Buffet dining is an acquired taste: Some are good (Le Village Buffet at Paris Las Vegas rocks.) Some are pretty good (DC's own Phillips Flagship) and then there's Cici's Pizza. If you've ever eaten at Cici's, I don't need to tell you how bad it is. Sure it's affordable ($5.99 + $1.99 for a drink) but the food is almost inedible... Not exactly a culinary match made in Heaven.
The fact is, Cici's Pizza may have the worst food of any eatery in DC, Maryland and Virginia. That doesn't necessarily make it the worst restaurant; but I'd strongly recommend crossing if off your "bucket list." When I arrived around 11:20 AM for an early lunch, there were only two people already eating... and a group of a dozen pre-teens waiting to order. 10 minutes later, another 50 people or so had made their way inside. Why they came in, remains a mystery to me: At least I had a reason to be there... to review the food. What was their excuse?
I stayed a total of 11 minutes, long enough to gag twice and somehow swallow two breadsticks and almost two desserts. I took three bites of cavatappi and sauce, one bite each of cheese & pepperoni pizza and a nibble of some kind of bread that resembled a scallop. The poor quality of food shocked me. For starters, the pasta was ice cold (even though Cici's was open for less than half an hour) and the tomato sauce tasted more like water than tomatoes. I gagged on Cici's thick crust pepperoni pizza, a cold, undercooked slice of dough with... what I can only assume was artificial pepperoni on top (meat just doesn't taste like that.)
I managed to finish a couple of garlic breadsticks... by far, the best thing on the buffet. I can't say that I highly recommend them; but they went down (and that's saying something.) A slice of razor thin cheese pizza produced my second and final gag. On to dessert, which consisted of a trio of cinnamon rolls, apple and bavarian dessert pizza. I encourage you to click on the links to each dessert, to read colorful (and dreamy) descriptions of what I can only describe as an icy, doughy and undercooked mess. They were supposed to have brownies too, but I seemed to have lucked out on missing them.
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I get no joy from bashing Cici's... The cashier was super nice and friendly (and made a special effort to say good-bye) but this place can only exist for the odd lot that seem to like inferior food. I can only imagine what they eat when they're at home. The restaurant itself was fairly clean, but my table had a 20° angle: It's a miracle that my food didn't slide off. Come to think of it, it's too bad it didn't.
