Published January 22, 2022 · Updated September 19, 2026
Some celebrations aren’t about enormous achievements.
Sometimes, they’re simply about recognizing how far we’ve come—even when we’re still only at the beginning.
When Raymund and I had dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto, we were celebrating two things: his graduation and the end of my first semester.
But looking back, I realize I was celebrating something else too.
I had been living in Canada for only four months.
Four months into a new country. Four months into being a student again. Four months into trying to understand a different city, a different way of life, and what this new chapter might become.
Everything was still new.
And somewhere between adjusting, studying, worrying about the future and wondering about the life I’d left behind, I was slowly learning to build a life here.
That dinner became one of those little moments that reminded me:
Not every milestone has to be big to be worth celebrating.
Four Months Into a New Life
Feature Friday highlights businesses, people, fashion, and basically anything under the sun!
Finally squeezed time for Feature Friday post since I moved here in Canada around four months ago!
I still couldn’t believe that I was here.
Time really flies soooo fast!
When it is God’s time and will, things will surely transpire to your favor! I praise God for His provisions, protection, and favors in this big transition of my life!
I am not resisting, I am going with the flow……
In this regard, I am slowly getting back to my usual whatabouts like blogging after being anxious and stressed out of the “what might’ve been’s” of this new journey of mine.
So for this first Feature Friday post here in Canada, I’m bringing you The Old Spaghetti Factory!
Reading those words again years later, I can almost meet that version of myself.
She was excited but she was also uncertain.
She had left behind a life she knew and was trying to figure out what this new one would become.
And perhaps that’s why something as ordinary as going out for spaghetti felt a little extraordinary.
Stepping Into The Old Spaghetti Factory Toronto
The Old Spaghetti Factory is an American brand which was founded by Guss and Sally Dussin in 1969 at Portland, Oregon. As a family owned and operated business, The Old Spaghetti Factory chain of restaurants has expanded not only in the Americas and Canada but also as far as Asia. (The Old Spaghetti Factory)
I was lucky enough to have visited and dined in a world-renowned resto, one that I only saw on Travel and Living Channel.
Dreams do come true, eh!
That sentence makes me smile now.
It wasn’t necessarily eating at The Old Spaghetti Factory that was the dream.
It was the feeling of suddenly finding myself inside places I had once only seen from thousands of kilometres away.
Four months earlier, Canada had still been the place I was moving to.
Now I was beginning to collect memories here.
Sometimes we’re so focused on where we’re trying to go next that we forget to notice the places we’ve already reached.
Look Around Before You Eat
Raymund was right when he brought me there that I would love the place because of its interior.
Surely, it brought me back in time with its antique fixtures and vintage artifacts.
You should never miss taking a photo with The Old Spaghetti Factory’s trolley car. It is their trademark.
If you’re familiar with those American diner scenes on TV and movies, then this is it!
All of their restos have the replica of their original trolley car diner.
At The Old Spaghetti Factory, you are not only dining with good food but you’re also stepping into some “movie feels”!
And if you visit, don’t rush straight to the menu.
Look around.
Notice the antique fixtures, the stained glass, the vintage details and, of course, that famous trolley car as mentioned.
This is something travel has continued to teach me: exploring isn’t only about seeing famous attractions. It’s also about paying attention to the character of the places we enter along the way.
Sometimes a restaurant can become part of how we remember a city.
A Familiar Dish That Didn’t Taste Familiar
Speaking of good food, I may not be a connoisseur of Italian cuisine, but I can say that The Old Spaghetti Factory’s spaghetti was phenomenal.
It was simple yet robust.
What surprised me was that it didn’t need the sweetness I was accustomed to for the sauce to feel rich and satisfying. The tomato flavour came through more strongly, with little tidbits of fresh tomatoes giving the sauce a slightly sweet and tangy taste. The pasta, sauce and savoury flavours worked together without any one of them overpowering the others.
It was far very different from what I was accustomed to—the Filipino spaghetti I grew up with, which is sweeter, often made with banana ketchup and served with sliced hotdogs.
At first, that difference was noticeable. This wasn’t the spaghetti my taste buds already knew.
But I developed a liking for it.
Maybe that’s why I called it phenomenal. It wasn’t because it tasted like the spaghetti I already loved. It was because it showed me that something so familiar could taste completely different—and still be delicious in its own way.
You better try it yourself if you have the opportunity to visit one of their restos.
There was something fitting about eating something familiar—spaghetti—and discovering that it could taste completely different from what I had known.
Maybe that’s one of the quiet lessons of beginning again somewhere new.
You don’t have to abandon everything familiar.
You simply make room for something different.
A different flavour.
A different street.
A different routine.
A different version of your life.
And gradually, your world becomes a little bigger.
But This Evening Actually Began at Berczy Park
There’s another reason this dinner remains special to me.
The Old Spaghetti Factory wasn’t actually our first stop that evening.
Raymund and I had originally planned to see the Christmas displays at the Distillery District, but we hadn’t realized that tickets were required. By the time we checked, the evening was already fully booked.
So we changed our plans and wandered around downtown instead.
That’s how we ended up at Berczy Park.
There were Christmas displays there too, so Raymund took some photos of me with Barksy.
At the time, we had no idea that one of those photographs would later win an Old Town Toronto holiday giveaway—and eventually appear in one of their print advertisements.
After taking those photos, we continued our evening with dinner here at The Old Spaghetti Factory.
What felt like a simple change of plans became an evening that gave us more than one story.
→ Read: Christmas at Berczy Park: When a Simple Photo Became Something More
Looking back, I love how these memories connect.
A plan didn’t work out.
So we wandered.
We stopped somewhere we hadn’t planned to stop.
We took photographs.
Then we ate spaghetti.
Nothing extraordinary seemed to be happening.
And yet, years later, I remember all of it.
Sometimes the best parts of exploring begin when the original plan doesn’t.
A Neighbourhood That Was Slowly Becoming Familiar
Berczy Park and The Old Spaghetti Factory also belong to a larger story for me.
During those first months in Canada, downtown Toronto still felt enormous.
Not long before this dinner, I had explored Old Town Toronto on my own—walking through Berczy Park, the Gooderham Building, St. Lawrence Market and the Distillery District with my phone, tripod and curiosity keeping me company.
→ Read: Exploring Old Town Toronto on Foot: What a Solo Afternoon Taught Me About Starting Over
When I returned to this neighbourhood with Raymund, it wasn’t completely unfamiliar anymore.
And perhaps that’s how a new place slowly becomes part of our lives.
Not all at once.
One subway ride.
One walk.
One restaurant.
One photograph.
One memory at a time.
Tiny Steps Become Milestones
At the end of my original post, I wrote:
Happy graduation, Raymund! Happy end of the semester to me! Cheers to more tiny-steps-to-milestones achievements with you!
I wouldn’t change those words.
Because now I realize they were saying something I didn’t fully understand yet.
When you’re navigating a transition, it’s easy to become obsessed with the destination.
When will I finish?
When will I succeed?
When will I feel settled?
When will this finally feel like my life?
But perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.
Maybe every now and then, we should ask:
How far have I already come?
Four months earlier, I was beginning an entirely new chapter.
And there I was, finishing my first semester, celebrating Raymund’s graduation, exploring Toronto, trying unfamiliar food and slowly returning to something I had always loved—writing.
None of those things meant I had everything figured out.
I didn’t.
There would still be unexpected turns ahead, including a chapter at the Fairmont Royal York that would teach me that starting over sometimes means letting go of what we thought progress was supposed to look like.
But for now, these little moments were signs that life was moving.
Tiny steps were becoming milestones.
Food Became Part of Our Exploring, Too
This wouldn’t be the last time Raymund and I would discover a place through food.
He became my constant eating buddy as we explored more of Ontario together—from a dinner at Hothouse in Old Town Toronto, which came from the gift card I won with my Barksy photo, to a meal in Huntsville that eventually inspired me to compare two very different Italian appetizers: bruschetta and capriccio bread..
What started as simply trying different food became another way of experiencing our new surroundings—and, sometimes, even finding unexpected reflections about life along the way.
→ Read: Bruschetta or Capriccio: An Ode to Strong, Independent Women
Don’t Wait Until You’ve “Made It”
If you’re in a season of transition yourself, perhaps you’re waiting for something big before you allow yourself to feel proud.
The promotion.
The graduation.
The new home.
The relationship.
The career change.
The moment when you can finally say, I’ve made it.
But life happens while we’re waiting for those milestones too.
Maybe you navigated somewhere alone for the first time.
Maybe you made it through a difficult month.
Maybe somewhere that once felt unfamiliar is beginning to feel normal.
Maybe you’ve started doing something again that you lost during a difficult season.
Maybe you simply kept going.
Notice that.
Celebrating the little steps doesn’t mean you’ve stopped wanting more.
It means you’re paying attention to the life you’re building on the way there.
Want to Notice More of the Life You’re Already Living?
That’s one of the reasons I created The Beauty Around You: A 7-Day Journey to Slow Down and Notice More.
It’s a gentle seven-day journey to help you pause and pay attention—not only to beautiful places, but also to the ordinary moments, little changes and quiet milestones that are easy to overlook.
You don’t have to wait for a vacation.
You don’t have to wait until life is perfect.
And you certainly don’t have to wait until you’ve “made it.”
Sometimes you simply need to notice how much life is already happening around you.
→ Begin the 7-Day Journey
Continue Your Journey
Explore Somewhere
If you’d like to see more of the neighbourhood surrounding The Old Spaghetti Factory, come walk through Old Town Toronto with me—from Berczy Park and the Gooderham Building to St. Lawrence Market and the Distillery District.
→ Explore Old Town Toronto on Foot
Notice Something
A Christmas display. An old trolley car. A different flavour of spaghetti. A shared dinner after a changed plan.
Ordinary things can become part of the stories we remember most when we learn to pay attention to them.
Become Something
Starting over doesn’t happen in one dramatic transformation.
Sometimes we become who we’re meant to be through the tiny steps we barely recognize while we’re taking them.