy kind of just laughs and I just go, I lost a bet. The weird thing was, he turns to his date, he had to explain the process of losing a bet. Yeah, and the process of ordering off of a menu.

I've never seen this before. Yeah, I haven't either. We've all been to restaurants before, at least I'm pretty sure. But hey, I don't know. I don't consume as much dairy as they do. Maybe that does something to your brain. Or your ability to be seen in public willingly. Too much dairy, you can't do it. If I doused a salad like that, I might stick to my kitchen. Yeah, no, totally. I would rather be seen out with a pineapple son than to be a salad douser.

A salad douser? What does that sound like? Like a weird, racist slur you just invented? Oh, look at these salad dousers over here. So we've got Milk Steve and the salad douser. We've got Milk Steve the cream lord and the salad douser. Woof. The stuff of legends. I feel like that's like a Percy Jackson title. Percy Jackson and the milk lord.

And the cream lord. Oh, another thing I forgot. He was making a joke to his date about leaving a bet slip from the Santa Anita racetrack as a tip. Sounds like a solid dude. Yeah, I know. Milk Steve the cream lord really knows how to make money and please the salad dousing women. Yeah. What a combination of words that's never been said before. What else did we notice?

There was, so leading in and out of the kitchen, there were four light switches. And they were all next to one another. But they were in like one of those in case of emergency break glass kind of cases. What's going on over there? Garrett, I don't know what's going on over there, but all I can guess is that it is protection from ghost fingers. Because if we all know one thing about ghost fingers, they can't go through glass. They can go through anything else, but they can't go through glass. Yup, walls, concrete, yes, glass, no.

Yeah, I actually think that the ghost proofing that they've done only on these four lights is a good idea, but it also leads to the question of what do these lights do? Are they literally just light switches? Are they like nuclear codes? Like what? How important are these lights that these are the four that they covered up? There, I remember hearing their dishwasher broke. Were these light switches in control of a dishwasher? Who knows? We just know that ghosts are a bunch of rascals who like turning lights on and off and going, ooh, or something like that. And their fingers cannot pass through glass.

And their fingers can't pass through glass. Ghost fingers would actually be an amazing massage parlor. What? What are you going to say, Garrett? I'm just going to leave that on. How much does this have in common with Milk Steve the Cream Lord? 100% Great. But yeah, so that's what I think is going on over there.

I think there is a emergency panel so that only human fingers can turn on and off these lights, and ghost fingers cannot because once again, as we all know, ghost fingers, they don't go through glass. We're going to do this again. Are we? I can't stop thinking about it. God damn it. What's been going on over there? So now time for the final rating on atmosphere. Michael, you don't like ghosts, so how do you think that affects your rating? I thought the place was kind of classier than I expected it to be, but it wasn't like a five-star dining experience by any means.

Not at all. It was nicer, but the ghosts creeped me out. I'm going to go no thumbs up. No thumbs down, but no thumbs up. I thought it was all things considered the atmosphere balanced out to being mediocre because it was nice, but it was haunted. It was inside of a train car, but next to Milk Steve, the cream lord. So for every positive, there was an equal and opposite negative. A spookier, creamy negative.

Yes. Well, for me, the atmosphere was typical. It was typical. It was a typical restaurant. It was typical. I was comfortable inside. Eventually, the temperature became acceptable. I will say the architecture was pretty cool.

Spanish colonial. At this point, train car, cool. Milk Steve added plus for you. Salad dousing. I'll say the fact that now we have salad douser and Milk Steve, the cream lord in our pantheon. In our pantheon of amazing characters. That's a positive. If someone had to tell you like, oh yeah, do you want to sit in that train car next to Milk Steve, the cream lord?

I think your response would be different than, hey, do you want to sit in that train car? I think my response is, can I reserve that table every time I come? So I have overall two thumbs up and one ghost finger up. And now a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi again. It's your boy job. I am back with a brand new business plan because turns out I was not immune to black mold like I previously thought. So I did get a deep infection, but luckily it did give me the ability to detect ghosts innately.

I do have a little spectrometer that I will hover around in different areas of your restaurant and I'll go beep beep beep beep beep. But then I'll cover it with my finger and I'll go, looks like the ghost is afraid of job. I intimidate ghosts. That's what I'm trying to tell you. They're still there, but I won't tell you that. I will tell you that they're gone because you want to eat milk and fettuccine alfredo inside of a train car. You should be able to do that without getting haunted. Haunting is not fun.

My last prison cell, there was always a noose that I would wake up to and every single morning a new body was hanging from it. My cellmate turnover was really high. I had nothing to do with it. I got to go. There's ghost to be busted. Who you gonna call? Call my name out loudly because I do not have a phone still. My mother was half bat, so I use echolocation and I can hear stuff from really far away.

Okay, have a good day. Bye. You didn't seem to enjoy it too much. I didn't hate it. She had a hustle. She appeared at the proper time. She asked for when we needed refills at the proper time. She didn't bug us too much.

She didn't speak too much. She barely spoke, but she was there when we needed her and she didn't interrupt our meal. All I heard her say was, is everything okay over here? Is everything going okay over here? I heard that 15 times throughout our meal. A lot of that was her talking to Milk Steve. I feel like Milk Steve had more demands. She was great at her job as a server without having charisma.

Yeah, but it didn't have that extra, which I think means that if I'm gonna rate the service, I'm again going no thumbs. Wow. So I have no thumbs on atmosphere, no thumbs on the service. This for me could be getting pretty close to five. Yeah, that sounds like a five from you, but I've got to go one thumb up with the service. I don't expect charisma. I just expect my food appropriately served to me at the appropriate time. See, Keith set the bar super high at Outback.

If you're unfamiliar with Keith, we're gonna talk about him a lot until he is dethroned as the king of service as far as we're concerned. Go back and listen to our Outback episode if you want to hear about Keith, the gold standard of service. I'll establish a secondary gold standard. Our server from Old Spaghetti Factory was the gold standard of the practical job you do as a server. To me, she was the bronze standard. Bronze standard, but she's also the type that's gonna train the new server, I bet. Yeah, she has a lot of experience and knows how to just go home as quickly as possible. She's procedurally strong.

Yeah, she wants to just get through her shift and then go home. I respect that. I mean, I do too. I think that's maybe one of the most relatable concepts that have ever been spoken. Yeah. Yeah, I liked the service, but it didn't really register as anything special. So yeah, I'm standing by at Zero Thumbs for service. I'm gonna stick by my one thumb up.

Munchkin Menu Musings. My name is Julian and I'm seven. I'm gonna be viewing the kids menu for the Old Spaghetti Factory. I didn't do the little scramble because I was confused. They made me spot the difference between two jackwars. There were like the tongue, the leg, the tail, and I didn't notice the eye and whiskers. I liked the flight path because it was kind of easy and really fun and stuff. We were playing a spinner game with the crank and it was pretty easy.

I win and I lost a little bit of times and then I keep winning. I like the purple, the red, and blue cranks. Overall, I like the kids menu from the Old Spaghetti Factory. I'll give it out of nine out of ten. Thank you. Food. Yum. Alright, as we dive into what we actually ate, surprisingly, I've got a lot... I don't know if it's surprising, but I've got a lot of opinions here.

And most of them stem from the fact that Italian food, in my estimation, in my preference and whatever you want to call it, Italian food is inherently better than average food. So that leads us to the question of how do we rate Italian food? Do we rate it compared to all foods or do we rate how this Italian food was compared to other Italian foods? I'd say this just gives all Italian foods a slight bump in our ratings. So you want to rate it compared to regular food? Yeah, totally. I can accept that Italian food is slightly better than average food.

Do you agree with that? Completely. We grew up in the Midwest. That's fair. There are a lot of Italians in Chicago where I was born. My grandfather's Italian, so I've been to my fair share of family-style Italian restaurants. I guess my Italian experience was just some of my grandparents' friends. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Best cannolis I've ever had in my life. Nice. I think that with Italian food being such a strong entry, does it preclude us from picking Italian food moving forward? I don't think it changes anything. You just need to be aware of the potential consequence. That's fair. Yeah, I guess that's fair. Some weeks I'm probably just going to want to have good food, knowing full well that it's not going to be mediocre.

And I just want to eat well and I will deal with the consequences. Or you might have that same inclination. And I think Olive Garden has a good chance at a five. I've only been to an Olive Garden once in my life. It was a long time ago. Really? Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing that one again. I think that it would be less than what the Old Spaghetti Factory was, but let's get into the Old Spaghetti Factory.

What did you order? Well, first off, I want to talk about the bread for the table. That was good bread. I've got two ratings for it because bread, another food that is just inherently good, right? There are places that have, I guess, dry bread that makes it not good, but bread is good. Right? Yeah, that's a universal truth. Warm bread is better.

It can be. They served a sourdough bread that when I first bit into it, and this was the first thing that I bit into for the entire meal, was incredible. It was like a nine out of ten for me. But didn't you burn yourself when you touched it? I actually did. Yeah, I went to cut it and I was just like, oh, because I've got my shit together and know how to emote burning properly. I am a fussy little boy. You are a fussy little boy with fussy little boy fingers.

I have fussy little boy fingers and ghost fingers galore. Can you burn a ghost finger? That is science that I am not familiar with. Okay, we'll have to investigate. We'll have to send it to the lab. Yeah. Pack it up. Send it to the boys at the lab.

So I thought this bread was very good and then I had some more a little bit later because I talked to myself out of eating too much bread up front. And then the food was taking maybe a little bit longer than I wanted it to. So I was like, all right, I'm going to go in for some more bread. And at this point, it had time to cool and my rating dropped substantially. Still good. Still a 6.5 instead of a 9. But it really shows that warmth works wonders for bread. So I wouldn't, I don't know if I would say that the old spaghetti factory has this amazing bread.

But I will say I had an amazing first bite experience with their bread. So if you eat it quickly, I highly recommend it. Also, make sure your friend cuts it. I'm giving this bread a 10 out of 10 just because it was funny watching Michael burn himself on bread. You're an asshole. And then I ordered the meatlovers treat because I am indeed a meatlover. I grew up in Texas. I knew you were going to order that one.

After leaving the Midwest, so I have gotten an affinity for meat, usually barbecue, but yeah, meaty things I like. So it's basically just their spaghetti with meat sauce, but also Italian sausage and meatballs. It comes with a super salad and I got minestrone, which I thought was very middling for minestrone. I've had some really good minestrone before. I've had some bad minestrone before and I felt that this was closer to bad than good, but I would just say it's average. I agree completely. Yeah. It's, if anything, the larger cabbage bits.

They were too big. I like the, I'm Korean. I like kimchi. So like, give me big cabbage. The meatlovers treat itself, I've had some very good pasta. It was good, but it did not compare to really good pasta. But as we mentioned, Italian food, I think in my heart is above average. So yeah, this puts me in a tough spot.

The meatball didn't really impress me, but it was good. The sausage I actively would say I didn't care for as much. What about it? Do you think? Was it like a too fatty? I know, like I hate getting a loose fatty sausage. No, I couldn't, I don't know if I could put it into words. The taste was just like, the way it was seasoned was a little bit off.

It just wasn't to my preference that didn't compare to the taste of other Italian sausage that I've had. But that's what you get when you get ghost cooked sausage. That's what ghost cooked sausage is like. So for the meatlovers treat, I'm going pretty middling. Yeah, very slightly above average. What'd you order? I actually got a classic spaghetti marinara. The whole reason we're going to a spaghetti joint, so I want the classic dish.

It was okay. It sounds like it would leave you wanting more. It's the best part for me were the noodles. They were almost al dente, but still slightly overcooked for my taste. Really? The pasta sauce, it existed. I like a good pasta sauce to have a slight vinegar aftertaste on the back of my tongue just to wash my palate. You're so specific.

It's really good. I hate to say this out loud and on the record, one of the best sauces I've ever had is from Sabaro. Really? I fucking love Sabaro's sauce. Sabaro's very tasty. Sabaro's amazing. We met in front of one. Yes.

Okay. It's like 5 out of 10 spaghetti. Yeah, that's about where I'm at. But again, spaghetti is an inherently 6 out of 10 food, so slightly below. Who knows where it factors in? And good spaghetti, like that's a 10 out of 10 every time. And also, I'm allergic to carrots, so the carrots in the middle are strong. Oh yeah, that's right.

You were literally throwing caution into the wind and I was like, what might happen? You're like, I don't know, my eyes might swell, my throat might close. It's a toss up. It actually ended up, it wasn't that bad. On the drive home, two of my fingers went numb, whatever. I still had eight to drive with. Actually isn't an exaggeration. He texted me the fact that that was happening.

But I still have eight. Good enough. Yeah. Maybe nine with a ghost finger. You can get home. Yeah, I made it home safe. So 5 out of 10 spaghetti, the minestrone that was maybe a 6 out of 10 minestrone. Taste was decent.

I'm accepting, I will eat foods I'm allergic to. Dessert. For dessert, they served Spamoni ice cream, which is strawberry. Chocolate and pistachio. Right? Strawberry chocolate pistachio. Yeah, yeah. It's like almost Neapolitan.

It was very good. I haven't had that much Spamoni before. So I honestly don't remember if I've had it before, but it is delightful. I really liked it. And then I ordered a tiramisu for myself and you got the New York cheesecake? Yes. Tiramisu was good. Texture was great.

Very fluffy. Taste-wise, it was good. It's not amazing. Fine. Just fine. That's the brand. You get it. Yeah.

What did you think of the cheesecake? I think it was more of a savory-style cheesecake that used ricotta. I'm not as big of a fan as the savory-style cheesecake. So I would just give it maybe around a 5 out of 10, too. It was okay. This Spamoni, on the other hand, the taste was great, but I'm giving that a 1 out of 10 for laziness. They pre-portioned scoops of ice cream into bowls and they store them in their walk-in. I could see the frosted remnants.

Like the little frost crystal right on top of my ice cream. No, give me a fresh scoop. You are such a fussy little boy. Proudly. Yeah, that doesn't bother me. I thought the Spamoni was the best thing I tasted other than that first bite of bread for the whole meal. Do you think you would have enjoyed Milk Steep's meal more? No.

I absolutely would have been disgusted by whole milk and fettuccine alfredo together. Just so much dairy. Extra cream. Yeah. Where does your rating fall? Overall for food. Food rating for me, I'm going zero thumbs up. This was purely mediocre, average Italian food.

I am also going zero thumbs up, zero thumbs down. I thought that this was perfectly acceptable. It was. And acceptable to me is good. I like acceptable. But I don't love it. It's not a place where I'm necessarily recommending it to people like, oh, you've got to go to the old spaghetti factory. It is the best Italian meal you're going to have.

You're not going to catch me saying that. But you might say it's the best haunted Italian meal you'll have. It's the only haunted Italian meal that I've had to my knowledge. So overall, we've got no thumbs here, no fingers. Got nothing. Nothing. We're just nubs. We give it two nubs up.

Two nubs up or no nubs. Just empty ghost space. Yes. Final rating. Now this place, I'm giving a huge atmosphere away too, because I love haunted things. Yeah, but we didn't even know about the hauntedness until the meal was already over. But it did also cause you to go down a rabbit hole for the following week. Yeah.

So I can see how you enjoyed that. Service, to me, barely made a mark. To me, the atmosphere overall, everything good was canceled out by something negative. So it averages out to zero thumbs. And the food, I thought, was very average for Italian, but Italian's pretty good. So it's like a slight weight in a positive direction. Overall, my rating for the old spaghetti factory is a 5.19. Oh wow, that is close.

It's pretty close to mediocre for me. But again, this podcast, we both have to average a rating of 5.00 to succeed. And I have a feeling you like this place quite a bit more than me. Just because of the atmosphere, which I would have given so many thumbs up to. I love haunted things. Milk Steve actually kind of put positive for me. It gave us a good story. I mean, it's fun to talk about in hindsight.

So those two thumbs up, those are a strong two thumbs. The service one thumb, okay, the food, it existed, it filled me up. But ghosts, come on, man, ghosts. All right. 7.33 for the ghosts. All right. The highest rating yet that puts us at a 6.26 total rating. So close.

So we're actually getting closer and closer to mediocrity. We're not quite in that sweet spot. The four to six, which means there's another punishment for me. Not mediocre enough. Draw from the bowl. The you must bowl. First, I had to shave a lemmy from Motorhead handlebar mustache on my face. I had to make a pineapple.

He's still wearing that facial hair, which looks great, by the way. I actually don't mind it. Then I had to make a pineapple my son and ask for a booster seat and dine with me. And now I have drawn from the you must bowl my punishment for our next meal. Oh, God, what is it? I must dress like a pro wrestler. Yes. Well, you already have everything necessary.

God, this is so up my alley. And yet what the hell are we doing? All right. Well, yeah, follow us on Instagram and Tik Tok at Fine Dining Podcast on both. If you want to see pictures or videos of me dressed as a pro wrestler as we go eat at whatever our next place is going to be. I think I'm going to play some intro music as he walks in. Oh, God. Maybe we'll do a slight light show, bring a smoke machine.

Now, this is entirely way too much, but I would be remiss if I skipped over the this is way too much award. This week's This is Way Too Much Award, which is an award that we're giving out for the most ridiculous part of our dining experience, whether it be a menu item that is literally insane in concept or Buffalo Wild Wings being overwhelming in atmosphere. Or too many ghosts, even. Or too many ghosts. But this week I am taking it upon myself to award the This Was Way Too Much Award to Garrett himself for getting up out of our seat at the end of the meal and asking the hostess for a tour. A thing that I found actually insane because I had no idea that it was an actual tourist trap for ghost hunters. Thank you, I'm honored.

You ready to jump into the headline game? I'm ready to lose again. All right, let's do it. The rules of the headline game are as follows. Michael will present three headlines to Garrett that include this week's restaurant. They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Garrett can correctly guess if at least two out of three are real or fake, he will get to select next week's restaurant. However, if Michael stumps him, he'll select again.

Are you ready to play, fellas? I am ready. All right. The Southwest Pilots Conference turns Taylorsville Old Spaghetti Factory upside down. I'm going false. The Old Spaghetti Factory doesn't seem like a pilot conference dinner event. Okay. Headline number two.

Spaghetti dog and meat paws. Hero pup dines for free at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Wichita. I'm gonna go false because I hope to God an actual journalist didn't write that title. And lastly, this is where I'm gonna get evil on you. Is this a real headline, Garrett? The Old Spaghetti Factory serves pasta and nostalgia with a side of ghosts. Well, it does. But did somebody write that?

You know what? I would think yes. I'm going false just because my gut says yes. You were incorrect on that one. You went with three falses, but luckily for you, the first two were false. So you actually got two out of three correct. Congratulations, Garrett. You get your first pick.

Where are we eating next week? Next week, we will be eating at islands. Oh, islands, burgers and shakes? Burgers? It's kind of like a tropical themed burger joint. It's a Southern California staple. I think one of the original locations was in Hawaii. I ate at the Honolulu location, which is no longer open.

Interesting. Then they had like good fish tacos there too. I am excited. I have some strong opinions about certain parts of Island's menu and you'll hear me talk about them next week. Okay, guys, well, thanks for joining us for another episode of the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. Join us next week, but also follow us on our socials. Go ahead and follow us on TikTok and Instagram at Fine Dining Podcast.

If you have any stories, crazy stories from when you were at islands, if you used to work there or anything like that, send it to us. If you have any fun artwork of Milk Steve the Cream Lord, please send that too. Or Juicy Junior. Or Ghost Fingers. Or Jub. I don't know. Just send us whatever you want. We'd love to have you.

We'll see you next week. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars? Follow us on TikTok, the same on Instagram. All the socials at Fine Dining Podcast. We have a website, findiningpodcast.com. Buy our t-shirts. Then put them on. And don't forget, you can always suggest where we go next.

Okay! We're going to find it. Mediocrity. The search continues. See you next week. It hurt my throat a little. Have a fine day.