The Spaghetti Warehouse
 Akron, Ohio        Date of Visit  05/07/11             http://www.meatballs.com/

Packing a lot of eating into a weekend we went from lunch at Nick Anthe’s to dinner in Akron. We had just punched Akron Restaurants into the search engine and scrolled until something sounded halfway decent. It turned out to be The Spaghetti Warehouse. I have been here before but it has been years and if you have been reading along you know how much I miss the many Y-town options for Italian, maybe I will find a welcome addition to the low census in the area here. The place was packed with quite a wait…that should be a good sign but having eaten in busy Italian restaurants in the area only to be repeatedly disappointed. Still, I held out hope.
 

Just Crazy Inside, Would Be More Pleasant If You Were Hearing Impaired
 

The interior of the place is wild with antique signs, enormous chandeliers, neon and brick. It is a mish-mash of all things restaurant. They use an antiquated system for seating, particularly when there is a wait, the public address system. They really should invest in the flashing beeper system because the address system makes Charlie Brown’s teacher sound like James Earl Jones. Seriously, while you are waiting you hear a crackle and Whhrraaaa whreeeey waaahaaaaa eeeartyy eeerrrrrrrrrr. Then you walk to the podium and ask if that was you. For 30 minutes. Over and over. Was that one us?!? Once you are seated you get to listen to the same thing over and over… Whhrraaaa whreeeey waaahaaaaa eeeartyy eeerrrrrrrrrr… Whhrraaaa whreeeey waaahaaaaa eeeartyy eeerrrrrrrrrr… Whhrraaaa whreeeey waaahaaaaa eeeartyy eeerrrrrrrrrr… Whhrraaaa whreeeey waaahaaaaa eeeartyy eeerrrrrrrrrr. Seriously, it couldn’t be more annoying.

On another note…the service…well, there are other ways to say it but to put it succinctly, the service sucks. Our server had one table. Us. That’s it. How did we know? Well, he spent the rest of our visit sitting with a woman at the table next to us as she picked through dinner and held court. Ex-employee…maybe. Girl-friend who every other employee seemed to know and stop by to talk to…possible. Manager? If so, shame! Whatever was going on our server couldn’t seem to manage a single table. The tables that were littered with dirty dishes when we arrived, both in the bar and where we sat, remained and festered at least until after we left. I don’t know if they are aware, but if you clear and clean a table, you can sit someone else there and turn the dining room over instead of making people wait a half an hour when you have a pile of empty tables. Apparently, they have a single seating and then throw the tables out at the end of the night and replace them for the next day. I don’t get it.
 

We have been places with lousy service and really good food…hope springs eternal. We got a loaf of bread. Warm. Reeking of sour. Delicious! Okay, Okay, things are looking up. Well, it was the singular highlight of the evening and remained the glimmer of false hope in a swirling sucking eddy of despair. Fried zucchini was over fried. The blue cheese dressing on the salad was watery. The Italian dressing ehhhh. The wedding soup had a nice undertone but the salt factor quickly overtook the whole mess. One thing about my brother. He loves tomato sauce…as long as he doesn’t know that real tomatoes were actually harmed in the making of the sauce. No Chunks! He actually picks his restaurants based on the lack of chunkiness to the sauce. Asking our server about the different sauces he was assured repeatedly that the meat sauce is only chunky due to the meat. Our server was either ignorant or a moron. The meat sauce is a lump extravaganza. John started to pick everything out of the sauce but decided the lasagna wasn’t worth the effort and surrendered.
 

The pasta in my dish was well cooked but the chicken in Steph’s parm suffered from the same overcooked breading of the zucchini. The pasta was loaded with a thick red sauce than appeared to have loads of spices and herbs throughout, but I was horribly confused. It didn’t really taste of much of anything, no garlic, no basil, not even tomato stood out. Things were going downhill and I thought we were already close to the bottom. The meatballs have a sandy grit to them that I find unappealing and the one thing that did offer substantial flavor was the sausage link but it too had been heated well past it’s prime. You would think the puddle of red water at the bottom of the plate from the undrained pasta might have kept it at least a little moist, but no, all it did was ruin the sauce.

It may well be that we turned up at The Spaghetti Warehouse on an off day. I will never know. I won’t be back. In the words of Elie Wiesel “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.” And I just don’t care.