Steveats: Cici's “Pizza” Buffet

Two lifeless pizza slices, but surprisingly OK cheesy bread.

This feature went away for a while, but now... IT'S BACK! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

For some reason, one commercial we would get quite a bit in Rhode Island would be for Cici's Pizza Buffet. Sure, it's not weird that they advertise on national television programs, but I'd also hear radio ads for them on HJY. It's strange, because the closest one is about 200 miles away in New Jersey. Although, as I'm about to get to, that might be appropriate.

In Texas, they have plenty of Cici's, so of course I had to go. And let me tell you – They aren't selling pizza, they're selling cardboard. I've had plenty of low grade pizza in my day, and I'm on record as kind of liking Sbarro. In the past, I've even had a breakdown of gas station pizza, and I compared a couple of those pizzas to cardboard.

The “pizza” at Cici's is worse than all of those places. It's not entirely surprising, since the margins for the business must be incredibly small, at a price of about $5 per buffet participant, depending on where you live. It is a sort of bizarre middleground between a thin crust and a pan pizza, without the positive qualities of either. The sauce and cheese don't really have much taste either, so the low-grade toppings are doing a lot of the “work” here.

I tried a wide variety of pizza at Cici's, and it all sucked. They also offer salad (hard to screw up) and pasta, which is... fine. They're likely using the same marinara sauce for the pizza and pasta though, since it's a mostly inoffensive pasta mush that they serve. They also had an Alfredo sauce pasta when I was there, which was a bit better, although strangely, the spinach Alfredo pizza was still complete garbage.

If you must eat at Cici's, I can only recommend one thing – the cheesy / garlic bread. According to the Cici's website, it's only 140 calories per two slices, which seems impossible to me. Mine was loaded up with a crap-ton of butter and garlic, which made it much more tolerable than the rest of the menu. If, for some sick reason, you need to order takeout, just load up on the cheesy bread.

My friend and fellow podcast co-host Todd Brisket warned me that Cici's was strictly a cheap place for 'za that you bring the kiddos, but man, I don't even think it clears that bar. The Pizza Hut buffet is 1.5-2x the price, but that's worth it for the jump in quality you get. Any place there might be a Cici's, there is likely a Chinese buffet, and even the weird pizza they have there is a better option than this.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! Or, you know, check the show out! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!

Steveats: Gas Station Pizza Showdown

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

As part of my continuing culinary adventures at gas stations, and at the urging of Eric Rueb, I decided to give one certain food item at three different places a try – pizza. The results were… not really that surprising overall, but individually, somewhat surprising!

First discussed and worst I had – 7-Eleven. This actually looked like the best of the three pizzas available to me, as the cheese looked to be seasoned and the pizza hot. Important note here – it’s an incredible curve that we’re judging these pizzas on, as a good portion of frozen, store-bought pizzas are better than these ones.

However, while the 7-Eleven pizza looked OK, it was incredibly bland and greasy. That’s a double dip of bad pizza qualities, since if I’m ingesting a bunch of calories and oily cholesterol, it better taste good. The pepperoni was slightly better than the cheese, but both left this reviewer cold.

In second place is Cumberland Farms. This was only narrowly behind 7-Eleven in terms of look, and it definitely tastes better. It’s kind of like good cardboard with cheese. You know, the type that would be acceptable to send something precious in, as compared to the cheap cardboard used for fast food, or to house gas station pizza.

I think the deciding factor in Cumberland Farms over 7-Eleven is the heat lamp. Cumby’s seems to keep their lamp on a higher temperature, or *gasp* they might actually ditch the pizza more frequently. This leads to fresher tasting cheesy cardboard.  

The surprising taste winner is Speedway, because their pizza looks like it was microwaved about a million times before being put out there on a heat rack under some lamps. This wasn’t a fluke, either – I went at two different times, and three different Speedways, and each time, the pizza looked like a warmed-over substance strip mined from the surface of Mars.

However, it definitely tasted the best of the three gas station pizzas I tried. I have no clue why either. My guess would be that because it’s a bit thinner, it retains its (probably fake) cheese taste and sauce a bit better than the other two. Also, the Speedway ’za is definitely helped by the fact that they helpfully offer up a bunch of seasonings. I went for the shaker of Garlic Parmesan, and covered the slice, and that definitely helped.

All three pizzas were edible, and since the going rate was two slices for $3 at all three places, I can’t really complain about the price too much. However, if you’re looking for an actual meal vs. a quick bite, then your Generic Chain Pizza Place is better for $5, whether you favor Domino’s, Pizza Hut or Papa Gino’s.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!

Inexplicable Video Game Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4

Remember a couple entries back, when I was talking about how awesome the second and third Ninja Turtles games were for the NES? Well, imagine that excellent, but riding a cool skateboard and eating pizza, because like, that's how totally awesome the fourth Turtles game for the SNES is.

Quite frankly, it's one of the best games for the system, which is amazing since it came out in 1992. Although technically titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, my friends and I just called it Super Turtles. You see, this was a clever double meaning, in that it was the first Turtles game for the SUPER Nintendo, and because the quality was quite SUPER as well. Ha ha ha, aren't I so clever? (Yeah, I'm totally taking credit for it right now.)

Anyway. Besides some obvious technical enhancements, Super Turtles is vastly superior from a planning and layout perspective. Stages feature more thing to interact with, such as manholes, damage-causing traffic cones and exploding gas tanks. While regular enemies are still numerous, bosses feature a life bar, which makes it much more convenient to fight them; you know if you have enough life to fight conservatively or aggressively.

The four turtles each have different weapons and attacks, and slight differences in attack power. You can also now run and use shoulder tackles, and there are combo attacks allowing for throws (more points) and back-and-forth slams (splash damage on nearby enemies). This is in addition to the usual weapon attacks, a jump kick, a slow but strong jumping weapon attack, and a character-specific special attack.

Touching on the technical enhancements – This is by far the best version at capturing the spirit of the animated cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is what most kids I knew liked about it. The music and sound effects are also spot-on, and heck, they even managed to cram in almost all of the relevant characters from the show. The time travel aspect of the storyline means there are some silly cutscenes that totally fit in with the flavor of the show.

They attempted a 3D remake for X-Box Live or Network, whatever it is called. Although I haven't played it, I've heard it's ass, so stick with the original. It ranges for $2 to $30 on eBay, depending on whether you want the box and manual. I wholeheartedly recommend it!