If you were a child passing through Toronto since the early 1970s, there's a good chance you may have eaten at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Kitschy antique decor, the pots of whipped garlic butter that arrived with the loaf of bread and a family-friendly atmosphere have kept the crowds coming for nearly four decades.

The Old Spaghetti Factory opened its first location in Portland, Oregon in 1969, a period when themed sit-down restaurant chains like Shakey's (pizza and Dixieland jazz) began to pop up across the continent. Expansion came quickly, with the first Canadian location opening a year later in Vancouver. Toronto's branch set up shop in August 1971, behind the recently-opened St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. At this time, nostalgia seems to have been the drawing card, even if Charlie Chaplin is more representative of the then-current 1920s revival than the Victorian era.

Another growing fad was the salad bar, though it's debatable whether it led to healthier eating habits, a wider variety of toppings beyond the traditional bowl of iceberg or flat out gluttony. One wonders what qualified as "seasonal fresh makings" back then.

As for Chaplin, 1972 saw his return to the United States for the first time since being denied re-entry to the country twenty years earlier due to McCarthyist fears about his leftist political leanings. Chaplin visited Los Angeles in April to receive a honourary Oscar, resulting in the longest ovation in Academy Awards history. In his scrapbook My Life in Pictures, Chaplin noted that "I was touched by the gesture—but there was a certain irony about it somehow."

Source: Toronto Life, September 1972