In August 2015 we reported on our visit to the Epic Buffet in the Hollywood Casino which is in Grantville, PA just outside of Hershey. This is a casino and racetrack with table games, slot machines and the racetrack. The casino is off limits to children - naturally - but the buffet is inside the casino and there is no way to the buffet but walking through the casino - so if you are planning to visit with children or anyone under 21, don't make the trip. I had mixed feelings about our dinner there a year ago - this visit I was happier.
We went on a Wednesday night in August and there was racing scheduled that night - not that this impacts on the buffet, but the dining room we were seating in had a television on the wall that showed the races that were in progress on the track. Perhaps this needs repeating as I have said this with other casinos that we have gone to for the buffet - we are not gamblers - we go to dine at the buffet and don't bet. We did enjoy watching the horse races last year and we were looking forward to that again after dinner - and while we don't generally like a television on in any restaurant while we are eating, watching the races that we would have otherwise missed was nice. The price for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday nights is $14.99. The buffet is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Dinner on Friday nights now includes Crab Legs in addition to the Saturday night features of Prime Rib and Seafood. The two nights are priced accordingly with the Friday night dinner now at $32.99 and the Saturday night dinner now $26.99. The Sunday night dinner buffet is $16.99. Hours are important to take note of - Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday the buffet closes at 8:00 pm. The Saturday and Friday night buffets close at 9:00 pm. The Wednesday and Thursday price of $14.99 includes beverages - and this is a very good price for a buffet these days. I have paid that much on weekends - PLUS paid for soda - at two Golden Corrals on their weekend "special" at Golden Corrals that have a weekday price of $13.99.
I will not go through all of the dishes on the buffet on this Wednesday night - there was quiet a selection from seafood entrees - both broiled and fried, to Asian, to Continental, to Italian which included "gourmet" type pizzas. The carving was Roast Turkey Breast and this was very good. There was also ham. There was not a great deal of difference from the weekend buffet that we had here a year ago for a lot more money. There was no Prime Rib but I was not impressed with then. Some of the "appetizer" style dishes that were there last year were not there on this Wednesday, so I would say that those go along with the weekend diner. There was no peel and eat shrimp. The salad bar on this trip was very basic - make a salad with a limited number of toppings and not much in the way of prepared salads. The "grape" tomatoes on the salad bar were dried out and not edible. Those were the only thing on the buffet that night that I took objection to. There are several small pizza's out cut into slices. For some reason there is a need to make pizzas with a very thin crust and this is supposed to make them "gourmet" - this is my description, they were not calling their pizzas that. They were tasty little slices and if you like a cracker like crust you will love these. I am not complaining - we had a good and satisfying dinner
Desserts are just as I had described last year. They are in small portions but that is a plus as you can try several or take more than one of the one you want. There is also fruit and two hot desserts.
It was a fluke that we were in this area on a Wednesday night. I am glad that we were because I am not sure I would have been as happy paying $32.99 had be been there on a Friday night. Will we go back again? Yes. Would I even try it on a Friday night again if that is how our itinerary takes us to this area next year - likely, but I will think twice.
The Epic Buffet at the Hollywood Casino is located at the Penn National
Race Course at 777 Hollywood Blvd, Grantville, PA 17028. There is plenty
of free parking. The phone number is 717-469-2211. There is a website
for the casino and buffet and that is linked at the side of this page. Take note of the hours and days open as noted above. Also - your GPS may not take you to the entrance of the complex. For some reason our GPS sent us to the entrance to the stables on the opposite side of the grounds.
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2016
Friday, August 28, 2009
Gatti's Pizza - A Pizza Buffet
When I think Pizza Buffet, I think Cici's but that is only because that is the chain most local to me - if local is 200 miles. There are other pizza buffet chain restaurants as well. We wrote about a new, small, two location chain in Pennsylvania a year ago. I recently found another chain that is much more wide-spread across the country. That chain is Gatti's Pizza.
Now, as always, I tell you right up front when I am writing about a restaurant or chain that I have not been to and this is another of those. I have not eaten at Gatti's Pizza, but I will share with you all that I have learned.
Gatti's presentation is very much like Cici's - a buffet comprised of pizza, salad bar, pasta, and dessert. There are also chicken wings - though it appears that these are not included on the buffet, . There is a take out option and there is also the ability to internet order from some of the locations, particularly those in Texas.
Locations are across the US as far west as Texas. There are Gatti's Pizza locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Most states listed have several locations with the most in Texas. This is not surprising as this is the state where the chain was founded in 1964 with a pizza restaurant called The Pizza Place. In 1969 the founder moved to Austin, Texas and renamed the restaurant using his wife's maiden name, it the restaurant became Mr. Gatti's. The restaurant prided itself on using all natural ingredients to make the best tasting pizza possible. In the 1980's the restaurant expanded to a chain of game rooms that included a pizza buffet. Interestingly, Cici's also began its pizza buffet restaurants in Texas in 1985. (So, who came first?) There are now 140 + locations of Gatti's Pizza. Locations are franchises.
So what types of pizza will you find on the buffet? This is another of the every combination you can think of assortment of pizzas. There is a Sampler pizza, a Bacon Double Cheeseburger pizza, BBQ Chicken pizza, Meat Market pizza, Vegetarian Sampler pizza, Superoni (pepperoni) pizza, Gatti's Deluxe pizza, Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Veggi Sicilian, and Meat Sicilian. There is a separate list of toppings so we can presume that other combinations are possible. Personally, I like to try the exotic when I go to pizza buffets but I am usually happier when I find basic cheese pizza also available.
The salad bar is what you would expect. Salad greens, tomatoes, and toppings with a variety of dressings. The pasta is spagetti with tomato sauce. There is a mention of macaroni and cheese as well. Most locations have a website and these tend to get a little more specific as to what you might find at that location.
The dessert choices are apple pizza and cinnamon bread sticks (what appears to be pizza dough baked with cinnamon). Of course there are soft drinks and it is stated that these vary by location.
To find prices you need to look at the websites of the individual restaurants which are linked on the locations page. For an example over 12 at the West Virginia location the buffet is $7.99. Not bad, but two to three dollars higher than Cici's. Kids over 6 pay $6.49. Only children under 2 are free and there is a senior discounted price of $6.49.
Each restaurant features a game room and large screen TV's in the dining room. There are larger locations call GattiTown which have party rooms and are listed as "destination" locations. Generally, destination means "shoppertainment" - an attraction location offering entertainment, food, etc. These are stand-alone restaurants meaning that they are not inset into other stores, etc. but a larger facility all on its own.
The food looks good. That is no recommendation. If I am in Virginia, West Virginia, or one of the Carolinas I will try it. The corporate website is linked at the side of this page. It is light on buffet information but if you go to the locations page and click on a location's website you will see much more about the buffet, prices, hours, etc.
If you have been to a Gatti's Pizza please leave a comment and tell us all about it!
Now, as always, I tell you right up front when I am writing about a restaurant or chain that I have not been to and this is another of those. I have not eaten at Gatti's Pizza, but I will share with you all that I have learned.
Gatti's presentation is very much like Cici's - a buffet comprised of pizza, salad bar, pasta, and dessert. There are also chicken wings - though it appears that these are not included on the buffet, . There is a take out option and there is also the ability to internet order from some of the locations, particularly those in Texas.
Locations are across the US as far west as Texas. There are Gatti's Pizza locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Most states listed have several locations with the most in Texas. This is not surprising as this is the state where the chain was founded in 1964 with a pizza restaurant called The Pizza Place. In 1969 the founder moved to Austin, Texas and renamed the restaurant using his wife's maiden name, it the restaurant became Mr. Gatti's. The restaurant prided itself on using all natural ingredients to make the best tasting pizza possible. In the 1980's the restaurant expanded to a chain of game rooms that included a pizza buffet. Interestingly, Cici's also began its pizza buffet restaurants in Texas in 1985. (So, who came first?) There are now 140 + locations of Gatti's Pizza. Locations are franchises.
So what types of pizza will you find on the buffet? This is another of the every combination you can think of assortment of pizzas. There is a Sampler pizza, a Bacon Double Cheeseburger pizza, BBQ Chicken pizza, Meat Market pizza, Vegetarian Sampler pizza, Superoni (pepperoni) pizza, Gatti's Deluxe pizza, Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Veggi Sicilian, and Meat Sicilian. There is a separate list of toppings so we can presume that other combinations are possible. Personally, I like to try the exotic when I go to pizza buffets but I am usually happier when I find basic cheese pizza also available.
The salad bar is what you would expect. Salad greens, tomatoes, and toppings with a variety of dressings. The pasta is spagetti with tomato sauce. There is a mention of macaroni and cheese as well. Most locations have a website and these tend to get a little more specific as to what you might find at that location.
The dessert choices are apple pizza and cinnamon bread sticks (what appears to be pizza dough baked with cinnamon). Of course there are soft drinks and it is stated that these vary by location.
To find prices you need to look at the websites of the individual restaurants which are linked on the locations page. For an example over 12 at the West Virginia location the buffet is $7.99. Not bad, but two to three dollars higher than Cici's. Kids over 6 pay $6.49. Only children under 2 are free and there is a senior discounted price of $6.49.
Each restaurant features a game room and large screen TV's in the dining room. There are larger locations call GattiTown which have party rooms and are listed as "destination" locations. Generally, destination means "shoppertainment" - an attraction location offering entertainment, food, etc. These are stand-alone restaurants meaning that they are not inset into other stores, etc. but a larger facility all on its own.
The food looks good. That is no recommendation. If I am in Virginia, West Virginia, or one of the Carolinas I will try it. The corporate website is linked at the side of this page. It is light on buffet information but if you go to the locations page and click on a location's website you will see much more about the buffet, prices, hours, etc.
If you have been to a Gatti's Pizza please leave a comment and tell us all about it!
Friday, August 07, 2009
I Love CiCi's Pizza Buffet, BUT...
I have written about CiCi's Pizza Buffet many times. I have always recommended it and I still do but I have an ongoing problem with Cici's that I have written about from my first article about the chain a few years back. I know that Cici's corporate is very responsive and they have followed my articles and responded to some in the past. I am hoping that they read this article and maybe make some changes.
My problem - actually two related problems - have to do with the system for table clean up in the restaurant. A cleaning person travels around the restaurant with a cart and picks up dirty dishes from tables and cleans tables when the dinners are finished and leave. In this lies my major problem. This person has no idea if anyone is coming back to the table so any empty table is totally cleared away. I know that my wife and I are not the only ones who will go up together for more food at any buffet that we go to, leaving the table empty. Most buffets have some type of sign or paper saying that the table is occupied. Not Cici's. More than once we have gone up for more pizza only to return to our table to find our cups of soda (half full when we left them) and everything else cleaned away. Once we came back to find people sitting at our table. This has not just happened once but on several visits and at different Cici's.
On this most recent visit my wife had an idea. She wore a sun hat into the buffet and set it down on the table - the idea was that the cleaner would see the hat and then know that we were still occupying that table. I am not going to mention which Cici's we were in but this was one of the most absurd occurences yet. No one had come around to our table for quite some time and the empty dishes were stacking up. We both got up to get more food and the hat was left on the side of the table. We were only gone a few moments when we returned to find - once again - the table was completely cleaned away AND THE HAT WAS GONE. We found the cleaner who said "oh, you are still here." "Were is the hat that was on the table?". we asked. "Oh, its over here by the cash register." We asked why did he clear away the table if the hat was still there showing that we were still there as well. "Huh?", was the reply. Just by coincidence a manager hda come by and asked how everything was going. We told him. His only response was to laugh. (Are you reading this Corporate?) The lesson is quickly leanred just like rats in a Skinner Box, don't get up from the table together and always leave someone behind. Maybe this is fine for others and for those with a lot of people in their family, but it is just the two of us and we like to eat together - not once getting up while the other waits.
So what could Cici's do to fix this? A simple sign that says "occupied" on one side and "open" on the other on each table - a bit of cardboard printed on computer printer would do it. Simple lamination for a few cents would preserve it. Or even more simply, a paper from the cashier that says leave up on table while occupied - just like OCB and so many buffets do. Why is this so hard for Cici's to realize?
My other complaint also has to do with the cleaning cart. The top of the trash bin sits at about face hieght and this cart rolls close to the tables up and down each aisle. As it goes by your nose in in the traah. This is one of the most unappetizing things that any restaurant could do - and it is standard practice at Cici's.
As I state in my title, I love Cici's but the table problem is enough to keep me from going to Cici's. When I dine out I want to relax and I want to be able to pace my meal with my partners. I do not want to be concerned that when we return to our table all will be gone. If this happened once, well, we would chaulk it up to an employee who did not know what he was doing - but this happens 9 out of 10 visits and that is just to much. My wife asked me if it would help if we brought our own sign, but you know, I do not think that would make any difference, because if the system is not changed - and the cleaning staff do not know to be aware if someone is still using the table, nothing is going to work.
So Cici's, I begging you, come up with a system to show a table is occupied. Get over whatever makes you feel that this is not necessary. It is VERY NECESSARY.
My problem - actually two related problems - have to do with the system for table clean up in the restaurant. A cleaning person travels around the restaurant with a cart and picks up dirty dishes from tables and cleans tables when the dinners are finished and leave. In this lies my major problem. This person has no idea if anyone is coming back to the table so any empty table is totally cleared away. I know that my wife and I are not the only ones who will go up together for more food at any buffet that we go to, leaving the table empty. Most buffets have some type of sign or paper saying that the table is occupied. Not Cici's. More than once we have gone up for more pizza only to return to our table to find our cups of soda (half full when we left them) and everything else cleaned away. Once we came back to find people sitting at our table. This has not just happened once but on several visits and at different Cici's.
On this most recent visit my wife had an idea. She wore a sun hat into the buffet and set it down on the table - the idea was that the cleaner would see the hat and then know that we were still occupying that table. I am not going to mention which Cici's we were in but this was one of the most absurd occurences yet. No one had come around to our table for quite some time and the empty dishes were stacking up. We both got up to get more food and the hat was left on the side of the table. We were only gone a few moments when we returned to find - once again - the table was completely cleaned away AND THE HAT WAS GONE. We found the cleaner who said "oh, you are still here." "Were is the hat that was on the table?". we asked. "Oh, its over here by the cash register." We asked why did he clear away the table if the hat was still there showing that we were still there as well. "Huh?", was the reply. Just by coincidence a manager hda come by and asked how everything was going. We told him. His only response was to laugh. (Are you reading this Corporate?) The lesson is quickly leanred just like rats in a Skinner Box, don't get up from the table together and always leave someone behind. Maybe this is fine for others and for those with a lot of people in their family, but it is just the two of us and we like to eat together - not once getting up while the other waits.
So what could Cici's do to fix this? A simple sign that says "occupied" on one side and "open" on the other on each table - a bit of cardboard printed on computer printer would do it. Simple lamination for a few cents would preserve it. Or even more simply, a paper from the cashier that says leave up on table while occupied - just like OCB and so many buffets do. Why is this so hard for Cici's to realize?
My other complaint also has to do with the cleaning cart. The top of the trash bin sits at about face hieght and this cart rolls close to the tables up and down each aisle. As it goes by your nose in in the traah. This is one of the most unappetizing things that any restaurant could do - and it is standard practice at Cici's.
As I state in my title, I love Cici's but the table problem is enough to keep me from going to Cici's. When I dine out I want to relax and I want to be able to pace my meal with my partners. I do not want to be concerned that when we return to our table all will be gone. If this happened once, well, we would chaulk it up to an employee who did not know what he was doing - but this happens 9 out of 10 visits and that is just to much. My wife asked me if it would help if we brought our own sign, but you know, I do not think that would make any difference, because if the system is not changed - and the cleaning staff do not know to be aware if someone is still using the table, nothing is going to work.
So Cici's, I begging you, come up with a system to show a table is occupied. Get over whatever makes you feel that this is not necessary. It is VERY NECESSARY.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Another Old Country Buffet - What a difference!
About twenty or more miles from me is another Old Country Buffet. We have been to this other location only once years ago, because it always seemed silly to make the trip when there is an OCB just a short way from our home. We have often talked about just going out there and finding out if the problems that we often find with Old Country Buffet is because of the particular one that we frequent or that which is general to all Old Country Buffets. Now, we have been to other Old Country Buffets in several other states over the years - but not since I have been writing this site. These other OCBs seemed in memory to be so much better than our local restaurant. On a recent holiday, we decided to make the trip east and find out what the other Old Country Buffet here is like.
The location that we visited is in Bay Shore, New York on Long Island. The restaurant is attached to a large, indoor shopping mall. The entrance to the restaurant is outside the mall. When we arrived for dinner there was a carnival going on just outside the restaurant in the parking lot. This really has nothing to do with the restaurant but I was interested to see how the crowds from the carnival plus the holiday shoppers from the mall would effect the operation, etc. of the restaurant. Going inside, the entrance and the layout of the restaurant was a bit different from the OCB that I usually go to. While this reataurant is slightly smaller in size, it appears much more open and bright. At the cash register the young lady took our money and asked if we had any coupons to redeem. No one ever asked me if I had coupons at the other OCB. We went into the dining room which was quite busy.
It was immediately obvious that this restaurant is much, much cleaner over all than the OCB in Levittown, NY. Remember that this is dinner on a holiday night. There are a number of people dining here this night as there had been all day. The floors were CLEAN. The open tables were all cleared and clean. Wow!
We started with soup and had the usual chicken noodle soup - and guess what? There were noodles in the chicken noodle soup. Why is that a surprise? Because in our usual OCB there is chicken noodle soup without noodles on a regular basis. The soup also was not salty. Generally, the chicken noodle soup that is served at that other OCB is so salty that it is barely palitable.
We went on to the salad bar and found that here it is spread across one whole double buffet server and half of another. There were several lettuce choices., prepared Ceasar salad that actually had dressing on it, and several items that we have not seen on that other OCB's salad bar.
When we returned to our table with our salads, the soup bowls were gone. How different! This remained throughout our meal. No dishes stacking up on the tables here!
Moving on to the entrees would be the real test. Would empty trays be refilled? Would main items be replaced with rolls? Would it be possible to communicate with the staff? Let me start with the communication question. The staff who operate the buffet tables and the carving station at that other OCB do not speak English. They all seem very nice and pleasant, but there is no way to communicate with them - they have no idea what you are asking or what you need. (Let's just say that I make a hopefull assumption that this is not intentional to ignor anyone's request.) Here at the Bay Shore OCB everyone clearly spoke and understood English.
Were empty trays refilled? Absolutely. And they were refilled with what they started out to be. Sausages ran out and in a few minutes new sausages came out. Chicken terriaki ran out - and it too was brought back out in a proper time frame. Everything went just as is expected.
There was a special holiday "picnic" addition to the menu - hot dogs and cheeseburgers. They were out on a half hot/half cold table next to the condiments which were nicely spread out, clean all around, and easy to reach. I have had hotdogs at the other OCB when they have been served at lunch. They were not as good as these.
Overall, the food was good. I had hoped that this OCB had an open grill area on the buffet floor. It did not. I have been told that at OCB's that do steak is grilled to order. Here they have the same set up as the OCB that we usually go to - a hot tray at the carving area where the person who carves takes the steaks out one at a time and cuts pieces off as people come up and ask for steak. The problem with this - as I have said before - is that the steak continues to cook in that hot tray and in a short time all steaks inside become well done. Unfortunately, here it was no different. What was different was that I was given - both times that I asked for steak - a small whole steak - and not the two inch square that I have gotten before. Yes, it was over done. If you like well done steak you would be very happy. The second time that I went up for steak there was no one at the carving station. I decided to stand there and see what would happen. At that other OCB you could stand there for an hour and never be noticed by staff. After a moment or two the manager walked passed and saw that I was standing there. He did not come over or say anything to me - he really should have acknowledge me to say that he could get the person who should be there. He did go right into the kitchen seeming to be looking for that person. A few minutes later he game out - saw I was still there and still no employee and went back into the kitchen again. This happened four times. The gentleman who should have been at the carving station did come back and served me a steak. Now, if I were the manager, after the second time I would have come over myself and start serving the customers. I did not wait forever - so as it was, it was, it was considerably better.
Other points about the food here. The pizza was brought out moist and with the cheese nicely melted. This was not the overcooked pizza that I am used to seeing and need to add tomato sauce to in order to make it moist enough to eat. My wife likes the chicken terriaki that is part of new additions that have appeared recently. The pieces were nice, large pieces of chicken and not the small bits that are served at that other OCB. Actually, these were much more like the pieces served in the same dish at the Ryans that we visited recently.
The restaurant went up twenty points in my esteem when I witnessed the following. At the top of the stack of clean dishes there was a dish covered in salad dressing. The dishes are stacked face down and this was across the exposed bottom of the plate. A customer came past and went right over to one of the young ladies tending the buffet area. The woman told her that there was a dirty plate on the stack. The employee stopped what she was doing, said, "oh, yes!", went to the stack of plates and immediately removed the dirty plate and took it away. Of course, you would say! Well, at that other OCB I have witnessed similar and when told of a problem the employees have starred at the customer and walked in the other direction. That dirty plate would have remained there all night.
Dinner at this Old Country Buffet was very enjoyable. We had a very nice dinner and a very nice time. I must say that all of my negative experiences at Old Country Buffet are truly the cause of the one OCB that I live near. How sad that this one really bad "apple" in the chain has to be near me. How sad that it is allowed to continue this way at all! When I wrote that the Levittown, NY OCB is the worst OCB in the country I was right on the button!
If you are on Long Island in New York and you want to go to Old Country Buffet, forget Levittown and make the trip east to the Bay Shore Old Country Buffet. It is located at 1701 Sunrise Highway, Bay Shore, NY 11706. The phone number is (631) 969-3943. One thing to know - this OCB has shorter hours than many. It closes on Monday to Thursday and Sunday at 8:30 pm instead of 9:00 pm and 9:00 pm on Friday and Saturday. For the summer these hours are extended from 8:30 to 9:00 and from 9:00 to 10:00 respectively. Perhaps the times coincide with the mall hours, but since there is no entrance from inside the mall, this should not make a difference.
Anyway, when I want to go to Old Country Buffet and I have the time and the gas to make the drive, this is the OCB that I am going to!
The location that we visited is in Bay Shore, New York on Long Island. The restaurant is attached to a large, indoor shopping mall. The entrance to the restaurant is outside the mall. When we arrived for dinner there was a carnival going on just outside the restaurant in the parking lot. This really has nothing to do with the restaurant but I was interested to see how the crowds from the carnival plus the holiday shoppers from the mall would effect the operation, etc. of the restaurant. Going inside, the entrance and the layout of the restaurant was a bit different from the OCB that I usually go to. While this reataurant is slightly smaller in size, it appears much more open and bright. At the cash register the young lady took our money and asked if we had any coupons to redeem. No one ever asked me if I had coupons at the other OCB. We went into the dining room which was quite busy.
It was immediately obvious that this restaurant is much, much cleaner over all than the OCB in Levittown, NY. Remember that this is dinner on a holiday night. There are a number of people dining here this night as there had been all day. The floors were CLEAN. The open tables were all cleared and clean. Wow!
We started with soup and had the usual chicken noodle soup - and guess what? There were noodles in the chicken noodle soup. Why is that a surprise? Because in our usual OCB there is chicken noodle soup without noodles on a regular basis. The soup also was not salty. Generally, the chicken noodle soup that is served at that other OCB is so salty that it is barely palitable.
We went on to the salad bar and found that here it is spread across one whole double buffet server and half of another. There were several lettuce choices., prepared Ceasar salad that actually had dressing on it, and several items that we have not seen on that other OCB's salad bar.
When we returned to our table with our salads, the soup bowls were gone. How different! This remained throughout our meal. No dishes stacking up on the tables here!
Moving on to the entrees would be the real test. Would empty trays be refilled? Would main items be replaced with rolls? Would it be possible to communicate with the staff? Let me start with the communication question. The staff who operate the buffet tables and the carving station at that other OCB do not speak English. They all seem very nice and pleasant, but there is no way to communicate with them - they have no idea what you are asking or what you need. (Let's just say that I make a hopefull assumption that this is not intentional to ignor anyone's request.) Here at the Bay Shore OCB everyone clearly spoke and understood English.
Were empty trays refilled? Absolutely. And they were refilled with what they started out to be. Sausages ran out and in a few minutes new sausages came out. Chicken terriaki ran out - and it too was brought back out in a proper time frame. Everything went just as is expected.
There was a special holiday "picnic" addition to the menu - hot dogs and cheeseburgers. They were out on a half hot/half cold table next to the condiments which were nicely spread out, clean all around, and easy to reach. I have had hotdogs at the other OCB when they have been served at lunch. They were not as good as these.
Overall, the food was good. I had hoped that this OCB had an open grill area on the buffet floor. It did not. I have been told that at OCB's that do steak is grilled to order. Here they have the same set up as the OCB that we usually go to - a hot tray at the carving area where the person who carves takes the steaks out one at a time and cuts pieces off as people come up and ask for steak. The problem with this - as I have said before - is that the steak continues to cook in that hot tray and in a short time all steaks inside become well done. Unfortunately, here it was no different. What was different was that I was given - both times that I asked for steak - a small whole steak - and not the two inch square that I have gotten before. Yes, it was over done. If you like well done steak you would be very happy. The second time that I went up for steak there was no one at the carving station. I decided to stand there and see what would happen. At that other OCB you could stand there for an hour and never be noticed by staff. After a moment or two the manager walked passed and saw that I was standing there. He did not come over or say anything to me - he really should have acknowledge me to say that he could get the person who should be there. He did go right into the kitchen seeming to be looking for that person. A few minutes later he game out - saw I was still there and still no employee and went back into the kitchen again. This happened four times. The gentleman who should have been at the carving station did come back and served me a steak. Now, if I were the manager, after the second time I would have come over myself and start serving the customers. I did not wait forever - so as it was, it was, it was considerably better.
Other points about the food here. The pizza was brought out moist and with the cheese nicely melted. This was not the overcooked pizza that I am used to seeing and need to add tomato sauce to in order to make it moist enough to eat. My wife likes the chicken terriaki that is part of new additions that have appeared recently. The pieces were nice, large pieces of chicken and not the small bits that are served at that other OCB. Actually, these were much more like the pieces served in the same dish at the Ryans that we visited recently.
The restaurant went up twenty points in my esteem when I witnessed the following. At the top of the stack of clean dishes there was a dish covered in salad dressing. The dishes are stacked face down and this was across the exposed bottom of the plate. A customer came past and went right over to one of the young ladies tending the buffet area. The woman told her that there was a dirty plate on the stack. The employee stopped what she was doing, said, "oh, yes!", went to the stack of plates and immediately removed the dirty plate and took it away. Of course, you would say! Well, at that other OCB I have witnessed similar and when told of a problem the employees have starred at the customer and walked in the other direction. That dirty plate would have remained there all night.
Dinner at this Old Country Buffet was very enjoyable. We had a very nice dinner and a very nice time. I must say that all of my negative experiences at Old Country Buffet are truly the cause of the one OCB that I live near. How sad that this one really bad "apple" in the chain has to be near me. How sad that it is allowed to continue this way at all! When I wrote that the Levittown, NY OCB is the worst OCB in the country I was right on the button!
If you are on Long Island in New York and you want to go to Old Country Buffet, forget Levittown and make the trip east to the Bay Shore Old Country Buffet. It is located at 1701 Sunrise Highway, Bay Shore, NY 11706. The phone number is (631) 969-3943. One thing to know - this OCB has shorter hours than many. It closes on Monday to Thursday and Sunday at 8:30 pm instead of 9:00 pm and 9:00 pm on Friday and Saturday. For the summer these hours are extended from 8:30 to 9:00 and from 9:00 to 10:00 respectively. Perhaps the times coincide with the mall hours, but since there is no entrance from inside the mall, this should not make a difference.
Anyway, when I want to go to Old Country Buffet and I have the time and the gas to make the drive, this is the OCB that I am going to!
Friday, December 26, 2008
Bits of News For the Year End
It looks like 2008 is closing on a down note for the Ryans chain, taken over and brought down by Buffets, Inc. Reports have come that Ryans all over are closing. We have learnedof two more closing. From customer and employee observations most of these were doing well. We have to wonder why productive restaurants are being closed by chain management that is trying to boost their finances.
On the opposite side of the Buffets Inc. bankruptcy story, Buffets Inc. announced in early November that it expects to come out of bankruptcy in the First Quarter of 2009. At the same time it was made known that in at least one state the companies debts to vendors would be paid back at a less than one percent equivalent of debt with stock offerings. Vendors owed money by Buffets, Inc. in this one state will not even make back 3% of the money owed them - if the stock actually pays off.
One of the more well known Chinese/International buffets in the New York metropolitian area on Long Island called EAST has been closed since August 2008 due to a fire in their kitchen. This buffet was very popular and was always filled with Asian guests. Their buffet menu always included very authentic dishes often unknown in the usual Chinese restaurants. I have written at least two reviews about East on this site and those articles may be searched in our archives. There has been great anticipation as to when this restaurant will reopen, and it was recently announced that it will reopen under new ownership. The restaurant will no longer be known as East. There will be some changes made. Of great concern has been what will happen to the gift certificates that many people have for meals at EAST. The new owner has said that he will honor those gift certificates for a limited time when the new restaurant opens. The gift certificates will be covered by the old owner who will reimburse the new owner for each one redeamed. East does have a restaurant of the same name in Queens, NY but that restaurant is owned by a relative of the owner of the now defunct, East in Huntington, NY. At first it was said that the Queens EAST would honor the gift certificates from Huntington, but when that restaurant was called to confirm this they stated that they will not honor the gift certificates. All this said, the new owner of the property has yet to file for any building permits and no work has begun to restore the interior of the building in Huntington. It does not look like this new restaurant will be opening any time soon. As you will read in my reviews of EAST I have always enjoyed this restaurant. The food was excellent. The problem was though that it was very expensive - even on a weeknight with a coupon. I am looking forward to the new restaurant and I am hoping that the price will be more affordable.
There has been a reappearance of the Ponderosa Restaurants chain website. This website has been closed for some time coinciding with the financial difficulties and bankruptcy of the parent company (no not Buffets, Inc. this time). For a while it was uncertain if the Ponderosa restaurants were remaining open and there was no way to search for any Ponderosa restaurant without that site. A month ago or so I got an email coupon from Ponderosa for a meal deal. I curiously looked to see if the website was up and it was not. I then, a couple of weeks ago got another coupon and when I tried the website link there was the website. If you have read my article on Ponderosa and the resulting comments it is still uncertain that Ponderosa can be considered a buffet restaurant. Their focus is always on what you will order off the menu with the "buffet" as a salad bar with appetizers complimenting the plated entrees from the menu.
Cici's newest commercials no longer say that you can come in for a meal for under $5.00. The newest ads tell you the meal is "$5 and change". The last time that I was at a Cici's about two months ago the meal price was $5.99 - add the soda to that and you are at $6 and change. Still a great deal!
I wish you all a very Happy New Year! I hope that 2009 is better for all of our friends who are trying to survive at Ryans. Next week I will be featureing our Buffet of the Year for 2008.
On the opposite side of the Buffets Inc. bankruptcy story, Buffets Inc. announced in early November that it expects to come out of bankruptcy in the First Quarter of 2009. At the same time it was made known that in at least one state the companies debts to vendors would be paid back at a less than one percent equivalent of debt with stock offerings. Vendors owed money by Buffets, Inc. in this one state will not even make back 3% of the money owed them - if the stock actually pays off.
One of the more well known Chinese/International buffets in the New York metropolitian area on Long Island called EAST has been closed since August 2008 due to a fire in their kitchen. This buffet was very popular and was always filled with Asian guests. Their buffet menu always included very authentic dishes often unknown in the usual Chinese restaurants. I have written at least two reviews about East on this site and those articles may be searched in our archives. There has been great anticipation as to when this restaurant will reopen, and it was recently announced that it will reopen under new ownership. The restaurant will no longer be known as East. There will be some changes made. Of great concern has been what will happen to the gift certificates that many people have for meals at EAST. The new owner has said that he will honor those gift certificates for a limited time when the new restaurant opens. The gift certificates will be covered by the old owner who will reimburse the new owner for each one redeamed. East does have a restaurant of the same name in Queens, NY but that restaurant is owned by a relative of the owner of the now defunct, East in Huntington, NY. At first it was said that the Queens EAST would honor the gift certificates from Huntington, but when that restaurant was called to confirm this they stated that they will not honor the gift certificates. All this said, the new owner of the property has yet to file for any building permits and no work has begun to restore the interior of the building in Huntington. It does not look like this new restaurant will be opening any time soon. As you will read in my reviews of EAST I have always enjoyed this restaurant. The food was excellent. The problem was though that it was very expensive - even on a weeknight with a coupon. I am looking forward to the new restaurant and I am hoping that the price will be more affordable.
There has been a reappearance of the Ponderosa Restaurants chain website. This website has been closed for some time coinciding with the financial difficulties and bankruptcy of the parent company (no not Buffets, Inc. this time). For a while it was uncertain if the Ponderosa restaurants were remaining open and there was no way to search for any Ponderosa restaurant without that site. A month ago or so I got an email coupon from Ponderosa for a meal deal. I curiously looked to see if the website was up and it was not. I then, a couple of weeks ago got another coupon and when I tried the website link there was the website. If you have read my article on Ponderosa and the resulting comments it is still uncertain that Ponderosa can be considered a buffet restaurant. Their focus is always on what you will order off the menu with the "buffet" as a salad bar with appetizers complimenting the plated entrees from the menu.
Cici's newest commercials no longer say that you can come in for a meal for under $5.00. The newest ads tell you the meal is "$5 and change". The last time that I was at a Cici's about two months ago the meal price was $5.99 - add the soda to that and you are at $6 and change. Still a great deal!
I wish you all a very Happy New Year! I hope that 2009 is better for all of our friends who are trying to survive at Ryans. Next week I will be featureing our Buffet of the Year for 2008.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet
THE LOCATION REVIEWED OF THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED. THE LOCATION AT Bristol Plaza Shopping Center
2669 Durham Road
Bristol, Pa. 19007
(Just northeast of Philadelphia, PA)
REMAINS OPEN. THIS REVIEW IS BASED UPON THE RESTAURANT THAT IS CLOSED BUT THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE RESTAURANT TO THE CURRENT LOCATION ARE THE SAME.
__________________________
There are a number of small pizza buffet chains across the United States that are trying to do what Cici's is doing. While doing a search for buffet restaurants in Central Pennsylvania (out of the Pennsylvania Amish area and away from Lancaster County) I came across a recent pizza buffet chain that is corporate based in Pennsylvania. Now, note that this chain came up on somewhere near page 45 of the search engine. I was about to give up my looking page by page to see what I would find when Pizza Buffet caught my eye.
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet started its first restauant about three years ago in Bristol, Pennsylvania which is near Philadelphia. About a year ago they opened their second franchised restaurant in Mechanicsburg, PA. Reading their website I was delighted at what I was seeing. The chain is looking to expand across the North East U.S. - an area that Cici's has not yet set its sights on. The description of the restaurant was great. The decor is Roman with columns and an Italian flair. The descriptions of the pizzas, pastas, and desserts were tantalizing. I was going to be about thirty miles from the Mechanicsburg location - south of the state capital of Harrisburg. I had to go to Friends and Family Pizza Buffet.
I should learn that not everything always lives up to its description and my high hopes.
We found the buffet restaurant with some difficulty. Unless you can see the small sign on the shopping center sign that says "Pizza Buffet" you will never know that this restaurant exists. It is located in a side (not the front) storefront on an L-shaped row of stores. You do not see it from the busy four lane road and if you are traveling on the either side of the road it is difficult to turn around if you miss it. We managed to find it on the second pass and drove up to the side of the building and parked.
The restaurant has a small sign above that says its name. Apparently the large sign in the photo on the website is the other location. We entered and paid at the cash register that is situated much like the set up at Cici's - in fact the counter set up is similar to Cici's but smaller. The dining room is smaller than Cici's but the decor does live up to the description - it is pleasantly decorated with Roman colums at the walls and photographs of Italy. It is very pleasant and carpeted. There are real restaurant tables on a carpeted floor. The room is much quieter than Cici's and does not have the atmospher of a fast food restaurant that is Cici's. Notice that I keep comparing to Cici's - well, if this is a Cici's copy which it is trying to be that will be my basis for comparison. We went on a summer Friday night - not a hot night - at 6:30 pm so we were certainly there at dinner time. Any Cici's would have been packed. This restaurant was almost empty. It remained near empty until we left an hour and a half later. The clientele was mostly families with a table or two of teens. Can no one find this buffet that has been open for a year - or does everyone know somehting that keeps them away?
You take your own silverware and grab a plate. No trays. You seat yourself at any table and then proceed to get your meal. The price for adults is $5.99 all of the time and unlimited soda is $1.69 each. The price is fair - but more expensive than Cici's. The first thing that we noticed was the silverware was clean but cloudy - as if it did not quite go through the full cleaning cycle. Usually the silverware has a shine - no matter what restaurant you are in.The second thing noticed was that the plates were not all clean. Many were, but a number were dirty - some just on the back but someone's plates surface came out sitting on that dirty plate back. I don't mean discolored but dirty. A number of things that were very evident lead us to feel that cleanliness at this buffet is marginal. And this cleanliness problem is with the dishes and at the buffet counter. Many of the covers that covered serving trays were not clean and throughout the evening no one stopped to clean or replace them. And as I said - it was not busy.
The layout of the serving counter is opposite to the counter at Cici's. The pizza starts at the right and the salad area is at the left end of the counter. My wife headed down to the salad area - I can't really call it a salad bar because there was not enough salad items to make a bar. The lettuce was shredded like you would have for hero (hoagie, sub) sandwiches. To add was chopped carrots, shopped olives, and a few dressings. Most of the area was taken up with toppings for hot dogs, which to our surprise were on the next space on the counter next to the pasta tray. According to the website description we were to find a selection of several different pasta shapes and a choice of tomato sauce and Alfredo sauce. There was no Alfredo sauce - unless the melted orange cheese was their idea of alfredo sauce. I think it was actually there to pour over the hot dogs. Well, there was no choice of pasta shapes either - just one shape of pasta which was a twist of two strands of pasta each about three inches long. When we first went to take the pasta we were scooping the bottom of the tray of pasta and the same of the red tomato sauce. It took a while before anyone noticed that these were empty and went to get more.
The website said that there would be soup - there were two soup servers. One had Chili which in many areas is considered a soup. The other had what looked like baked beans in it - it did not resemble soup. So I would say that again, these were to go with the hot dogs.
There was also a tray in this area that was covered in another of the not so clean covers. I opened and looked in to see what looked like the remains of dried out and darkish in color macaroni and cheese. I recalled the website saying that there was mac and cheese for the kids. Well, I would not have given this t o anyone's kids. And it remained just like that the entire time that we were there.
All right already, it is not a pasta, soup, or salad buffet - it is a pizza buffet so what was the pizza like? The pizza was pretty good. The pizza actually might even be better than Cici's. There was more of a variety of regular pizzas out and little duplication. They also make it very obvious with signs all over the counter and the table that if you do not see what you like just ask and they will make it for you in minutes - just like Cici's but Cici's does not come out and say that you may do this. Each pizza was also labeled with a sign identifying it. If you would like a pizza of your own creation there is a list of toppings and you may add any three to cheese. They say that it will be ready in five minutes but do not time them. We asked for a rather unusual combination and it took about ten minutes for it to come out. When it did is is announced by its toppings and it is placed on the pizza counter for you to come back to take. The pizza that was made for us was almost what we asked for - close enough, but not exact. In addition to the standards and create it yourself - and by standards I mean regular cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, sausage pizza, mushroom pizza, whole wheat crust pizza, white pizza, etc. - there are "Gourmet Pizzas". These include barbecue chicken pizza, hot wing pizza, ham and chees hoagie pizza, blt pizza, spicy barbecue pizza, Hawaiian pizza, chicken Alfredo pizza, meat lovers pizza, mac and cheese pizza, veggie pizza, cheese steak pizza, taco pizza, and Grandma's pizza which is a robust cheese pizza with pepper flakes. Not all of these are out all of the time, and this night only the bbq chicken and hot wing pizza were out from this list. The counter and overhead lights keep the pizza sufficiently hot and each is sliced into uneven slices. Each is set out on a small pizza tray and not the wire screens that Cici's uses. None of the pizzas that were out for any time dried out or got hard. What we tried were tasty and new pizza's came out sporadically - perhaps more would have come out if there were more customers eating.
Where Friends and Family Pizza Buffet shines is the dessert pizzas! There are 15 different hot and cold dessert pizzas and what we tried were great. I had blueberry cheese pizza - cream cheese and blueberry topping mixed in with a sugar icing glaze. We both tried the apple crumb pizza and this was much better than the apple pizza served at Cici's. We both tried the small rolled cinnamon buns which were good and my wife tried vanilla pudding pizza which was the cold pizza that was out. There is even a peanut butter and jelly pizza and a peanut butter and chocolate pizza. These were not out on this night.
The website says that there is scooped hard ice cream but there was no ice cream freezer anywhere to be seen, no signs or mention of ice cream, and no offer of ice cream. Perhaps you could ask for it but if you have to ask and there is no indication anywhere that it even exists then I consider that as there is no ice cream. Again, what you read is not always what you get.
Service was marginal. The stacks of dirty dishes were taken off of our table twice by the young lady who walked around the near empty dining room. Happily, there was no large cleaning cart wheeled around the room which is a negative at Cici's. (That cart at Cici's is put to use cleaning away dirty dishes and cleaning tables but it is disgusting to have this wheeled repeated around the room next to your face while you are eating.)
Oh yes, I need to mention the noise. Every so often it sounded as if people were bowling - in a bowling alley. I started to wonder if there were bowling lanes in the storefront next door - but no, there were not. It was a loud rumbling crash. We asked the young lady who was walking around the room - sometimes picking up dirty dishes. She said that most people think that it is thunder, but it is actually the oven exhaust fan when it intermittently turns on and runs. Oh boy!
So overall - value is ok (if Cici's $5 buffet did not exist I would say that this price is great. Atmosphere is very nice. Cleanliness at the buffet server area is marginal. Service in the dining room is marginal. The pizza is good.
If you are a parent who has the salad bar while the kids attack the pizza selections, forget it. The salad is a major dissappointment in selection. The kids will be happy. You will not.
If you always wanted a hot dog buffet you will love this - lots of hot dog toppings and steam cooked hot dogs with buns. The hot dog was good.
Don't care about anything else but pizza - not even how clean the plates are - then you will love this buffet.
It is very possible that a Friends and Family Pizza Buffet will come near you at some time in the future. This corporation is hot to sell franchises and they are doing it in several ways. There are plans for non-buffet pizza franchises as well as pizza buffets. Some day I may get to try the original location near Philadelphia - no I am not running to get there. It may very well may be that the short comings of the Mechanicsburg location - and these are all really in the area of keeping the dishes and the serving trays clean (which is very important so that people don't get sick) - are better in Bristol. Management and mature managerial supervision of any buffet is ultimately important. Properly supervised this buffet would be A-Class. At the moment - at least on the night that I was there - it was not.
I ate myself full. I managed to get a clean plate each time and I avoided anything that did not quite look up to par. I was satisfied and I was fine afterward (all important!).
If you have tried the Bristol location let us know how it was in a comment. If you are not near Philadelphia or Harrisburg, PA you will not yet find one of these restaurants. This one that I went to is located at 6499 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsberg, Pa. The phone number is 717-697-4283. There is a website for the chain which is listed at the side of this page. The restaurant is open from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 9 pm. It is closed on Sundays and most holidays.
2669 Durham Road
Bristol, Pa. 19007
(Just northeast of Philadelphia, PA)
REMAINS OPEN. THIS REVIEW IS BASED UPON THE RESTAURANT THAT IS CLOSED BUT THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE RESTAURANT TO THE CURRENT LOCATION ARE THE SAME.
__________________________
There are a number of small pizza buffet chains across the United States that are trying to do what Cici's is doing. While doing a search for buffet restaurants in Central Pennsylvania (out of the Pennsylvania Amish area and away from Lancaster County) I came across a recent pizza buffet chain that is corporate based in Pennsylvania. Now, note that this chain came up on somewhere near page 45 of the search engine. I was about to give up my looking page by page to see what I would find when Pizza Buffet caught my eye.
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet started its first restauant about three years ago in Bristol, Pennsylvania which is near Philadelphia. About a year ago they opened their second franchised restaurant in Mechanicsburg, PA. Reading their website I was delighted at what I was seeing. The chain is looking to expand across the North East U.S. - an area that Cici's has not yet set its sights on. The description of the restaurant was great. The decor is Roman with columns and an Italian flair. The descriptions of the pizzas, pastas, and desserts were tantalizing. I was going to be about thirty miles from the Mechanicsburg location - south of the state capital of Harrisburg. I had to go to Friends and Family Pizza Buffet.
I should learn that not everything always lives up to its description and my high hopes.
We found the buffet restaurant with some difficulty. Unless you can see the small sign on the shopping center sign that says "Pizza Buffet" you will never know that this restaurant exists. It is located in a side (not the front) storefront on an L-shaped row of stores. You do not see it from the busy four lane road and if you are traveling on the either side of the road it is difficult to turn around if you miss it. We managed to find it on the second pass and drove up to the side of the building and parked.
The restaurant has a small sign above that says its name. Apparently the large sign in the photo on the website is the other location. We entered and paid at the cash register that is situated much like the set up at Cici's - in fact the counter set up is similar to Cici's but smaller. The dining room is smaller than Cici's but the decor does live up to the description - it is pleasantly decorated with Roman colums at the walls and photographs of Italy. It is very pleasant and carpeted. There are real restaurant tables on a carpeted floor. The room is much quieter than Cici's and does not have the atmospher of a fast food restaurant that is Cici's. Notice that I keep comparing to Cici's - well, if this is a Cici's copy which it is trying to be that will be my basis for comparison. We went on a summer Friday night - not a hot night - at 6:30 pm so we were certainly there at dinner time. Any Cici's would have been packed. This restaurant was almost empty. It remained near empty until we left an hour and a half later. The clientele was mostly families with a table or two of teens. Can no one find this buffet that has been open for a year - or does everyone know somehting that keeps them away?
You take your own silverware and grab a plate. No trays. You seat yourself at any table and then proceed to get your meal. The price for adults is $5.99 all of the time and unlimited soda is $1.69 each. The price is fair - but more expensive than Cici's. The first thing that we noticed was the silverware was clean but cloudy - as if it did not quite go through the full cleaning cycle. Usually the silverware has a shine - no matter what restaurant you are in.The second thing noticed was that the plates were not all clean. Many were, but a number were dirty - some just on the back but someone's plates surface came out sitting on that dirty plate back. I don't mean discolored but dirty. A number of things that were very evident lead us to feel that cleanliness at this buffet is marginal. And this cleanliness problem is with the dishes and at the buffet counter. Many of the covers that covered serving trays were not clean and throughout the evening no one stopped to clean or replace them. And as I said - it was not busy.
The layout of the serving counter is opposite to the counter at Cici's. The pizza starts at the right and the salad area is at the left end of the counter. My wife headed down to the salad area - I can't really call it a salad bar because there was not enough salad items to make a bar. The lettuce was shredded like you would have for hero (hoagie, sub) sandwiches. To add was chopped carrots, shopped olives, and a few dressings. Most of the area was taken up with toppings for hot dogs, which to our surprise were on the next space on the counter next to the pasta tray. According to the website description we were to find a selection of several different pasta shapes and a choice of tomato sauce and Alfredo sauce. There was no Alfredo sauce - unless the melted orange cheese was their idea of alfredo sauce. I think it was actually there to pour over the hot dogs. Well, there was no choice of pasta shapes either - just one shape of pasta which was a twist of two strands of pasta each about three inches long. When we first went to take the pasta we were scooping the bottom of the tray of pasta and the same of the red tomato sauce. It took a while before anyone noticed that these were empty and went to get more.
The website said that there would be soup - there were two soup servers. One had Chili which in many areas is considered a soup. The other had what looked like baked beans in it - it did not resemble soup. So I would say that again, these were to go with the hot dogs.
There was also a tray in this area that was covered in another of the not so clean covers. I opened and looked in to see what looked like the remains of dried out and darkish in color macaroni and cheese. I recalled the website saying that there was mac and cheese for the kids. Well, I would not have given this t o anyone's kids. And it remained just like that the entire time that we were there.
All right already, it is not a pasta, soup, or salad buffet - it is a pizza buffet so what was the pizza like? The pizza was pretty good. The pizza actually might even be better than Cici's. There was more of a variety of regular pizzas out and little duplication. They also make it very obvious with signs all over the counter and the table that if you do not see what you like just ask and they will make it for you in minutes - just like Cici's but Cici's does not come out and say that you may do this. Each pizza was also labeled with a sign identifying it. If you would like a pizza of your own creation there is a list of toppings and you may add any three to cheese. They say that it will be ready in five minutes but do not time them. We asked for a rather unusual combination and it took about ten minutes for it to come out. When it did is is announced by its toppings and it is placed on the pizza counter for you to come back to take. The pizza that was made for us was almost what we asked for - close enough, but not exact. In addition to the standards and create it yourself - and by standards I mean regular cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, sausage pizza, mushroom pizza, whole wheat crust pizza, white pizza, etc. - there are "Gourmet Pizzas". These include barbecue chicken pizza, hot wing pizza, ham and chees hoagie pizza, blt pizza, spicy barbecue pizza, Hawaiian pizza, chicken Alfredo pizza, meat lovers pizza, mac and cheese pizza, veggie pizza, cheese steak pizza, taco pizza, and Grandma's pizza which is a robust cheese pizza with pepper flakes. Not all of these are out all of the time, and this night only the bbq chicken and hot wing pizza were out from this list. The counter and overhead lights keep the pizza sufficiently hot and each is sliced into uneven slices. Each is set out on a small pizza tray and not the wire screens that Cici's uses. None of the pizzas that were out for any time dried out or got hard. What we tried were tasty and new pizza's came out sporadically - perhaps more would have come out if there were more customers eating.
Where Friends and Family Pizza Buffet shines is the dessert pizzas! There are 15 different hot and cold dessert pizzas and what we tried were great. I had blueberry cheese pizza - cream cheese and blueberry topping mixed in with a sugar icing glaze. We both tried the apple crumb pizza and this was much better than the apple pizza served at Cici's. We both tried the small rolled cinnamon buns which were good and my wife tried vanilla pudding pizza which was the cold pizza that was out. There is even a peanut butter and jelly pizza and a peanut butter and chocolate pizza. These were not out on this night.
The website says that there is scooped hard ice cream but there was no ice cream freezer anywhere to be seen, no signs or mention of ice cream, and no offer of ice cream. Perhaps you could ask for it but if you have to ask and there is no indication anywhere that it even exists then I consider that as there is no ice cream. Again, what you read is not always what you get.
Service was marginal. The stacks of dirty dishes were taken off of our table twice by the young lady who walked around the near empty dining room. Happily, there was no large cleaning cart wheeled around the room which is a negative at Cici's. (That cart at Cici's is put to use cleaning away dirty dishes and cleaning tables but it is disgusting to have this wheeled repeated around the room next to your face while you are eating.)
Oh yes, I need to mention the noise. Every so often it sounded as if people were bowling - in a bowling alley. I started to wonder if there were bowling lanes in the storefront next door - but no, there were not. It was a loud rumbling crash. We asked the young lady who was walking around the room - sometimes picking up dirty dishes. She said that most people think that it is thunder, but it is actually the oven exhaust fan when it intermittently turns on and runs. Oh boy!
So overall - value is ok (if Cici's $5 buffet did not exist I would say that this price is great. Atmosphere is very nice. Cleanliness at the buffet server area is marginal. Service in the dining room is marginal. The pizza is good.
If you are a parent who has the salad bar while the kids attack the pizza selections, forget it. The salad is a major dissappointment in selection. The kids will be happy. You will not.
If you always wanted a hot dog buffet you will love this - lots of hot dog toppings and steam cooked hot dogs with buns. The hot dog was good.
Don't care about anything else but pizza - not even how clean the plates are - then you will love this buffet.
It is very possible that a Friends and Family Pizza Buffet will come near you at some time in the future. This corporation is hot to sell franchises and they are doing it in several ways. There are plans for non-buffet pizza franchises as well as pizza buffets. Some day I may get to try the original location near Philadelphia - no I am not running to get there. It may very well may be that the short comings of the Mechanicsburg location - and these are all really in the area of keeping the dishes and the serving trays clean (which is very important so that people don't get sick) - are better in Bristol. Management and mature managerial supervision of any buffet is ultimately important. Properly supervised this buffet would be A-Class. At the moment - at least on the night that I was there - it was not.
I ate myself full. I managed to get a clean plate each time and I avoided anything that did not quite look up to par. I was satisfied and I was fine afterward (all important!).
If you have tried the Bristol location let us know how it was in a comment. If you are not near Philadelphia or Harrisburg, PA you will not yet find one of these restaurants. This one that I went to is located at 6499 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsberg, Pa. The phone number is 717-697-4283. There is a website for the chain which is listed at the side of this page. The restaurant is open from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 9 pm. It is closed on Sundays and most holidays.
Friday, April 25, 2008
FRANKIE TOMATTO'S ALL YOU CAN EAT ITALIAN FEAST, Toronto, Canada
Mama Mia! I actually found a real Italian buffet! Many readers ask me where there is an Italain buffet. Other than restaurants and buffets that may have an Italian buffet menu night and other than pizza buffets (which are more American than Italian) I have never come across a full time Italian Buffet - until now! Right off, I must thank who connected me to this buffet. It is a great young man by the name of David, who just happens to be my nephew. We don't often get to see him but we had the wonderful opportunity to get together with him recently and I was telling him about this site and asking him if he knew of any buffets. He went on a teen tour last summer and on the tour he went to Frankie Tomatto's All You Can Eat Italian Feast. He told me about it and I then found the restaurant's website - which by the way is quite an experience in itself! Now, as I always make clear if I am writing an article about a restaurant that I have not personally been to, what I am writing here is based upon all of the information that I have been able to learn, BUT I have not actually dined there. In this case, David did eat there and I can, through him, comment on the food.
So - Frankie Tomatto's All You Can Eat Italian Feast is in Canada. It is located in Markham, Ontario which is very near, if not in, Toronto. The restaurant's building looks on the outside like the Coliseum in Rome. The website has a virtual tour of the entire restaurant so I feel like I have actually been inside. When you enter you are in a lobby area that looks like an Italian area in a theme park. You are transported to rustic Italy - but more of a fun fantasy Italy than the real thing. The dining rooms are similar in decor with walls that are made to look like exterior ancient building walls - all of it looks like a lot of fun! Different rooms have different Italian fun themes. There are ten different dining rooms. The buffet serving areas in this restaurant are set up to be a marketplace. This was the first thing that came to mind when David was telling me about it. You go up to different sections for different types of foods.
Pricing at Frankie Tomatto's is on the mid-level of the buffets that we usually talk about it. It is not a buffet where you will eat dinner for $10 or $11 - though few are any more. All prices are in Canadian Dollars. With the recent currency exchange they are more in US Dollars. Dinner here Monday to Thursday is $14.99. Lunch on weekdays is $10.99. Friday dinner is $17.99. Saturday dinner is $18.99. Sunday dinner is $17.99. Holidays dinner is $18.99. There is lunch on Saturday for $12.99. There is no lunch on Sunday but there is Brunch and that is $14.99. They also list late night prices - weeknights $10.99, Friday/Saturday $13.99, and Early bird Fridays for $12.99. There are reasonable children's prices - half price for three to eleven, two and under are $1.99. Seniors over 65 get a 15% discount at all times. While I am sure a variety of beverages are served, there is no mention of beverage prices on the website.
The buffet is scattered along "Main Street" where there are fourteen different food stations. Oh yes, fourteen! They state that the food is made in small quantities and right in front of you at each food station so that everything is always hot and fresh. You are encouraged to try a little of this and a little of that and eat all that you care to eat.
Let's start with the Seafood Station. Here you will find mussels marinara, calamari, seafood pasta, baked salmon, seafood polenta, and Atlantic sole. Next door you come to the Rotisserie. Here you may have spit chicken, cacciatore, roast potatoes, chicken and veal Parmesan, roast veal, and Italian sausage with peppers and onions. The next station is called Ortaggi - get ready for fresh grilled vegetables, eggplant Paresan, rice Italiano, potato rosti, seasonal vegetables, and frittata. (I have to stop for a moment and tell you that I am only at the first three of the fourteen stations and I already want to make arrangements to get to this restaurant as fast as I can - my mouth is watering as I write!) Ok - moving on. The stations are grouped in threes - three "stalls" in a building - and they all look like buildings on an Italian alley way. You come to the next building and find the Carvery at the corner. Here the meat selection that is being carved appears to change and one of these items will be available - roast sirloin, turkey, baked stuffed salmon, roast lamb, glazed ham, or roast veal. Next door - pasta! Pasta specialties are made in front of you and the selections vary. Of course, if you have pasta there has got to be meatballs - and the Meatballs Station follows with linguine, Italian Meatballs, alfredo sauce, and vongole (clam sauce) and tomato sauce. Across the way is the Zuppa Station with homemade soups and their special Minestrone soup. Next to the soup is the Antipasti Station with peel and eat shrimp, Italian salads, marinated olives, and more. The order of these shops are not in the order of eating (at least as they are presented on the website). Dessert stations come up next with Spumoni's Gelato Bar with 16 flavors of ice cream, gelato, and Italian ices. Next door is Maria's Pasticceria with sweets, cakes, pies, puddings and all types of Italian specialties. Across the way from here is Pizza with all types of fresh made pizzas. Across the aisle again is Frutta with fresh fruits in season. Next door from the fruit is the Bakery. In the Bakery you will find fresh baked Italian breads, rolls, buns, focaccia, and calabrese rolls. Just in case you wanted salad other than the antipasti, there is a station called Insalada that makes the specialty Caesar salad along with other fresh salads. The Caesar salad is made in front of you. Yes - fourteen stations! Oh my!
Is that enough? Yes... but there is more! There are specials on certain days and they are offered ALL day. Tuesdays bring all you can eat crab legs! Thursdays they are grilling steaks! Fridays are special Seafood selections! Kids eat free on Mondays. On Wednesdays Seniors get a buy one adult dinner and get one FREE. There are specials on birthdays but appears that you pay for these - either $4.99 or $6.99 (it is not clear) for birthday packages. This seems to include spinning a large tomato wheel and winning a prize and getting a number of extras including photographs, hats, and a special chocolate cake that looks like a pizza slice. The whole birthday explanation is on two pages and I am still not certain what it is all about. (It does not look like you are getting a discount or a free meal - but perhaps I am wrong. It does appear that you are paying for a birthday package.)
Frankie Tomatto's does take reservations and can accommodate large parties - with reservations. Reservations are accepted for parties of two to two hundred.
So how is the food? I am reporting on the the food based upon the report that I have from my nephew, David. Now, David is sixteen years old but for his age he has dined with his parents in many very fine restaurants. I feel that we can trust his opinion on the food and he said that it was very good. If any of my readers have been to Frankie Tomatto's I ask that you leave a comment with this article.
I am not only intrigued by this buffet, I am dying to go! It sounds terrific! And the report to me (from David) is that it is terrific. So if you live in Canada near Toronto you are all set! If you are in the US, go now and check that your passport is current and head north over the border. This is a destination buffet! Mangia! Mangia!
Frankie Tomatto's All You Can Eat Feast is located at 7225 Woodbine Avenue in Markham, Ontario L3RIA3. Directions on their site say that from 401 take exit 404 North to the Steeles/Woodbine exit - or from 407 exit Woodbine South and they are two lights north from Steeles. The phone number is 905-940-1900. There is a website - that is an experience all on its own - and the link is at the side of this page.
So - Frankie Tomatto's All You Can Eat Italian Feast is in Canada. It is located in Markham, Ontario which is very near, if not in, Toronto. The restaurant's building looks on the outside like the Coliseum in Rome. The website has a virtual tour of the entire restaurant so I feel like I have actually been inside. When you enter you are in a lobby area that looks like an Italian area in a theme park. You are transported to rustic Italy - but more of a fun fantasy Italy than the real thing. The dining rooms are similar in decor with walls that are made to look like exterior ancient building walls - all of it looks like a lot of fun! Different rooms have different Italian fun themes. There are ten different dining rooms. The buffet serving areas in this restaurant are set up to be a marketplace. This was the first thing that came to mind when David was telling me about it. You go up to different sections for different types of foods.
Pricing at Frankie Tomatto's is on the mid-level of the buffets that we usually talk about it. It is not a buffet where you will eat dinner for $10 or $11 - though few are any more. All prices are in Canadian Dollars. With the recent currency exchange they are more in US Dollars. Dinner here Monday to Thursday is $14.99. Lunch on weekdays is $10.99. Friday dinner is $17.99. Saturday dinner is $18.99. Sunday dinner is $17.99. Holidays dinner is $18.99. There is lunch on Saturday for $12.99. There is no lunch on Sunday but there is Brunch and that is $14.99. They also list late night prices - weeknights $10.99, Friday/Saturday $13.99, and Early bird Fridays for $12.99. There are reasonable children's prices - half price for three to eleven, two and under are $1.99. Seniors over 65 get a 15% discount at all times. While I am sure a variety of beverages are served, there is no mention of beverage prices on the website.
The buffet is scattered along "Main Street" where there are fourteen different food stations. Oh yes, fourteen! They state that the food is made in small quantities and right in front of you at each food station so that everything is always hot and fresh. You are encouraged to try a little of this and a little of that and eat all that you care to eat.
Let's start with the Seafood Station. Here you will find mussels marinara, calamari, seafood pasta, baked salmon, seafood polenta, and Atlantic sole. Next door you come to the Rotisserie. Here you may have spit chicken, cacciatore, roast potatoes, chicken and veal Parmesan, roast veal, and Italian sausage with peppers and onions. The next station is called Ortaggi - get ready for fresh grilled vegetables, eggplant Paresan, rice Italiano, potato rosti, seasonal vegetables, and frittata. (I have to stop for a moment and tell you that I am only at the first three of the fourteen stations and I already want to make arrangements to get to this restaurant as fast as I can - my mouth is watering as I write!) Ok - moving on. The stations are grouped in threes - three "stalls" in a building - and they all look like buildings on an Italian alley way. You come to the next building and find the Carvery at the corner. Here the meat selection that is being carved appears to change and one of these items will be available - roast sirloin, turkey, baked stuffed salmon, roast lamb, glazed ham, or roast veal. Next door - pasta! Pasta specialties are made in front of you and the selections vary. Of course, if you have pasta there has got to be meatballs - and the Meatballs Station follows with linguine, Italian Meatballs, alfredo sauce, and vongole (clam sauce) and tomato sauce. Across the way is the Zuppa Station with homemade soups and their special Minestrone soup. Next to the soup is the Antipasti Station with peel and eat shrimp, Italian salads, marinated olives, and more. The order of these shops are not in the order of eating (at least as they are presented on the website). Dessert stations come up next with Spumoni's Gelato Bar with 16 flavors of ice cream, gelato, and Italian ices. Next door is Maria's Pasticceria with sweets, cakes, pies, puddings and all types of Italian specialties. Across the way from here is Pizza with all types of fresh made pizzas. Across the aisle again is Frutta with fresh fruits in season. Next door from the fruit is the Bakery. In the Bakery you will find fresh baked Italian breads, rolls, buns, focaccia, and calabrese rolls. Just in case you wanted salad other than the antipasti, there is a station called Insalada that makes the specialty Caesar salad along with other fresh salads. The Caesar salad is made in front of you. Yes - fourteen stations! Oh my!
Is that enough? Yes... but there is more! There are specials on certain days and they are offered ALL day. Tuesdays bring all you can eat crab legs! Thursdays they are grilling steaks! Fridays are special Seafood selections! Kids eat free on Mondays. On Wednesdays Seniors get a buy one adult dinner and get one FREE. There are specials on birthdays but appears that you pay for these - either $4.99 or $6.99 (it is not clear) for birthday packages. This seems to include spinning a large tomato wheel and winning a prize and getting a number of extras including photographs, hats, and a special chocolate cake that looks like a pizza slice. The whole birthday explanation is on two pages and I am still not certain what it is all about. (It does not look like you are getting a discount or a free meal - but perhaps I am wrong. It does appear that you are paying for a birthday package.)
Frankie Tomatto's does take reservations and can accommodate large parties - with reservations. Reservations are accepted for parties of two to two hundred.
So how is the food? I am reporting on the the food based upon the report that I have from my nephew, David. Now, David is sixteen years old but for his age he has dined with his parents in many very fine restaurants. I feel that we can trust his opinion on the food and he said that it was very good. If any of my readers have been to Frankie Tomatto's I ask that you leave a comment with this article.
I am not only intrigued by this buffet, I am dying to go! It sounds terrific! And the report to me (from David) is that it is terrific. So if you live in Canada near Toronto you are all set! If you are in the US, go now and check that your passport is current and head north over the border. This is a destination buffet! Mangia! Mangia!
Frankie Tomatto's All You Can Eat Feast is located at 7225 Woodbine Avenue in Markham, Ontario L3RIA3. Directions on their site say that from 401 take exit 404 North to the Steeles/Woodbine exit - or from 407 exit Woodbine South and they are two lights north from Steeles. The phone number is 905-940-1900. There is a website - that is an experience all on its own - and the link is at the side of this page.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Cici's Pizza Buffets Moves NorthEast
I have written several articles about Cici's Pizza Buffet. I had my first and up until now only opportunity to eat in this famous chain a year ago in Maryland. At the time the Hagerstown, Maryland location was the furthest north east that Cici's had opened. Now to my very pleasant surprise Cici's has opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There are now 11 locations in PA - all but this one in the western portion of the state.
I had heard several months ago that a Cici's was about to open in the Allentown/Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania - an area near the New Jersey border. This was causing some exuberance from those that I heard about it from but at the moment there is no mention of it on the Cici's website. On my recent arrival in Lancaster, however, we passed a familiar shopping center to see that since we were there in December, there is now a Cici's! Of course, we had to work a meal in there during the course of this trip.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Cici's and don't want to look back to last April and May to see what I wrote about it - and about what the corporate offices wrote back to me - I will give you a fresh look at Cici's. Cici's is a buffet chain located across the US that offers Salad, Pasta, Pizza, and Dessert - all you care to eat for one SMALL price. Now, I have to give an aside here from my "fresh" description to say that one year ago the price at Cici's was $4.49 per person. Now the price - at least at this new location is $5.49 per person. This is still a bargain - but a one dollar jump is quite a lot. I do not know if this "new, higher" price applies to all locations or this one. I was quite to surprised to see the jump. On the Cici's website it says "All you can eat for under $5*". Note the * - at the bottom of the page it says prices vary by location - so I guess I found one of the above $5 locations. How many others are there? The most recent Cici's television ads no longer mention a price. They just say "at an incredibly low price." Has Cici's now hooked us and will start raising the prices? I hope not. Unlimited soda still remains at $1.59 and the children's price remains at $2.99. These are the prices and they are the same all day and every day.
The Lancaster Cici's was exactly like the Hagerstown Cici's inside. You enter the same way, the counter and dining rooms are identical. When I was at Hagerstown they did not take charge cards - here they did. I was told by corporate after my Hagerstown visit that that had just been a temporary situation in Hagerstown. For Cici's newbies, you pay as you enter and you are given a plastic cup for your soft drink. No hot drinks here so be ready for soda or ice tea. You pick up a tray if you want one and move along a long counter to pick up your selections. You seat yourself and serve your drinks yourself from the soda fountain.
The first area is a salad bar with lettuce, toppings, cold vegetables, and a few prepared salads like pasta salad. You next come to a server with chicken pasta soup and then a tray of pasta follows with two sauces - tomato sauce and alfredo sauce. You next encounter a long row of pizzas. The pizza's are quite different from what you will usually find. Their signature pizza is Mac and Cheese Pizza. They also have the likes of Taco pizza, Barbecue Chicken Pizza, Barbecue Pizza, spinach pizza, white pizza, jalapeños pepper pizza, and many others. As was true of my first Cici's experience, the pizza's are not labeled as to what they are. I am told that this is because new and different pizzas are constantly brought out and take the place of something else. They could not keep up with labeling. I was also told not to be shy and ask one of the many people setting out pizzas what anyone is. And, indeed, on this visit I asked and was promptly told with a smile. One thing that was happening in Lancaster - perhaps because they are so knew and still doing things the way things are supposed to be done was when a pizza was put out it was loudly announced by name. Some pizzas - the taco pizza for one had a little song that several employees performed- "Ole!" Each pizza is about 12 inches in diameter and is cut into ten or so small slices - these are not large NY style pies that you fold and eat. Each piece is big enough so that you can enjoy a number of slices and take as many of the many selections that you would like to try. Each pizza is fresh and kept hot. There is cheesy garlic toast as well.
Once you have had your fill of pizza there are three desserts - an apple crumb pizza, hot cinnamon buns, and chocolate brownies. Wash it all down with Coke products, "sweet tea" and unsweet iced tea.
So how was the new Lancaster location? Good. The staff were extremely friendly, greeting everyone as they entered and left. The bus staff were very polite. The counters and the tables were kept very clean. The staff kept stirring the pasta and the sauces, mixing the salads to stay fresh, and continually put out pizzas.
My wife had some criticisms - which I will share - but these are with the chain in general and not specific to this location. I have been told several things about Cici's by readers which I will share here. If you do not see a pizza out that you would like, ask for it and it will be made and you will be brought slices. I witnessed this at Lancaster. I was also told that if you would like something special you should ask for it and if they have the ingredients they will make it just for you. My wife's feelings about this are these - and she kept commenting this to me through out the meal. "How does anyone know this and how do they know what the pizzas are to ask for one?" She feels that somewhere on the counter or on the wall there should be a list of all of the pizzas. In this way if you see a pizza on the list that you would like to try you can ask for it. She says that it all should not be a secret. She, of course, is right. I could understand that there could be chaos with everyone reading the list and asking for something different - but if it is truly the case that you can ask for something that you do not see, then everyone should know what to ask for - and that they may ask.
Now, she wanted something special - a vegetable pizza without cheese, but she would not ask for it and did not want me to ask for it. They do have "zesty" vegetable cheese pizza, so all the ingredients are right there - and pizzas are made in a matter of minutes. But there is nothing indicating that you can just up and ask for your own combination - and her concern was that she only want a slice or two, so what would happen if they brought her an entire pizza. If, indeed, all of this request stuff is true, then it should not be a secret and there should be some sign about it. When we entered the cashier asked if I had ever been to Cici's before and would I like to know all about it. Interested in hearing what a new person is told, I told her to give me the pitch - all she told me (very friendly) was the prices and that you get all the salad, pasta, pizza, and dessert that you want - and that soda was extra. No mention about special requests.
I have had more positive comments about Cicis to my articles than any other buffet. Everyone loves these buffets. They are great for kids - there is a game room in the back, pleasant classic rock music playing, and two large screen television sets at the ceiling. Adults love them. Kids love them.
If you are on a diet and can resist the pizza and be happy with the small salad bar and pasta then you too will enjoy this buffet - but it is really hard to resist. If you do not eat cheese for any reason you are in the same dilemma, and perhaps should seek out someplace else. But if you do not care about carbs or your cholesterol this is heaven. (I ate many and too much of things that I should not eat - but love.)
I come to this area of Pennsylvania a number of times a year and I am very happy that Cici's has come to Lancaster -and is moving north east. (BUT I am not sure that I want one in NY because most chains are changed for the worse when they come to NY.) I could also never maintain my health with a Cici's too close by.
Cici's Lancaster is located at 2405 Covered Bridge Road in Lancaster.Pennsylvania which is on Route 30 in the shopping center with Target. Cici's has a website for all of its chain and that link is at the side of this page. There is a location finder on the website with links to maps. The Lancaster phone number is 717-392-2740.
Enjoy pizza? Enjoy a filling and good meal for little money? Enjoy Cici's Pizza Buffet!
I had heard several months ago that a Cici's was about to open in the Allentown/Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania - an area near the New Jersey border. This was causing some exuberance from those that I heard about it from but at the moment there is no mention of it on the Cici's website. On my recent arrival in Lancaster, however, we passed a familiar shopping center to see that since we were there in December, there is now a Cici's! Of course, we had to work a meal in there during the course of this trip.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Cici's and don't want to look back to last April and May to see what I wrote about it - and about what the corporate offices wrote back to me - I will give you a fresh look at Cici's. Cici's is a buffet chain located across the US that offers Salad, Pasta, Pizza, and Dessert - all you care to eat for one SMALL price. Now, I have to give an aside here from my "fresh" description to say that one year ago the price at Cici's was $4.49 per person. Now the price - at least at this new location is $5.49 per person. This is still a bargain - but a one dollar jump is quite a lot. I do not know if this "new, higher" price applies to all locations or this one. I was quite to surprised to see the jump. On the Cici's website it says "All you can eat for under $5*". Note the * - at the bottom of the page it says prices vary by location - so I guess I found one of the above $5 locations. How many others are there? The most recent Cici's television ads no longer mention a price. They just say "at an incredibly low price." Has Cici's now hooked us and will start raising the prices? I hope not. Unlimited soda still remains at $1.59 and the children's price remains at $2.99. These are the prices and they are the same all day and every day.
The Lancaster Cici's was exactly like the Hagerstown Cici's inside. You enter the same way, the counter and dining rooms are identical. When I was at Hagerstown they did not take charge cards - here they did. I was told by corporate after my Hagerstown visit that that had just been a temporary situation in Hagerstown. For Cici's newbies, you pay as you enter and you are given a plastic cup for your soft drink. No hot drinks here so be ready for soda or ice tea. You pick up a tray if you want one and move along a long counter to pick up your selections. You seat yourself and serve your drinks yourself from the soda fountain.
The first area is a salad bar with lettuce, toppings, cold vegetables, and a few prepared salads like pasta salad. You next come to a server with chicken pasta soup and then a tray of pasta follows with two sauces - tomato sauce and alfredo sauce. You next encounter a long row of pizzas. The pizza's are quite different from what you will usually find. Their signature pizza is Mac and Cheese Pizza. They also have the likes of Taco pizza, Barbecue Chicken Pizza, Barbecue Pizza, spinach pizza, white pizza, jalapeños pepper pizza, and many others. As was true of my first Cici's experience, the pizza's are not labeled as to what they are. I am told that this is because new and different pizzas are constantly brought out and take the place of something else. They could not keep up with labeling. I was also told not to be shy and ask one of the many people setting out pizzas what anyone is. And, indeed, on this visit I asked and was promptly told with a smile. One thing that was happening in Lancaster - perhaps because they are so knew and still doing things the way things are supposed to be done was when a pizza was put out it was loudly announced by name. Some pizzas - the taco pizza for one had a little song that several employees performed- "Ole!" Each pizza is about 12 inches in diameter and is cut into ten or so small slices - these are not large NY style pies that you fold and eat. Each piece is big enough so that you can enjoy a number of slices and take as many of the many selections that you would like to try. Each pizza is fresh and kept hot. There is cheesy garlic toast as well.
Once you have had your fill of pizza there are three desserts - an apple crumb pizza, hot cinnamon buns, and chocolate brownies. Wash it all down with Coke products, "sweet tea" and unsweet iced tea.
So how was the new Lancaster location? Good. The staff were extremely friendly, greeting everyone as they entered and left. The bus staff were very polite. The counters and the tables were kept very clean. The staff kept stirring the pasta and the sauces, mixing the salads to stay fresh, and continually put out pizzas.
My wife had some criticisms - which I will share - but these are with the chain in general and not specific to this location. I have been told several things about Cici's by readers which I will share here. If you do not see a pizza out that you would like, ask for it and it will be made and you will be brought slices. I witnessed this at Lancaster. I was also told that if you would like something special you should ask for it and if they have the ingredients they will make it just for you. My wife's feelings about this are these - and she kept commenting this to me through out the meal. "How does anyone know this and how do they know what the pizzas are to ask for one?" She feels that somewhere on the counter or on the wall there should be a list of all of the pizzas. In this way if you see a pizza on the list that you would like to try you can ask for it. She says that it all should not be a secret. She, of course, is right. I could understand that there could be chaos with everyone reading the list and asking for something different - but if it is truly the case that you can ask for something that you do not see, then everyone should know what to ask for - and that they may ask.
Now, she wanted something special - a vegetable pizza without cheese, but she would not ask for it and did not want me to ask for it. They do have "zesty" vegetable cheese pizza, so all the ingredients are right there - and pizzas are made in a matter of minutes. But there is nothing indicating that you can just up and ask for your own combination - and her concern was that she only want a slice or two, so what would happen if they brought her an entire pizza. If, indeed, all of this request stuff is true, then it should not be a secret and there should be some sign about it. When we entered the cashier asked if I had ever been to Cici's before and would I like to know all about it. Interested in hearing what a new person is told, I told her to give me the pitch - all she told me (very friendly) was the prices and that you get all the salad, pasta, pizza, and dessert that you want - and that soda was extra. No mention about special requests.
I have had more positive comments about Cicis to my articles than any other buffet. Everyone loves these buffets. They are great for kids - there is a game room in the back, pleasant classic rock music playing, and two large screen television sets at the ceiling. Adults love them. Kids love them.
If you are on a diet and can resist the pizza and be happy with the small salad bar and pasta then you too will enjoy this buffet - but it is really hard to resist. If you do not eat cheese for any reason you are in the same dilemma, and perhaps should seek out someplace else. But if you do not care about carbs or your cholesterol this is heaven. (I ate many and too much of things that I should not eat - but love.)
I come to this area of Pennsylvania a number of times a year and I am very happy that Cici's has come to Lancaster -and is moving north east. (BUT I am not sure that I want one in NY because most chains are changed for the worse when they come to NY.) I could also never maintain my health with a Cici's too close by.
Cici's Lancaster is located at 2405 Covered Bridge Road in Lancaster.Pennsylvania which is on Route 30 in the shopping center with Target. Cici's has a website for all of its chain and that link is at the side of this page. There is a location finder on the website with links to maps. The Lancaster phone number is 717-392-2740.
Enjoy pizza? Enjoy a filling and good meal for little money? Enjoy Cici's Pizza Buffet!
Friday, September 28, 2007
Golden Corral - Colonie, New York
On a trip two hundred miles north to Albany, NY to visit a friend, I was surprised to find a Golden Corral in New York State. It is in a suburb of Albany called Colonie and, as I have discovered, is one of two in this region. The other is in Saratoga Springs about thirty five miles further north. These are the only two Golden Corral restaurants in New York State. We decided to see how it is and had dinner.
As I have written about Golden Corral in general in the past I will not go into the general details of Golden Corral, but I will focus on this particular location. The restaurant is very much like the other Golden Corral restaurants that I have tried. The dining rooms are actually a little nicer with the dining rooms partitioned into sections and the partitions pleasantly decorated as walls that would be in a home including framed windows looking between the dining rooms. It was very homey and nice.
I have been to a few Golden Corral restaurants recently on my trip South. This New York Golden Corral had more vegetable offerings on the hot buffet. It did have less salad offerings though. The recent feature on the salad bars at Golden Corral is something called Greenhouse Select and they had this in Albany, but its presentation was not as elaborate as a Golden Corral that I was at in North Carolina two weeks prior. The Greenhouse select are salad toppings of meats to create salads with steak or chicken slices. In the Golden Corral in North Carolina there were special salad plates to use for this feature and what seemed like more toppings. Here is was just mixed in to the salad bar. Golden Corrals also usually have a special section to create Caesar salads - the items were here, but they too were mixed into the other salads. There also seemed to be less prepared salads offered. One problem at this location is that the salad dressings are labeled on the glass over the dressings, BUT they did not correspond. I thought that I was taking Thousand Island Dressing and got Honey Mustard. The sign over the dish said Thousand Island - this seemed to hold true for the other dressings as well.
The grill was serving steaks, pork steaks, and carving a whole turkey. The pork steaks were very tasty. The Golden Corral says that there should be "slow roasted" sirloin at dinner meals, but this was not being served here.
The gentlemen working the grill did not seem to understand English well. My wife asked for some Turkey - he told her it was chicken - it was turkey. He had some difficulty understanding the terms for the doneness of steaks on the grill - and what he had prepared was all well done. Several dinners were told to come back in ten minutes for more steaks to cook to rare, medium rare, and medium well. When I went back after ten minutes a man in front of me asked for Medium Rare. He was told that there was none - still. He went away grumbling - and rightly so. I decided to ask anyway - and I too was told that there was no medium rare - so I asked what he had. He picked up a steak from the grill and cut into it - it was perfectly medium rare. I told him to give that one to me. There were several unhappy guests because this guy did not know what medium rare is or he did not understand what we were asking him for. There are two things that can make or break your dining experience at a Golden Corral - any Golden Corral. A good grill chef is one of them.
The other is your server. Because of the procedure followed at Golden Corral restaurants, you are given a plate when you pay when you enter and then your server brings you more clean plates. There are no dinner plates on the buffet. This is a remnant from the days when Golden Corral had table service in addition to the buffet. They prevented someone who ordered from the menu from going to the buffet and taking food by handing out the buffet dishes one by one. The menu is gone but the practice continues. Your server will both refill your drinks and give you clean plates - no going up to the buffet without a CLEAN plate. If you have a poor server you will wait a long time before and if you get another plate (or a soft drink refill). When have had some poor servers at Golden Corral that make you wish you had gone somewhere else to eat. I must say that our server in Colonie was EXCELLENT. We had more plates than we needed and she made sure our drinks were full. (What a surprise for a New York location!)
The restaurant was clean. As for the restrooms, my wife told me that the ladies room was well maintained, but I found the men's room to be needing maintenance.
If you are in eastern, upstate New York give the Golden Corral in Colonie a try. You will not find other Golden Corrals until you get to New Jersey and western PA. The address is 1901 Central Avenue in Colonie (this is Route 5). The phone number is (518)862-1520. The hours listed stated that closing is 9:00 pm every night - which is early for Golden Corral.
As I have written about Golden Corral in general in the past I will not go into the general details of Golden Corral, but I will focus on this particular location. The restaurant is very much like the other Golden Corral restaurants that I have tried. The dining rooms are actually a little nicer with the dining rooms partitioned into sections and the partitions pleasantly decorated as walls that would be in a home including framed windows looking between the dining rooms. It was very homey and nice.
I have been to a few Golden Corral restaurants recently on my trip South. This New York Golden Corral had more vegetable offerings on the hot buffet. It did have less salad offerings though. The recent feature on the salad bars at Golden Corral is something called Greenhouse Select and they had this in Albany, but its presentation was not as elaborate as a Golden Corral that I was at in North Carolina two weeks prior. The Greenhouse select are salad toppings of meats to create salads with steak or chicken slices. In the Golden Corral in North Carolina there were special salad plates to use for this feature and what seemed like more toppings. Here is was just mixed in to the salad bar. Golden Corrals also usually have a special section to create Caesar salads - the items were here, but they too were mixed into the other salads. There also seemed to be less prepared salads offered. One problem at this location is that the salad dressings are labeled on the glass over the dressings, BUT they did not correspond. I thought that I was taking Thousand Island Dressing and got Honey Mustard. The sign over the dish said Thousand Island - this seemed to hold true for the other dressings as well.
The grill was serving steaks, pork steaks, and carving a whole turkey. The pork steaks were very tasty. The Golden Corral says that there should be "slow roasted" sirloin at dinner meals, but this was not being served here.
The gentlemen working the grill did not seem to understand English well. My wife asked for some Turkey - he told her it was chicken - it was turkey. He had some difficulty understanding the terms for the doneness of steaks on the grill - and what he had prepared was all well done. Several dinners were told to come back in ten minutes for more steaks to cook to rare, medium rare, and medium well. When I went back after ten minutes a man in front of me asked for Medium Rare. He was told that there was none - still. He went away grumbling - and rightly so. I decided to ask anyway - and I too was told that there was no medium rare - so I asked what he had. He picked up a steak from the grill and cut into it - it was perfectly medium rare. I told him to give that one to me. There were several unhappy guests because this guy did not know what medium rare is or he did not understand what we were asking him for. There are two things that can make or break your dining experience at a Golden Corral - any Golden Corral. A good grill chef is one of them.
The other is your server. Because of the procedure followed at Golden Corral restaurants, you are given a plate when you pay when you enter and then your server brings you more clean plates. There are no dinner plates on the buffet. This is a remnant from the days when Golden Corral had table service in addition to the buffet. They prevented someone who ordered from the menu from going to the buffet and taking food by handing out the buffet dishes one by one. The menu is gone but the practice continues. Your server will both refill your drinks and give you clean plates - no going up to the buffet without a CLEAN plate. If you have a poor server you will wait a long time before and if you get another plate (or a soft drink refill). When have had some poor servers at Golden Corral that make you wish you had gone somewhere else to eat. I must say that our server in Colonie was EXCELLENT. We had more plates than we needed and she made sure our drinks were full. (What a surprise for a New York location!)
The restaurant was clean. As for the restrooms, my wife told me that the ladies room was well maintained, but I found the men's room to be needing maintenance.
If you are in eastern, upstate New York give the Golden Corral in Colonie a try. You will not find other Golden Corrals until you get to New Jersey and western PA. The address is 1901 Central Avenue in Colonie (this is Route 5). The phone number is (518)862-1520. The hours listed stated that closing is 9:00 pm every night - which is early for Golden Corral.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Hong Kong King Buffet, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The last time that I was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was about five years ago. At that time I found one of the very few western-themed buffet restaurants that was part of the Old Country Buffet family at that time (it no longer exists.) I knew that this buffet had gone out of business but was curious as to what may have taken its place. On this trip "South" I went back to the location and found the Hong Kong King Buffet. So what am doing eating in a Chinese buffet in North Carolina when I should be eating the local version of barbecue (shredded, slow cooked pork in a vinegar sauce)? Well, I could not resist seeing how an Old Country Buffet (even under another name) converted over to a Chinese buffet.
I must say it was interesting to see the entire OCB layout inside the restaurant. The usual OCB curtain-topped walls along the booths are now topped with glass partitions with Oriental designs etched into them. The pictures on the wall that were once western themed are now pictures of Hong Kong.
So how was the Hong Kong King Buffet? It was good and for the price of $8.99 per adult was exceptional in what is offered. Let me begin as I usually do in telling you about this buffet.
As I said this space once was an OCB and all of the booths, all of the tables, and some of the serving areas are the same. This is a really big restaurant. We went on a Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm and there were diners spread through all of the dining areas. Had this been a more conventionally sized restaurant for a Chinese buffet it would have appeared very busy, but because of the size and layout, it looked sparse (but wasn't). Now this is North Carolina - the home of most of the tobacco and cigarette companies and smoking is not so frowned upon in these here parts. So this restaurant has a smoking section - which for a buffet is very unusual. We asked for a non-smoking table only to find later on that we were sitting on the edge of the smoking section - and the smoking section is right at the edge of the buffet serving area - well, this is North Carolina.
This restaurant had six double sided buffet servers plus a Mongolian grill. There was also a server along one wall. Prices at this buffet are very reasonable - Dinner is $8.99 per adult and $6.99 for children ages 6 to 10. There is also a younger child price from age 3 to 5 at $4.99. Now, there are king crab legs on the buffet, BUT if you want these there is an additional $5.00 charge for all you care to eat. On their website there is a current weekend offer that adds unlimited lobster to that same $5.00 additional charge- which is not bad (I am not sure how they serve the lobster (whole or pieces).) There is a lunch menu for $6.99, $4.99, NS $2.99 , respectively. Now all of these prices are from Monday to Thursday for dinner and to Friday for lunch. Saturday AND Sunday lunch is $7.99, $4.99, and $3.99. Lunch ends at 3:45. Dinner prices on Friday to Sunday are adults $9.99, children 5 to 10 $6.99 and children 3 to 5 $4.99. The crab leg charge at dinners is always $5.00. There is a clear sign over the crab legs on the buffet table that if you take crab legs on your plate you will be charged $5.00. There is a ten percent discount for seniors over 65 at all times. Soft drinks are $1.50 with unlimited refills - all Pepsi products. Hours for this restaurant are from 11:00 am until 9:30 pm and !0:30 pm Friday and Saturday.
To start off there is an extensive salad bar with greens, dressings, and toppings, along with prepared salads. There were four soups - the usual wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, and an unusual vegetable seafood tomato based soup with a Chinese name that I have never encountered before. I tried the hot and soup soup and it was good - not too hot and spicy. My wife tried the wonton soup and the broth was very good but the wontons were just fair - when she first went for soup there were no more wontons in the broth in the server - it took about twenty minutes for more wontons to be brought out - she felt it was not worth the wait. There is sushi with a good assortment of raw fish on rice and raw fish rolls. The rolls looked as usual,but instead of avocado rolled with the tuna it was cucumber. Looked the same but not what I expected as I bit down and crunched the cucumber. There were steamers for dumplings but no dumplings. Instead there were steamed rolls and steamed cake in the steamers. There were no dumplings of any kind.
There was a broad assortment of entrees. Some of them very unusual if you are used to Northern US, Midwest, or Western US Chinese buffets. This buffet offered steamed crayfish and frogs legs made salt and pepper style. Crawfish down South are known as "bugs" and they look like a cross between tiny red lobsters and bugs. You eat them by biting off the heads and sucking out the meat in the body and tail. I find them very fishy and salty. They are not bad. It is more of a get used to how it looks and how you eat it than anything else. If you like 'em you can have all that you want here. I did not try the crawfish or the frogs legs here. I have had them elsewhere and yes, frogs legs do taste like chicken (so does rabbit). There was plenty to eat without them. There were crab halves (included in the regular buffet price). There was a lot of shrimp and seafood dishes. There were several fried fish dishes and there was a steamed white fish in a light sauce. There were several chicken dishes - many hot and spicy and the hot sauce was very evident when you looked in the serving pan. There were beef ribs and boneless pork spareribs (that looked over done). There was Peking Duck - mostly carved duck pieces but these looked much too greasy - perhaps sitting in the tray too long and the duck fat melting into the pan. There were fried scallops but these also were overdone and hard when I tried to eat one. There were some dishes that were very good. The shrimp with scallions was great. This is one of the House Specialties on the take out menu. There was a good chicken in peanut butter sauce - thin strips of lightly fried chicken with a liquid peanut sauce on the side to pour on as you wish.I have had peanut chicken before but this one was much better. Of course there was General Tso Chicken, chicken with broccoli, and pepper and beef. There were several American dishes including fried potatoes several ways. There was also pepperoni pizza.
If you could not find something that you like among the claimed 180 buffet items, there is also the Mongolian Grill. Here there was a large assortment of raw vegetables including three types of mushrooms including the black mushrooms that are usually in the most expensive Chinese dishes. There were several types of noodles to add including the hair thin rice noodles that make up Mai Fun dishes. Of course there is meat and here it included beef, chicken, pork, crab, and shrimp. You mix what you want on a plate and hand it to the chef at the large flat round grill. He asks what sauce you would like added and rather than put it on at the beginning as is done at all of the other Mongolian grills that I have been to, here they put it on after the mix has mostly cooked through. There is a sign on the counter explaining exactly what is in each sauce which is a great idea! The chef was very nice and accidentally dropped my mix on the counter as he took it from me - he appologized in limited Chinese English a million times and with no problem I made a new mixture which he took and excellently cooked- handing it to me still apologizing with me saying, "No problem."
If you still want dessert after all of this there was a great assortment of the usual Little Debbie type Chinese buffet cakes, puddings, fruit, jello, and soft serve ice cream.
Service was very good. The dirty dishes were removed quickly enough and soft drinks were refilled regularly. An interesting aside to the drink area is that it is the old OCB drink island - two sided, with all of the equipment from the former tenant. They do not want you to go up and get your own drinks - they will bring them to you - and they do.
The restaurant was clean and nicely decorated. Restrooms were fine. The atmosphere was very pleasant (except for the cigarette smoke - BUT THIS IS CAROLINA!)
When the check comes the tax is added to the individual amounts so they don't look like the prices listed - but they are with the sales tax (for our UK readers this is the VAT) The check came with a fortune cookie for each of us - these were commercially baked cookies with the plastic sealed wrapper around them - the fortunes inside however were a bit unusual - a little nasty actually (I guess to bring a smile). Mine said,"You laugh now, wait until you get home." Oh boy! Not what you want to read after a meal!!!
The owners advertising claims that this is the largest "international" buffet and grill in "town". On the website they say that they are from Hong Kong and that is why they called the restaurant the Hong Kong King Buffet. That normally would imply Cantonese cuisine, but there was a broad mix of Oriental cuisines served here.
Do I recommend this restaurant? Yes. Would I go back? Probably, though I might want to go looking for one of those North Carolina barbecue restaurants (no buffets like that unfortunately). If you live in this area give it a try.
The address is 1237 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27127. There is a website and that is listed on the side of this site. The phone number is 336-725-9788. The restaurant is located in a shopping center next door to an Office Depot store. (Exit 192 on I40)
One other thing- restaurants are inspected by health officials everywhere, but in North Carolina those health inspection reports are on the internet. If you search for this restaurant you will find the latest year's reports. Maybe you don't want to read these. This restaurant got a score of 94 out of 100 on its last report. This is good. The violations were not significant. I think that I would not want to see the reports on many of the restaurants that I enjoy.
I must say it was interesting to see the entire OCB layout inside the restaurant. The usual OCB curtain-topped walls along the booths are now topped with glass partitions with Oriental designs etched into them. The pictures on the wall that were once western themed are now pictures of Hong Kong.
So how was the Hong Kong King Buffet? It was good and for the price of $8.99 per adult was exceptional in what is offered. Let me begin as I usually do in telling you about this buffet.
As I said this space once was an OCB and all of the booths, all of the tables, and some of the serving areas are the same. This is a really big restaurant. We went on a Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm and there were diners spread through all of the dining areas. Had this been a more conventionally sized restaurant for a Chinese buffet it would have appeared very busy, but because of the size and layout, it looked sparse (but wasn't). Now this is North Carolina - the home of most of the tobacco and cigarette companies and smoking is not so frowned upon in these here parts. So this restaurant has a smoking section - which for a buffet is very unusual. We asked for a non-smoking table only to find later on that we were sitting on the edge of the smoking section - and the smoking section is right at the edge of the buffet serving area - well, this is North Carolina.
This restaurant had six double sided buffet servers plus a Mongolian grill. There was also a server along one wall. Prices at this buffet are very reasonable - Dinner is $8.99 per adult and $6.99 for children ages 6 to 10. There is also a younger child price from age 3 to 5 at $4.99. Now, there are king crab legs on the buffet, BUT if you want these there is an additional $5.00 charge for all you care to eat. On their website there is a current weekend offer that adds unlimited lobster to that same $5.00 additional charge- which is not bad (I am not sure how they serve the lobster (whole or pieces).) There is a lunch menu for $6.99, $4.99, NS $2.99 , respectively. Now all of these prices are from Monday to Thursday for dinner and to Friday for lunch. Saturday AND Sunday lunch is $7.99, $4.99, and $3.99. Lunch ends at 3:45. Dinner prices on Friday to Sunday are adults $9.99, children 5 to 10 $6.99 and children 3 to 5 $4.99. The crab leg charge at dinners is always $5.00. There is a clear sign over the crab legs on the buffet table that if you take crab legs on your plate you will be charged $5.00. There is a ten percent discount for seniors over 65 at all times. Soft drinks are $1.50 with unlimited refills - all Pepsi products. Hours for this restaurant are from 11:00 am until 9:30 pm and !0:30 pm Friday and Saturday.
To start off there is an extensive salad bar with greens, dressings, and toppings, along with prepared salads. There were four soups - the usual wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, and an unusual vegetable seafood tomato based soup with a Chinese name that I have never encountered before. I tried the hot and soup soup and it was good - not too hot and spicy. My wife tried the wonton soup and the broth was very good but the wontons were just fair - when she first went for soup there were no more wontons in the broth in the server - it took about twenty minutes for more wontons to be brought out - she felt it was not worth the wait. There is sushi with a good assortment of raw fish on rice and raw fish rolls. The rolls looked as usual,but instead of avocado rolled with the tuna it was cucumber. Looked the same but not what I expected as I bit down and crunched the cucumber. There were steamers for dumplings but no dumplings. Instead there were steamed rolls and steamed cake in the steamers. There were no dumplings of any kind.
There was a broad assortment of entrees. Some of them very unusual if you are used to Northern US, Midwest, or Western US Chinese buffets. This buffet offered steamed crayfish and frogs legs made salt and pepper style. Crawfish down South are known as "bugs" and they look like a cross between tiny red lobsters and bugs. You eat them by biting off the heads and sucking out the meat in the body and tail. I find them very fishy and salty. They are not bad. It is more of a get used to how it looks and how you eat it than anything else. If you like 'em you can have all that you want here. I did not try the crawfish or the frogs legs here. I have had them elsewhere and yes, frogs legs do taste like chicken (so does rabbit). There was plenty to eat without them. There were crab halves (included in the regular buffet price). There was a lot of shrimp and seafood dishes. There were several fried fish dishes and there was a steamed white fish in a light sauce. There were several chicken dishes - many hot and spicy and the hot sauce was very evident when you looked in the serving pan. There were beef ribs and boneless pork spareribs (that looked over done). There was Peking Duck - mostly carved duck pieces but these looked much too greasy - perhaps sitting in the tray too long and the duck fat melting into the pan. There were fried scallops but these also were overdone and hard when I tried to eat one. There were some dishes that were very good. The shrimp with scallions was great. This is one of the House Specialties on the take out menu. There was a good chicken in peanut butter sauce - thin strips of lightly fried chicken with a liquid peanut sauce on the side to pour on as you wish.I have had peanut chicken before but this one was much better. Of course there was General Tso Chicken, chicken with broccoli, and pepper and beef. There were several American dishes including fried potatoes several ways. There was also pepperoni pizza.
If you could not find something that you like among the claimed 180 buffet items, there is also the Mongolian Grill. Here there was a large assortment of raw vegetables including three types of mushrooms including the black mushrooms that are usually in the most expensive Chinese dishes. There were several types of noodles to add including the hair thin rice noodles that make up Mai Fun dishes. Of course there is meat and here it included beef, chicken, pork, crab, and shrimp. You mix what you want on a plate and hand it to the chef at the large flat round grill. He asks what sauce you would like added and rather than put it on at the beginning as is done at all of the other Mongolian grills that I have been to, here they put it on after the mix has mostly cooked through. There is a sign on the counter explaining exactly what is in each sauce which is a great idea! The chef was very nice and accidentally dropped my mix on the counter as he took it from me - he appologized in limited Chinese English a million times and with no problem I made a new mixture which he took and excellently cooked- handing it to me still apologizing with me saying, "No problem."
If you still want dessert after all of this there was a great assortment of the usual Little Debbie type Chinese buffet cakes, puddings, fruit, jello, and soft serve ice cream.
Service was very good. The dirty dishes were removed quickly enough and soft drinks were refilled regularly. An interesting aside to the drink area is that it is the old OCB drink island - two sided, with all of the equipment from the former tenant. They do not want you to go up and get your own drinks - they will bring them to you - and they do.
The restaurant was clean and nicely decorated. Restrooms were fine. The atmosphere was very pleasant (except for the cigarette smoke - BUT THIS IS CAROLINA!)
When the check comes the tax is added to the individual amounts so they don't look like the prices listed - but they are with the sales tax (for our UK readers this is the VAT) The check came with a fortune cookie for each of us - these were commercially baked cookies with the plastic sealed wrapper around them - the fortunes inside however were a bit unusual - a little nasty actually (I guess to bring a smile). Mine said,"You laugh now, wait until you get home." Oh boy! Not what you want to read after a meal!!!
The owners advertising claims that this is the largest "international" buffet and grill in "town". On the website they say that they are from Hong Kong and that is why they called the restaurant the Hong Kong King Buffet. That normally would imply Cantonese cuisine, but there was a broad mix of Oriental cuisines served here.
Do I recommend this restaurant? Yes. Would I go back? Probably, though I might want to go looking for one of those North Carolina barbecue restaurants (no buffets like that unfortunately). If you live in this area give it a try.
The address is 1237 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27127. There is a website and that is listed on the side of this site. The phone number is 336-725-9788. The restaurant is located in a shopping center next door to an Office Depot store. (Exit 192 on I40)
One other thing- restaurants are inspected by health officials everywhere, but in North Carolina those health inspection reports are on the internet. If you search for this restaurant you will find the latest year's reports. Maybe you don't want to read these. This restaurant got a score of 94 out of 100 on its last report. This is good. The violations were not significant. I think that I would not want to see the reports on many of the restaurants that I enjoy.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Sweet Tomatoes / Souplantation
On my recent trip to
We went on a very hot day – predicted to be 99 degrees and it felt hotter. We went for lunch on a Monday at around
Entering the restaurant we were a bit confused. As we entered we were faced with the beginning of the salad bar stretching out down the entrance with the cashiers at the other end. The salad bar had rails for trays along each side and each side was either the same or easily accessed the other side. An employee standing inside the door handed each person who entered a tray and directed them onto the line that went down the salad bar. There was a large sign to explain things but basically it said to take a tray, take a plate, and create your salad. We took plates and followed along the line wondering to each other how one would go back to the salad bar if the cashier is at the end and it is necessary to come through the line if you were to come back for more salad. I started wondering if this was really a buffet or all you care to eat restaurant – but the signs inside all did say buffet and all you can eat. We went along and took salad.
There were salad greens to take at the beginning and several special prepared green salads that followed, I took two of these special salads – the Caesar and a Chinese chicken salad called Wonton Chicken Happiness Salad. I also took a prepared noodle salad that had the name tuna in it but no tuna listed on the ingredients. I had decided that I was not going to fill up on the tossed salad. Many were filling more than one plate full of salad and the many, many toppings and dressings that were offered. If you can think of a salad topping they had it. They had small cups of chicken to top salads but there was a sign under the cups stating that the chicken cost $1.25 extra for one small serving. This struck me as odd but my wife speculates that they do this so that someone does not make a meal of chicken (though if you take the chicken noodle soup – which I will say more about later – you could eat all the chicken you desired. As we got toward the end we were approaching the two cashiers – one on each side of the salad bar right on the bar. Just before you reach the cashier you are asked for your drink order. You are given glasses with ice. If you would like just water at no charge you are given a blue colored glass. All other glasses are clear. We paid for our lunches and my wife asked the cashier what to do if one wants more salad. We were told that you just come back through with your paid receipt. Fair enough!
We sat down and discovered that on each table as part of the little advertising platform was a card to signal that the table is occupied. This is great and comical! It said “See you next thyme” on the back to signal that you have left the table. We set the card and went for drinks. The soft drink bar is extensive and there are signs encouraging you to mix the drinks to create your own. There were fruit juices, coke soda products, “sweet” tea, and “unsweet” ice tea, lemonade, etc. This was one of the best soft drink bars that I have ever seen in a buffet. We returned to our table with our drinks and saw that everyone around us took everything off their trays and put them on the side of the table. Soon someone came to pick them up.
Moving along the hot bar there was a baked potato bar that included both baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes, each wrapped in foil. There were little bowls to put the potato in and there were hot and cold toppings. There was melted cheese and a light bean chili.
It was time to turn that little card over to the side that said, “See you next thyme!” and leave. We had a great lunch and this would have made an equally good and filling dinner. We really did not need to know how to get back to the salad bar because we had so much without a return trip, but had we wanted to it would have been no problem! Despite the change in price from lunch to dinner I believe that the menu remains the same all day.
Service was very good. Dishes were cleared regularly from the table. You get your own drinks and refills. The room, the tables, the buffet bars, the floors, and everything was clean. The room was very pleasantly decorated. There was no smoking in this restaurant (even though this is
Sweet Tomatoes/Souplantation is a must try! I highly recommend it assuming that they are all like the one that I had the pleasure to try. If any of our readers have been to another location please share your experience in our comments. If you live in
Friday, August 24, 2007
SOUPER! SALAD!
One of our readers asked me if I had ever heard of this restaurant chain. I had not, but the question came at a very opportune time as when I searched the chain on the Internet I discovered a location in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Now while South Carolina is about 1500 miles from my home, I happened to be on the road heading for that very city to visit two nearby Revolutionary War historic battlefield sites. On Saturday night in Spartanburg we decided that we would give Souper! Salad! a try, and we are VERY GLAD that we did.
This is a chain of restaurants located in the Southeast Untied States and the Western United States from Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada. Souper! Salad! features just what the name states - soup and salad served on an all you care to eat buffet. In addition to the soup and salad, there is pizza, pasta, baked potatoes, breads, and dessert. This is very similar to Soup Plantations.
The Spartanburg, SC location is in a shopping center. It is a relatively small restaurant filling the space of three store fronts. The restaurant has large windows that look out onto the parking lot. You enter at the cash register and pay as you go in. This is an EXTREMELY REASONABLE restaurant. The adult price at all times is $6.29. The children's price from ages 5 to 12 is $2.99 and children to age 4 are free. The soft drink price is high at $1.69 with children's drinks for $0.99. Regular soft drinks are refillable. There are "special" flavored lemonades that cost $1.99 and are not refillable.
After you pay you come right to the beginning of the salad bar which is a long double sided cold buffet server that runs most of the length of the restaurant. You take a tray, your silverware, and napkins and start to assemble your salad - if you wish to start with that. There were two different salad greens plus a "featured" mixed salad. This night the featured mixed salad was a mango cranberry salad which was very good. There is every imaginable topping and dressing for your tossed salad and when I got to the croutons and dry toppings there were even small cookies to put on the salad. That was a first for me to see. You then come to several prepared salads that change by the day. There was California chicken salad, a pasta seafood salad, a fetticine pasta salad, tuna salad, a special pasta and tuna salad, edame (soy beans) salad, mustard potato salad and a few others. At the end of this bar was the dessert bar, which we will get to later.
As you pass through the salad bar you are into the dining room for the first time and you seat yourself at tables and booths. We were there on a Saturday night and the restaurant was not crowded but there were a number of people and families dining. I suspect that this is most crowded at lunch time when the shopping center is busy. The atmosphere in the restaurant is informal and the decor is very pleasant. The room was bright and clean. We chose a booth and sat down with our salads. A few moments later a waitress came over and asked what we ordered to drink. She brought large, full drink glasses to our table. Looking around most people had their receipts out on their tables to signal that the table was still occupied - but no one said to do this. We did (as we have had our table cleaned and reset in mid-meal when we went up to the server several times in other buffets recently - this was NOT a problem here!).
After our salad we went up to try the soups. There are five soups served and these also change every day. This night there was chicken noodle, vegetable beef, Santa Fe chicken soup, tomato basil, and double baked potato soup. I am a SOUP LOVER! I had to try each one. All of the soups were good, but I liked the double baked potato soup the best. It was thick and seasoned just right with pieces of potato and bits of potato skins in this hearty soup. The Santa Fe chicken was thick and spicy - it had a mild chili flavor. The tomato basil was a semi-thick soup with chunks of tomato. This had a bit of an acid taste - but it was good. The vegetable beef was a thin broth with vegetables and tiny meatballs. The chicken soup was good but it had too many herbs that overpowered the broth. The noodles were not the thick dumpling like noodles but more like pasta noodles. All of the soups are made from scratch at the restaurant.
So there you have the soup of the Souper! and the salad of the "Salad" but that is not all! At the rear of the restaurant is a wall of hot spots including the soup bar. There is pasta that changes by the day to either ziti or spagetti and two sauces of meat marinara and alfredo. As an Italian-American on both sides of my family I grew up with very high expectations of tomato sauces. I can be very critical of tomato sauce - called "gravy"in my family. Well, I usually have low expectations of tomato sauce in most buffets, but I must say that the meaty marinara sauce here is very good. It is not acidy and it is not sweet. It is not overloaded with meat or greasy. For a buffet restaurant it passed my test with a B+. Following the pasta on the server are two types of pizza - cheese and pepperoni. The pizza was odd compared to most buffet pizzas (and most pizzas). The pizza is more like cheese and sauce on a cracker. The crust is as thinner than a cracker, flat, and cooked hard and crispy. The taste was pleasant - the cheese and tomato sauce were standard but it was like eating a pizza cracker. I would not hold this against the restaurant but if you are looking for "real" pizza you are going to be disappointed. If you think of this as a unique pizza-like treat you will be more satisfied. Further along on the hot server are whole baked potatoes wrapped in foil. There are several toppings for the potatoes including hot cheese, hot chili, cold cheese, bacon, sour cream, butter, and chives. There is also everything on the salad bar to put on your potato if you wish. It did not seem like it from the descriptions that I read of this restaurant but there is a lot of filling food here. I went in thinking that just eating salad and soup for dinner I would be hungry - but I was stuffed when I walked out!
As if all of this is not enough there is fresh baked breads which also change by the day. There were garlic bread sticks, cheese biscuits, corn bread, and wonderful blueberry bread. The blueberry bread looked like a pan of corn bread but it had pure blueberry taste in every bite!
Had enough? You did not save room for dessert? There is lots of good things for dessert. There were the fixing to make a strawberry cream dessert - a try of cake to top with strawberries in sauce and whipped cream. There were peaches in syrup. There was fruit salad. There was pudding. There were fresh grapes and oranges plus cantelope, watermelon, and honeydue melon. And, of course, there is the ice cream sundae bar - soft serve vanilla ice cream with toppings and cones.
Those who wish to eat vegetarian can easily do so here as all vegetarian dishes are clearly labeled as such. Labeling was excellent all around - there was no guessing. The prepared salads and the soups were not only labeled but the ingredients were clearly listed below the name on each label. No guessing and no surprises.
The service was excellent. Your server comes and takes dirty plates away - and there are a lot of plate changes here and just about every item gets its own plate - salad plates, soup bowls, pasta plates, bread plates, dessert plates. The server also refills your drinks and there was no waiting for a refill.
Tables when empty are cleaned quickly and this restaurant was very clean - tables, seats, walls, and floors. The room was bright and restrooms were clean and well supplied.
This is a great restaurant for families. The food is inexpensive (actually, cheaper than eating at home) and there is something for everyone unless you have someone who wants lots of meat. There were several families enjoying the restaurant. There are signs saying that children under 12 must be accompanied at the food servers - which is great. On Sunday there is a family special and all kids over 5 are $1.99.
All of the food was good. The experience was nice and very pleasant. The staff were friendly and welcoming. I would highly recommend this particular restaurant and if it is a good example of the others I would highly recommend this chain. There is a website that is linked at the side of this page. The website will give you the locations and each location has a way to see the menu for any particular day on the calendar. As I have said many dishes change by the day and there are many, many dishes listed on the website for each restaurant to put on the menu. If you are lucky enough to be in a state with a Souper!Salad! give it a try for dinner or lunch. You should be as satisfied as I am. If you have been to one of these restaurants leave a comment and tell us about your experience.
This is a chain of restaurants located in the Southeast Untied States and the Western United States from Texas to Las Vegas, Nevada. Souper! Salad! features just what the name states - soup and salad served on an all you care to eat buffet. In addition to the soup and salad, there is pizza, pasta, baked potatoes, breads, and dessert. This is very similar to Soup Plantations.
The Spartanburg, SC location is in a shopping center. It is a relatively small restaurant filling the space of three store fronts. The restaurant has large windows that look out onto the parking lot. You enter at the cash register and pay as you go in. This is an EXTREMELY REASONABLE restaurant. The adult price at all times is $6.29. The children's price from ages 5 to 12 is $2.99 and children to age 4 are free. The soft drink price is high at $1.69 with children's drinks for $0.99. Regular soft drinks are refillable. There are "special" flavored lemonades that cost $1.99 and are not refillable.
After you pay you come right to the beginning of the salad bar which is a long double sided cold buffet server that runs most of the length of the restaurant. You take a tray, your silverware, and napkins and start to assemble your salad - if you wish to start with that. There were two different salad greens plus a "featured" mixed salad. This night the featured mixed salad was a mango cranberry salad which was very good. There is every imaginable topping and dressing for your tossed salad and when I got to the croutons and dry toppings there were even small cookies to put on the salad. That was a first for me to see. You then come to several prepared salads that change by the day. There was California chicken salad, a pasta seafood salad, a fetticine pasta salad, tuna salad, a special pasta and tuna salad, edame (soy beans) salad, mustard potato salad and a few others. At the end of this bar was the dessert bar, which we will get to later.
As you pass through the salad bar you are into the dining room for the first time and you seat yourself at tables and booths. We were there on a Saturday night and the restaurant was not crowded but there were a number of people and families dining. I suspect that this is most crowded at lunch time when the shopping center is busy. The atmosphere in the restaurant is informal and the decor is very pleasant. The room was bright and clean. We chose a booth and sat down with our salads. A few moments later a waitress came over and asked what we ordered to drink. She brought large, full drink glasses to our table. Looking around most people had their receipts out on their tables to signal that the table was still occupied - but no one said to do this. We did (as we have had our table cleaned and reset in mid-meal when we went up to the server several times in other buffets recently - this was NOT a problem here!).
After our salad we went up to try the soups. There are five soups served and these also change every day. This night there was chicken noodle, vegetable beef, Santa Fe chicken soup, tomato basil, and double baked potato soup. I am a SOUP LOVER! I had to try each one. All of the soups were good, but I liked the double baked potato soup the best. It was thick and seasoned just right with pieces of potato and bits of potato skins in this hearty soup. The Santa Fe chicken was thick and spicy - it had a mild chili flavor. The tomato basil was a semi-thick soup with chunks of tomato. This had a bit of an acid taste - but it was good. The vegetable beef was a thin broth with vegetables and tiny meatballs. The chicken soup was good but it had too many herbs that overpowered the broth. The noodles were not the thick dumpling like noodles but more like pasta noodles. All of the soups are made from scratch at the restaurant.
So there you have the soup of the Souper! and the salad of the "Salad" but that is not all! At the rear of the restaurant is a wall of hot spots including the soup bar. There is pasta that changes by the day to either ziti or spagetti and two sauces of meat marinara and alfredo. As an Italian-American on both sides of my family I grew up with very high expectations of tomato sauces. I can be very critical of tomato sauce - called "gravy"in my family. Well, I usually have low expectations of tomato sauce in most buffets, but I must say that the meaty marinara sauce here is very good. It is not acidy and it is not sweet. It is not overloaded with meat or greasy. For a buffet restaurant it passed my test with a B+. Following the pasta on the server are two types of pizza - cheese and pepperoni. The pizza was odd compared to most buffet pizzas (and most pizzas). The pizza is more like cheese and sauce on a cracker. The crust is as thinner than a cracker, flat, and cooked hard and crispy. The taste was pleasant - the cheese and tomato sauce were standard but it was like eating a pizza cracker. I would not hold this against the restaurant but if you are looking for "real" pizza you are going to be disappointed. If you think of this as a unique pizza-like treat you will be more satisfied. Further along on the hot server are whole baked potatoes wrapped in foil. There are several toppings for the potatoes including hot cheese, hot chili, cold cheese, bacon, sour cream, butter, and chives. There is also everything on the salad bar to put on your potato if you wish. It did not seem like it from the descriptions that I read of this restaurant but there is a lot of filling food here. I went in thinking that just eating salad and soup for dinner I would be hungry - but I was stuffed when I walked out!
As if all of this is not enough there is fresh baked breads which also change by the day. There were garlic bread sticks, cheese biscuits, corn bread, and wonderful blueberry bread. The blueberry bread looked like a pan of corn bread but it had pure blueberry taste in every bite!
Had enough? You did not save room for dessert? There is lots of good things for dessert. There were the fixing to make a strawberry cream dessert - a try of cake to top with strawberries in sauce and whipped cream. There were peaches in syrup. There was fruit salad. There was pudding. There were fresh grapes and oranges plus cantelope, watermelon, and honeydue melon. And, of course, there is the ice cream sundae bar - soft serve vanilla ice cream with toppings and cones.
Those who wish to eat vegetarian can easily do so here as all vegetarian dishes are clearly labeled as such. Labeling was excellent all around - there was no guessing. The prepared salads and the soups were not only labeled but the ingredients were clearly listed below the name on each label. No guessing and no surprises.
The service was excellent. Your server comes and takes dirty plates away - and there are a lot of plate changes here and just about every item gets its own plate - salad plates, soup bowls, pasta plates, bread plates, dessert plates. The server also refills your drinks and there was no waiting for a refill.
Tables when empty are cleaned quickly and this restaurant was very clean - tables, seats, walls, and floors. The room was bright and restrooms were clean and well supplied.
This is a great restaurant for families. The food is inexpensive (actually, cheaper than eating at home) and there is something for everyone unless you have someone who wants lots of meat. There were several families enjoying the restaurant. There are signs saying that children under 12 must be accompanied at the food servers - which is great. On Sunday there is a family special and all kids over 5 are $1.99.
All of the food was good. The experience was nice and very pleasant. The staff were friendly and welcoming. I would highly recommend this particular restaurant and if it is a good example of the others I would highly recommend this chain. There is a website that is linked at the side of this page. The website will give you the locations and each location has a way to see the menu for any particular day on the calendar. As I have said many dishes change by the day and there are many, many dishes listed on the website for each restaurant to put on the menu. If you are lucky enough to be in a state with a Souper!Salad! give it a try for dinner or lunch. You should be as satisfied as I am. If you have been to one of these restaurants leave a comment and tell us about your experience.
Friday, May 11, 2007
CiCi's Responds!
I would like to first thank Cici's corporate offices for their detailed response to last week's article. The response arrived by email this past Thursday. I applaud CiC's Pizza Buffet for responding. They are the only chain restaurant that I have written about that has taken the time and the concern to reply and answer the concerns that I raised.
I will now present their response as sent and following I will react.
______________
Thank you for your detailed feedback on your visit to CiCi's. We appreciate your comments and suggestions, as we are always open to feedback that will allow us to serve you better.
In answer to some of your concerns, many of our locations do accept credit/debit cards. Most of the stores that do not accept credit/debit cards have ATMs for use. However, there is a nominal fee for their use. It is entirely up to the franchisee which system they use. On the corporate level, we are urging them to move towards the acceptance of credit/debit cards.
The reason we do not label our pizzas is that we offer 16 different varieties and most of our buffets only have room to accommodate 12. They are constantly rotated, with pepperoni being offered at all times. With the rotation process, it is nearly impossible to keep the different pizzas labeled. We always have a server there to answer any questions our guests may have about the pizzas. After several visits, the different varieties are very identifiable and most of our guests don't have any problem finding what they want. You may also order any variety that you would like to have and it will be prepared fresh and delivered to your table in a very short time.
Our goal at CiCi's is to offer our guests exceptional service, beyond what the guest expects, while maintaining a family friendly environment. We are very glad to hear that you enjoyed your visit and hope that you will visit with us again in the near future. It will be our pleasure to have you as our guest.
Sincerely,
Pam Goodgion
CiCi's University
___________________
Now, apparently, I found one of the Cici's that did not take credit cards, and yes, there was a hand-written paper sign that said ATM available. Of course, with independent ATM fees as they are, bring cash... just in case.
I wish it was made known in the restaurant that one could order any variety and have it delivered to the table. This was not evident in this particular restaurant and we saw no one getting pizzas brought to their table. The idea that there are more varieties of pizza than there is room to serve is great - however - as stated in last week's article, there were several of the same pizza's out at once - and though new pizzas kept coming out, they were still the same. There must be a better system so that there is only one or even two of each type out at one time. Five pepperonis out of sixteen possible pizzas is a lot of pepperoni.
There was no response to devising a system of keeping your table while you go up to the buffet. This was one of the most important points made last week and was a problem for us at Cici's. As I wrote, we went up to the buffet together and returned to the table to find it had been completely cleared away including our soda glasses - still full with soda. Other chain buffets have easily solved this problem and Cici's need only visit an Old Country Buffet, etc. to see how it may be done.
Again, thank you Pam Goodgion of Cici's for truly being concerned about your customers. That is a rare thing lately! I recommend that you try Cici's. A friend with a young daughter was recently in North Carolina and visited a Cici's there. We heard this eleven year old telling someone about where she ate. We asked if it was Cici's and with a big grin she said, "Yes!" She loved it! It is a lot of fun for kids and adults alike. If you live near or visit an area with a Cici's Bizza Buffet give it a try. And then come back here and tell us all about your experience.
I will now present their response as sent and following I will react.
______________
Thank you for your detailed feedback on your visit to CiCi's. We appreciate your comments and suggestions, as we are always open to feedback that will allow us to serve you better.
In answer to some of your concerns, many of our locations do accept credit/debit cards. Most of the stores that do not accept credit/debit cards have ATMs for use. However, there is a nominal fee for their use. It is entirely up to the franchisee which system they use. On the corporate level, we are urging them to move towards the acceptance of credit/debit cards.
The reason we do not label our pizzas is that we offer 16 different varieties and most of our buffets only have room to accommodate 12. They are constantly rotated, with pepperoni being offered at all times. With the rotation process, it is nearly impossible to keep the different pizzas labeled. We always have a server there to answer any questions our guests may have about the pizzas. After several visits, the different varieties are very identifiable and most of our guests don't have any problem finding what they want. You may also order any variety that you would like to have and it will be prepared fresh and delivered to your table in a very short time.
Our goal at CiCi's is to offer our guests exceptional service, beyond what the guest expects, while maintaining a family friendly environment. We are very glad to hear that you enjoyed your visit and hope that you will visit with us again in the near future. It will be our pleasure to have you as our guest.
Sincerely,
Pam Goodgion
CiCi's University
___________________
Now, apparently, I found one of the Cici's that did not take credit cards, and yes, there was a hand-written paper sign that said ATM available. Of course, with independent ATM fees as they are, bring cash... just in case.
I wish it was made known in the restaurant that one could order any variety and have it delivered to the table. This was not evident in this particular restaurant and we saw no one getting pizzas brought to their table. The idea that there are more varieties of pizza than there is room to serve is great - however - as stated in last week's article, there were several of the same pizza's out at once - and though new pizzas kept coming out, they were still the same. There must be a better system so that there is only one or even two of each type out at one time. Five pepperonis out of sixteen possible pizzas is a lot of pepperoni.
There was no response to devising a system of keeping your table while you go up to the buffet. This was one of the most important points made last week and was a problem for us at Cici's. As I wrote, we went up to the buffet together and returned to the table to find it had been completely cleared away including our soda glasses - still full with soda. Other chain buffets have easily solved this problem and Cici's need only visit an Old Country Buffet, etc. to see how it may be done.
Again, thank you Pam Goodgion of Cici's for truly being concerned about your customers. That is a rare thing lately! I recommend that you try Cici's. A friend with a young daughter was recently in North Carolina and visited a Cici's there. We heard this eleven year old telling someone about where she ate. We asked if it was Cici's and with a big grin she said, "Yes!" She loved it! It is a lot of fun for kids and adults alike. If you live near or visit an area with a Cici's Bizza Buffet give it a try. And then come back here and tell us all about your experience.
Friday, May 04, 2007
CiCi's Pizza Buffet - THIS TIME I ATE THERE!
I have been writing about Cici's Pizza Buffet ever since I heard about one on a cable ad. There are none in my area - though they are all over the country. The closest is in Maryland and on my recent trip south I knew before I left that I was going to find that Cici's. The Cici's that I went to is located in Hagerstown, Maryland - and this does seem to be the closest one to the northeast region of the United States.
So was the wait (and the trip) worth it? Well... I have to say a kind of yes. So you ask, what does that mean? Was it good or not? The food was good. The organization of the restaurant was not so good - and this seems to be intrinsic of the general design and not related to the particular location visited. Let me start out with the usual pattern of my buffet reviews and I will get to the high and low points as we go along.
This particular location was in an outdoor shopping center and the restaurant is the size of two deep store fronts. There were two doors near each other. One said "ToGo" on it and the other said buffet. Both doors led to exactly the same place which was the line to the one cashier. At Cici's you pay as you enter. The cost of the buffet - all times - is $4.49 per adult and $2.99 per child. Unlimited soft drinks are extra and cost $1.59 per adult or $0.99 per child. Bring CASH because they DO NOT take credit cards at CiCi's. We visited on a Sunday afternoon and there was a short line to get in, but the restaurant was full. Once up at the register you pay and are given your cups. The cashier line then automatically moves into the buffet line.
The buffet layout consists of one long cafeteria-style counter. Once you pass the cashier you pick up silverware and napkins and then there is a stack of dishes. There are also trays. You take your plate and continue to move on down the line.
You first come to the salad bar. There were two types of lettuce and a variety of the usual salad toppings - mostly raw vegetables along with dry toppings as well. There was a good choice of several salad dressings. The only prepared salad on the salad bar was pasta salad.
Passing the salad bar you come to what seems to be a new addition to the buffet at Cici's - soup. There was chicken noodle soup (which was nice chicken broth with pieces of chicken and carrots with the pasta that is served on the buffet). The soup was good. Not too salty, nice flavor, good pasta. There were plenty of bowls next to the soup along with soup spoons.
You next come to the pasta. This is an odd shaped macaroni. It is a twisted tube. It was nicely cooked - al dente. Next to the hot pasta is a choice of two sauces - a tomato sauce and a white Alfredo sauce. I tried the tomato sauce and it was quite good. (As an Italian American who grew up in a very Italian home I know good tomato sauce. There was (and is) never anything out of a jar in my home.) The tomato sauce at Cici's was not bitter, acidy, or sweet. It was just right.
Past the pasta you come to hot garlic bread (seasoned pizza crust) and then you get to the center of attraction - PIZZA. Pizza pies are 12 inch pies that are being cooked right behind the counter in view in a mechanized pizza oven. The raw pie goes in one side and rolls through as it cooks to come out the other side ready to eat. The pizza is placed on trays with mesh bottoms to keep them crisp. They are cut into ten pieces and there is a serving spatula at each tray. As you go down the line you will find the variety of pizza that you may take. AH - here is one of the problems that I observed immediately. There is no order or organization to how the pizza is put out. As one pie is finished another takes its place - but that new pie is not the same as the one that was finished. That one might have been pepperoni and this new one might be mushroom. As a result there were several of the same type of pizza out at the same time - and this was consistent through the time that we were in the buffet. There are also no labels - except for their specialty macaroni and cheese pizza which has a big sign on the counter in front of that pie - EXCEPT that the first time through the line, the pizza there was definitely not macaroni and cheese. With no labels it is a guess what everything is - you can ask the several people behind the counter, but it would have been nice to have labels - and find all of the variety of pizzas that they have. As pizza's come out of the oven they are placed under the counter until there is a need for another pie to come up. When there are just a few slices left on a tray, they will be combined onto a serving tray - making it even more confusing - as in - there is pepperoni pizza on a tray with beef pizza and also something else.
At the end of the pizza was a dessert pizza - apple. There are also hot brownies and hot cinnamon rolls.
The counter ends and the soda dispenser comes next. You serve yourself from Coke products along with sweet and unsweetened ice tea. There is no coffee (which I do not care about, but some can't survive a meal without coffee).
The dining room is set up like a large fast food restaurant - regimental rows of booths and tables that filled the deep room. At the rear of the room was a three or four arcade machine game room. There were two ceiling televisions playing in the dining room with captions running and no sound. The room was noisy with loud background music and a lot of people. (The music could have been quieter and there really was no need for the televisions playing.)
There you have the basic set up. The restaurant was crowded when we went in and from the cashier area it looked as if there were no more tables so I sent my wife on ahead to grab what she could. You seat yourself at Cici's and she found a table in the front that had been cleaned. Several others were waiting to be cleaned (which they soon were). We placed a tray with our empty drink cups down on the table and went to the buffet. This meant getting into the line which was coming from the cashier. There were lots of dirty looks from people thinking that we were going to get into the middle of the line moving on to the counter. We went to the end and moved along. There were big tie ups at the salad bar. No one wanted to move past those taking salad to go to the pasta, pizza, etc. As a result of this set up, people were taking multiple plates and filling trays with them - and then filling those plates overflowing with pasta and pizza. Any of you who have read our "Rules of the Buffet" know my feelings about filling plates in advance. The design of this restaurant made this a necessity - or you would be getting back at the beginning of the line every time you went back for another slice. This was not good - and then something else happened that made this way of filling plates even more of a need. After our first plate we went up together for more. While we were away from the table, the table was cleared and cleaned - along with our drink cups. When we returned it was all gone. This was a warm day (surprisingly) and we had no jackets to leave at the table to show that it was occupied. There are no little plaques or paper slips to put down, as you get in other buffets, to show that the table is occupied. We had to find the person who cleaned the table, tell her that we were still eating, and ask for new drink cups. We got them, but this was not good. For the rest of the meal we went up separately, leaving someone behind to guard the table. This made the meal even more haphazard, since each time back up, each of us had to get back at the end of the line and we rarely got to eat anything together - unless we gave in and filled plates to the brim on one trip - as others seemed to do to avoid this. This was not a leisurely meal - and very different from other buffets - and as you know, I have been to many.
So about the food. The pizza was nice. This is not the large, fold in half slice of pizza that is common in NY but it is like the "Pizza Hut" small slices of pizza that are common in most of the US. There were some unusual pizzas such as barbecue (actually good), taco pizza, macaroni and cheese (it eventually made its way out and to the marked spot), vegetable pizza and others. Many of the toppings for the pizza seemed to come from the vegetables on the salad bar. The macaroni and cheese pizza disappointed the both of us. We expected it to taste like mac and cheese on pizza - what they do is put the macaroni from the pasta bar on the dough and cover it in cheese which all melts together hard in the oven. It is not creamy like mac and cheese but more like baked ziti without the sauce. I tried a variety of pizzas - some of them I could not taste any difference from one to the other. I could not tell if it was chopped beef, plain, mushroom, even pepperoni, etc. from the taste. It tasted good, but it all tasted the same. One of the slogans on the wall is "You can taste the difference." Well no, I could not taste the difference between most pizzas. Of course they mean taste the difference in freshness, but I had to laugh when I saw the sign.
The desserts were ok. I liked the apple pizza the best of the three desserts. The chocolate brownies were mushy and the cinnamon rolls were small and not very cinnamony. The apple pizza is pizza dough baked with apple and crumbs on top. It takes like apple strussel.
Some questions left unanswered - when we entered there was a sign on the buffet menu on the wall (not the to go menu) that said mega your meal with extra meat and cheese for two dollars more. No one seemed to do this - and there were no special pizzas out that had extra meat or cheese on them. So we have no real understanding of this with the exception that this sign should have been on the To Go menu on the wall which would make perfect sense. Another odd thing was the offer by the cashier of an extra large drink for more money. Since the drinks are unlimited refills (other than cashing in on the idea that you better not leave your table or lose it) why would anyone buy an extra large drink? - again unless it was for the To Go - but the cashier offered it to those going into the buffet.
Staff are friendly. The man who cleans the floors and the tables was diligent in moving his cleaning cart around the restaurant. There are few people to take dirty plates from tables and as a result plates stacked up a bit until they were taken away.
So I have some suggestions -and I hope that someone from Cici's corporate offices is reading this.
First, there needs to be a simple method of marking a table as occupied. A simple plastic coin - face up for occupied, face down when you leave - would solve this problem instantly. Many buffets use a strip of paper with the number of diners written on it placed on the table. This would work too.
Second, separating the serving counters to the typical free standing buffet servers would eliminate the lines and cafeteria approach to taking all that you can carry.
Third, each pizza type should have a place and that pizza should be clearly labeled on the counter. When mushroom is finished, mushroom should replace it. There were several pizzas that we would have loved to try. We saw a spinach and cheese pizza come out once, but when I got there, it was gone and never came out again.
So I traveled about four hundred miles one way (with the price of gas today) to try Cici's Pizza Buffet. Would I go regularly if there was one around the corner? No, not regularly - as this is a cholesterol and carbohydrate watcher's nightmare - that is not a bad thing overall for the restaurant - because, if I could, I would. To eat healthy here means to mostly eat from the salad bar and add a slice or two of pizza (maybe). It can be done, but requires a great deal of will power. The price is right either way - for salad or pizza you cannot beat $4.49 for all you care to eat. The soda is on the high side, but together with the meal price you are set for $6.00 per person - still a bargain for decent food. The system, however, is another thing - and needs a lot of change (in my humble, but experienced, opinion). I like to relax while I eat, take a some things to try, and then go back for more - without feeling like I am getting on the end of the school lunch line each time. We also like to eat together and wait for each other to go up for more - as noted, we could not do that here.
So, if you come across a Cici's Pizza Buffet, give it a try. Take my experience with you and watch your table and try to avoid a crowded time when there are no lines. The hours of the restaurant are extensive - they open at 11 am every day and on Friday and Saturday stay open until 11 pm with other days closing at 10 pm. There is a web link at the side of this page. You can find out where the restaurants are on their website.
So was the wait (and the trip) worth it? Well... I have to say a kind of yes. So you ask, what does that mean? Was it good or not? The food was good. The organization of the restaurant was not so good - and this seems to be intrinsic of the general design and not related to the particular location visited. Let me start out with the usual pattern of my buffet reviews and I will get to the high and low points as we go along.
This particular location was in an outdoor shopping center and the restaurant is the size of two deep store fronts. There were two doors near each other. One said "ToGo" on it and the other said buffet. Both doors led to exactly the same place which was the line to the one cashier. At Cici's you pay as you enter. The cost of the buffet - all times - is $4.49 per adult and $2.99 per child. Unlimited soft drinks are extra and cost $1.59 per adult or $0.99 per child. Bring CASH because they DO NOT take credit cards at CiCi's. We visited on a Sunday afternoon and there was a short line to get in, but the restaurant was full. Once up at the register you pay and are given your cups. The cashier line then automatically moves into the buffet line.
The buffet layout consists of one long cafeteria-style counter. Once you pass the cashier you pick up silverware and napkins and then there is a stack of dishes. There are also trays. You take your plate and continue to move on down the line.
You first come to the salad bar. There were two types of lettuce and a variety of the usual salad toppings - mostly raw vegetables along with dry toppings as well. There was a good choice of several salad dressings. The only prepared salad on the salad bar was pasta salad.
Passing the salad bar you come to what seems to be a new addition to the buffet at Cici's - soup. There was chicken noodle soup (which was nice chicken broth with pieces of chicken and carrots with the pasta that is served on the buffet). The soup was good. Not too salty, nice flavor, good pasta. There were plenty of bowls next to the soup along with soup spoons.
You next come to the pasta. This is an odd shaped macaroni. It is a twisted tube. It was nicely cooked - al dente. Next to the hot pasta is a choice of two sauces - a tomato sauce and a white Alfredo sauce. I tried the tomato sauce and it was quite good. (As an Italian American who grew up in a very Italian home I know good tomato sauce. There was (and is) never anything out of a jar in my home.) The tomato sauce at Cici's was not bitter, acidy, or sweet. It was just right.
Past the pasta you come to hot garlic bread (seasoned pizza crust) and then you get to the center of attraction - PIZZA. Pizza pies are 12 inch pies that are being cooked right behind the counter in view in a mechanized pizza oven. The raw pie goes in one side and rolls through as it cooks to come out the other side ready to eat. The pizza is placed on trays with mesh bottoms to keep them crisp. They are cut into ten pieces and there is a serving spatula at each tray. As you go down the line you will find the variety of pizza that you may take. AH - here is one of the problems that I observed immediately. There is no order or organization to how the pizza is put out. As one pie is finished another takes its place - but that new pie is not the same as the one that was finished. That one might have been pepperoni and this new one might be mushroom. As a result there were several of the same type of pizza out at the same time - and this was consistent through the time that we were in the buffet. There are also no labels - except for their specialty macaroni and cheese pizza which has a big sign on the counter in front of that pie - EXCEPT that the first time through the line, the pizza there was definitely not macaroni and cheese. With no labels it is a guess what everything is - you can ask the several people behind the counter, but it would have been nice to have labels - and find all of the variety of pizzas that they have. As pizza's come out of the oven they are placed under the counter until there is a need for another pie to come up. When there are just a few slices left on a tray, they will be combined onto a serving tray - making it even more confusing - as in - there is pepperoni pizza on a tray with beef pizza and also something else.
At the end of the pizza was a dessert pizza - apple. There are also hot brownies and hot cinnamon rolls.
The counter ends and the soda dispenser comes next. You serve yourself from Coke products along with sweet and unsweetened ice tea. There is no coffee (which I do not care about, but some can't survive a meal without coffee).
The dining room is set up like a large fast food restaurant - regimental rows of booths and tables that filled the deep room. At the rear of the room was a three or four arcade machine game room. There were two ceiling televisions playing in the dining room with captions running and no sound. The room was noisy with loud background music and a lot of people. (The music could have been quieter and there really was no need for the televisions playing.)
There you have the basic set up. The restaurant was crowded when we went in and from the cashier area it looked as if there were no more tables so I sent my wife on ahead to grab what she could. You seat yourself at Cici's and she found a table in the front that had been cleaned. Several others were waiting to be cleaned (which they soon were). We placed a tray with our empty drink cups down on the table and went to the buffet. This meant getting into the line which was coming from the cashier. There were lots of dirty looks from people thinking that we were going to get into the middle of the line moving on to the counter. We went to the end and moved along. There were big tie ups at the salad bar. No one wanted to move past those taking salad to go to the pasta, pizza, etc. As a result of this set up, people were taking multiple plates and filling trays with them - and then filling those plates overflowing with pasta and pizza. Any of you who have read our "Rules of the Buffet" know my feelings about filling plates in advance. The design of this restaurant made this a necessity - or you would be getting back at the beginning of the line every time you went back for another slice. This was not good - and then something else happened that made this way of filling plates even more of a need. After our first plate we went up together for more. While we were away from the table, the table was cleared and cleaned - along with our drink cups. When we returned it was all gone. This was a warm day (surprisingly) and we had no jackets to leave at the table to show that it was occupied. There are no little plaques or paper slips to put down, as you get in other buffets, to show that the table is occupied. We had to find the person who cleaned the table, tell her that we were still eating, and ask for new drink cups. We got them, but this was not good. For the rest of the meal we went up separately, leaving someone behind to guard the table. This made the meal even more haphazard, since each time back up, each of us had to get back at the end of the line and we rarely got to eat anything together - unless we gave in and filled plates to the brim on one trip - as others seemed to do to avoid this. This was not a leisurely meal - and very different from other buffets - and as you know, I have been to many.
So about the food. The pizza was nice. This is not the large, fold in half slice of pizza that is common in NY but it is like the "Pizza Hut" small slices of pizza that are common in most of the US. There were some unusual pizzas such as barbecue (actually good), taco pizza, macaroni and cheese (it eventually made its way out and to the marked spot), vegetable pizza and others. Many of the toppings for the pizza seemed to come from the vegetables on the salad bar. The macaroni and cheese pizza disappointed the both of us. We expected it to taste like mac and cheese on pizza - what they do is put the macaroni from the pasta bar on the dough and cover it in cheese which all melts together hard in the oven. It is not creamy like mac and cheese but more like baked ziti without the sauce. I tried a variety of pizzas - some of them I could not taste any difference from one to the other. I could not tell if it was chopped beef, plain, mushroom, even pepperoni, etc. from the taste. It tasted good, but it all tasted the same. One of the slogans on the wall is "You can taste the difference." Well no, I could not taste the difference between most pizzas. Of course they mean taste the difference in freshness, but I had to laugh when I saw the sign.
The desserts were ok. I liked the apple pizza the best of the three desserts. The chocolate brownies were mushy and the cinnamon rolls were small and not very cinnamony. The apple pizza is pizza dough baked with apple and crumbs on top. It takes like apple strussel.
Some questions left unanswered - when we entered there was a sign on the buffet menu on the wall (not the to go menu) that said mega your meal with extra meat and cheese for two dollars more. No one seemed to do this - and there were no special pizzas out that had extra meat or cheese on them. So we have no real understanding of this with the exception that this sign should have been on the To Go menu on the wall which would make perfect sense. Another odd thing was the offer by the cashier of an extra large drink for more money. Since the drinks are unlimited refills (other than cashing in on the idea that you better not leave your table or lose it) why would anyone buy an extra large drink? - again unless it was for the To Go - but the cashier offered it to those going into the buffet.
Staff are friendly. The man who cleans the floors and the tables was diligent in moving his cleaning cart around the restaurant. There are few people to take dirty plates from tables and as a result plates stacked up a bit until they were taken away.
So I have some suggestions -and I hope that someone from Cici's corporate offices is reading this.
First, there needs to be a simple method of marking a table as occupied. A simple plastic coin - face up for occupied, face down when you leave - would solve this problem instantly. Many buffets use a strip of paper with the number of diners written on it placed on the table. This would work too.
Second, separating the serving counters to the typical free standing buffet servers would eliminate the lines and cafeteria approach to taking all that you can carry.
Third, each pizza type should have a place and that pizza should be clearly labeled on the counter. When mushroom is finished, mushroom should replace it. There were several pizzas that we would have loved to try. We saw a spinach and cheese pizza come out once, but when I got there, it was gone and never came out again.
So I traveled about four hundred miles one way (with the price of gas today) to try Cici's Pizza Buffet. Would I go regularly if there was one around the corner? No, not regularly - as this is a cholesterol and carbohydrate watcher's nightmare - that is not a bad thing overall for the restaurant - because, if I could, I would. To eat healthy here means to mostly eat from the salad bar and add a slice or two of pizza (maybe). It can be done, but requires a great deal of will power. The price is right either way - for salad or pizza you cannot beat $4.49 for all you care to eat. The soda is on the high side, but together with the meal price you are set for $6.00 per person - still a bargain for decent food. The system, however, is another thing - and needs a lot of change (in my humble, but experienced, opinion). I like to relax while I eat, take a some things to try, and then go back for more - without feeling like I am getting on the end of the school lunch line each time. We also like to eat together and wait for each other to go up for more - as noted, we could not do that here.
So, if you come across a Cici's Pizza Buffet, give it a try. Take my experience with you and watch your table and try to avoid a crowded time when there are no lines. The hours of the restaurant are extensive - they open at 11 am every day and on Friday and Saturday stay open until 11 pm with other days closing at 10 pm. There is a web link at the side of this page. You can find out where the restaurants are on their website.
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