120 S Denton Tap Rd Ste 170
Coppell, TX 75019
(972) 393-2424

For $4.99 (drinks extra) all-you-can-eat pizza/pasta/salads, Cici’s has been the destination for budget-minded families dining on the super-cheap. This Cici’s location is roomy and staffed with polite, courteous folks, who keep the buffet lines constantly refreshed and tables cleared. On a weekday night, the line stretched out the door, though curiously the dining room was only half full. It seems that my party had arrived just as the dinner rush was ramping up, and the cheery cashier was doing her best to keep the line moving. I also saw the manager roaming around the dining room, serving full-sized pizzas and checking on customer satisfaction. Cici’s pizza isn’t Chicago- or New York-grade, but it’s value-priced filler. My disbelieving dining partner would not have believed “mac and cheese” pizza until he saw it with his own eyes…other notables include barbecue pizza, mushroom and chicken, spinach alfredo and the super-sweet apple pie pizza–all served fresh and hot. Their pasta for the night was a bland rigatoni drowned in pizza sauce; the salad bar was stocked with typical American iceberg lettuce and standard dressings. There are–without a doubt–plenty of places to enjoy a better pizza, salad or pasta, but very few cost this little and can satisfy the entire family.

8350 N Macarthur Blvd
Irving, TX 75063
(972) 402-9799

Not a place for fat people.

My man is portly, and I’m a little wide on the hips…but my goodness, it’s something of a production to squeeze into those narrow eating spaces with hardly any breathing room to spare. It’s even more annoying when your neighbors’ kids are bumping their chairs up against yours when you’re trying to eat dinner.

But the menu is what we came here for, and despite the slightly cramped dining space, we dove into dinner with great anticipation. An opener of their eggrolls were merely passable. Though my partner enjoyed the meatiness–I felt it wasn’t meaty or tasty enough.

As much as I was leaning toward pho, I decided to try their Hanoi special vermicelli while the man ordered the combination stir-fried noodle with chicken. What we didn’t comprehend from the “combination” in the name, was that the chicken was accompanied by beef, shrimp and squid. So when his dish came out, it was more than what he had asked for. Still he had to give it a liberal dousing of hoisin sauce and sriracha to make it more palable.

In the end, as I downed my Hanoi special (tasty but lacking), I still felt a little hungry and disappointed that the food didn’t knock my socks off. I was ready to proclaim this my new haunt for Vietnamese, but I left the place only mildly satiated.

136 E Belt Line Rd
Coppell, TX 75019
(972) 304-1122

This is your typical Chicken Express outlet dressed up in nicer digs…at this location you have a drive-in along with drive-thru service. The restaurant dining room is also a notch above other Chicken Express locations I’ve visited.

But the menu here is representative of the chain. They offer up catfish, livers and gizzards along with the normal fried chicken, wings and tenders. (Why don’t they offer combo packs of fish and chicken?) The requisite sides of mashed potatoes/gravy, corn, cole slaw and fries are joined by the CE signature sides such as fried okra, mini-poppers and fried pickles. Since my last visit to CE, they’ve expanded their drink menu to offer smoothies and frozen treats. They still sell iced tea, in both sweetened and unsweetened forms, by the gallon.

I wasn’t too impressed with their fried catfish, finding the portions small and overly bland–remedied by liberal dipping into the provided tartare sauce. The chicken also didn’t sit well to me, either coming off as too dry and the batter tasteless to merit seconds.

I will still prefer CE to KFC, but in the future, I’ll remember to go for the atypical selections rather than the standards.