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Its like a bad joke. Everything looks like pizza but tastes worse than a .99c Totinos pizza. The 300lb morons will sit there munching the faux pizza thinking at least it was only $3.99. Then they finish and immediately forget how bad the pizza they just ate was. Start looking at the buffet and think 'that looks good I'll try that'. Gets more faux pizza with no cheese, and no sauce, and starchy crust designed to fill you up. Munch, munch, tastes like crap but at least it was only $3.99. Rinse and repeat.
This place is what I imagine hell is like. You eat nice looking food that you cant taste. Its like mental torture.
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apop
Jan 6, 2010 01:03 PM
Anyone who's been to a Cici's lately was probably astonished to see that they have removed almost the entire salad bar and they also discontinued the cheese bread. What were they thinking? There are plenty of other pizza joints so I'll take my biz elsewhere!
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re: apop
Bob W
Mar 1, 2010 10:49 AM
I took my kids to Cici's last night. Easy to see how they can still turn a profit selling AYCE buffet for $3.99. My kids probably each ate about 25 cents worth of food. (I was eating at home later so I resisted the "temptations" of Cici's pizza).
I do have to say, though, that the cinnamon buns my kids got were very good. Probably along the lines of Pillsbury's, but they were fresh and warm.
If I do have to go back to Cici's, and I'm sure I will, I'll stick to the pasta and the cinnamon buns. The pizza looked as bad as usual.
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re: apop
podunkboy
Mar 1, 2010 03:44 PM
Ah HA, that's what was missing! Took the family there last week (we had a coupon, I'm cheap, sue me...), and there was no cheese bread. They had some sort of alleged "calzone" that was pizza crust folded over a few stray bits of pepperoni, with no discernable cheese in there, but no cheese bread. They did have ranch and blue cheese back on the salad bar, along with the pre-dressed mixed salad, which was nice because my daughters like dipping their crust in ranch dressing. But nothing had really improved and they were really slow to put our acceptable pizza, so it'll probably be a long time before I try them again.
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re: podunkboy
Never was a big fan of this place, but I can't believe they discontinued their cheese bread!?? ..I thought that was actually one of their "decent" items. Maybe it is just a regional thing or a store-by-store thing. I still see it listed on their web site...
Yea, and the Apple Dessert was good when fresh and hot out of the oven. Oy Yoy Yoy
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Ah, CiCi's buffet...much like slitting one's throat, except this is interminably slow. I don't know who CiCi is but he must be part of the fifth circle. The going is initially slow after your five bucks so easily and ridiculously go away to the demon attendant...first the salad area containing a small bowl of green lettuce next to a vat of lettuce that's so white your eyes will be seared if you look right at it. There, creamy buckets of goop stand guard to the chaos so you remember why you are here...pure suffering. The real torturous stuff then begins...a bowl of dense pasta spirals so tough they might be metal, bathed in a gunk of red-though-slightly-greyish hue, all hearkening back to those dorm room days when you actually had to eat like this, instead of now when, um, you have to eat like this. The pasta sauce...better than something from a medical supply truck, but just slightly, lending a tinny and hollow sensation to the mass. Then the main concoction...pizza after horribly plastic pizza, all lined up like a weapon, standing like small tombstones, each with various colorful guises but all of a similar ilk. Alfredo (sprayed with popcorn butter), Mexican Ole' (no doubt Spanish for "oyvey"), and, for those who can *not* part their pasta from their pizza, macaroni and cheese...all with a horribly stale and slippery crust, coated in a corn-syrup infused paste, and jacketed by cheese they say is real, but seems like pants. Each new pizza - er, attack - announced by a man who must have done something truly horrible to have to keep watch over this evil spread. Down it goes, painfully, excrutiatingly, until the very depths of one's soul begins to moan and scream "why?", while the coin-sized plastic plate before you - a dish from the devil - begs for its return to its original spot. But now there's "dessert", glycemic index ten thousand, and more greasy, dense crust, now smothered by factory-concocted apples and a chemically-developed butterscotch sauce. But that is not enough, there must also be...cinnamon buns! What would pasta, dough-heavy cheese pizza and gunky dessert pizza be without some dense cinnmon buns!? ! Truly, the vomit can begin now, except one's stomach muscles lack the power to bring this stuff up. I'm surprised they don't have a person there to just shovel masses of dough into your face. After this vicious assault, one can only stumble back to one's car, feeling the suffering and wondering how long before normalcy can return...but this isn't normal. This is something horrible.
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podunkboy
Oct 4, 2007 04:19 PM
Heavens -- jes said they were going to lunch Monday...13 months ago. Never heard how they liked it.
We hit Cici's for lunch occasionally. Yes, it's cheap, sparsely topped pizza, but if you special order one, it's hot and fresh and no worse than anything on any of the other local pizza buffets.
The dwindling number of local Godfather's won't make a fresh pizza, and don't put out anything but combinations of pepperoni, sausage, and pepperoni and sausage. And they're overpriced for the quantity and quality of pizza available.
Pizza Hut doesn't do buffets here anymore so far as I've seen. They keep changing their business model so you never know if they're doing order-at-the-counter or waited-table service.
I happen to like Cici's combo/garbage pizza and the spinach alfredo, and my wife just likes to order a half-pizza of jalapeno and cheese only. And then we feast on the cinnamon rolls. And the salad bar's not that bad when they don't fill it up with weird things like banana pepper rings and pineapple.›1 Reply -
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i've been to p. hut's all you can eat lunch buffet. maybe they should rename it all you can eat if you can find anything on the buffet. there were 3(three) pies on the buff. all looking a day old. and when i asked for something else they said we'll see what we can do. i think some of you p. hut emp's should grow up. and, if you don't work at a competitor of cici's and it was truly that bad maybe you should have called the health dept. sure, your not going to find pizza at cici's that loaded down with toppings. it's a cheap buffet. what did you expect for the price? maybe a cadillac. i challenge anyone out there to give an example of a same price or lower pizza buffet that will make you a fresh pizza with the toppings you want on it. and, if you want more toppings order double or triple whatever you like. i'm not a rocket scientist but i have stayed at a holliday inn express before. as for the greeting as you enter or the bye, thanks, cici ya later as you leave complants, are you completly antisocial? i've heard whinee babies before but you guys take the cake. maybe they should have payed you to come in and cooked steak and lobster for you. or maybe they should have asked " did you want mozz or chedder cheese with that wine(i mean whine). one last thing. are your parents going to have your 12th birthday party at mickey d's or is it chuckee cheezzzzz. don't listen to all this negativity. go to a cici's and try it. give it a honest chance. and, if you don't like it then do the adult thing and talk to the manager. i bet if your trully not satisfied they'll probably offer your money back.
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re: pizzacake
southernitalian
Oct 5, 2007 10:27 AM
Hey - calm down! I said it was very clean and inexpensive and you want to know something? I just went again. Yup. A group of us just ran out and went there. I had a nice salad and a bowl of pretty decent soup and a slice of veggie pizza. Had a large soda and the check came to $6.47. Not bad at all.
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southernitalian
Sep 7, 2007 11:34 AM
I went today for the first time. i think it's spelled Ceci's? I went to the one on S. Tryon in Charlotte. They shouted at us when we walked in and we almost ran out. Very clean, inexpensive. I had a small salad and then got a pepperoni slice. I heard the pizza guy yell, "Macaroni and Cheese" and I thought I'd go check it out but it was Mac & Cheese pizza! Yuck. Right? Maybe not. Hmm.
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Guys- It's not poisoned. That said, it's not good, either. But it's 4 bucks and it's not like it tastes bad. So grab a slice and a little salad and bask in your cheap lunch. Take the change and get a nice steak for dinner or something. It's not the end of the world and you can always find something to chow on.
I'd ignore the posters who decry CiCi's as the gourmet apocalypse.
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CiCi's wouldn't be so bad if they didn't yell greetings at you when you enter and leave the store. It's very intrusive and obnoxious at my city's location.
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re: cheeseonastick
deibu
Aug 29, 2007 08:15 AM
They are obnoxious at the one near me as well. The manager kept pushing the staff to smile constantly. When one high school age kid was cutting and putting out the pizzas and I was in the line, the manager came over and told him to "smile big, it makes the customers happy". When he walked away I told him that it was okay, you don't need to smile...
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southerngal
Aug 10, 2007 08:30 AM
I think Cici's is fine for the price. I always have a salad, order a special order pizza...usually a pepperoni, onion and mushroom...and let my grandkids eat their fill, and enjoy themselves.
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Richard 16
Jul 31, 2007 11:47 PM
Sure -- don't expect much. Have fun with your friends or coworkers. Order a fresh pizza right away; I had one with spinach and mushrooms. Be patient for the fresh pie -- it's too easy to fill up on incredibly mediocre junk, and it won't take too long.
It's not the worst pizza I've had -- after all, I live in St. Louis, where St. Louis style "pizza" is made on stale matzoh, with horribly overdone sauce and provel "cheese". But the only reason we go to Cici's is that it's so cheap and the kids like it. It's not dining, it's barely eating -- it's refueling.
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The only reason they did it is that P. Hut did (never mind that they're in FAR, FAR fewer locations, and won't tell you on the .com whether a location has one...)
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re: Sister Sue
Offer a buffet built around pizza.
Pizza Hut's (where available) has not only multiple thin-crust regular-type pizzas, but also usually-fruit-covered dessert thin-crust, breadsticks (with garlic-parm topping and cinnamon-sugar), cavatini pasta topped with mozzarella, and a noticeable salad bar (I prefer the caesar)
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I'll respectfully disagree with most of the posters and say CiCi's isn't too bad, especially when you consider it's a bargain buffet pizza place, as previously said.
Do indeed ask for a fresh pizza. They'll make you any kind you want, one slice to a whole pie, and I've never had a problem getting fresh pizza even when what I wanted was still there.
The pasta is not overcooked as you might expect, and the red sauce I like is a simple tomato sauce. The salad bar is kept up well, and the desserts are very sweet, but in moderation good.
The posters can flame away as they see fit, but I think you'll do okay (not great, but okay) at CiCi's
Thanks,
Kevin
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re: HollyDolly
TexasToast
Aug 31, 2006 01:50 PM
Well if you MUST go, then ask for the pizza that's NOT there (because someone just took it all) and when they ask you "how many slices" just say half, or whole, or whatever. And they'll bring it to you, so you get a freshly made (but still crappy) pizza for next to nothing. At least, that's what they do in TX.
TT
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re: jlawrence01
I dropped in once at lunchtime and got carryout. Based on that, I'd say the value and quality are somewhat less than you can get with a medium quality frozen pizza from the grocery. If I were eating in, I'd strip the skimpy toppings off three or four slices and put them onto one slice of crust.
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