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| - For the past year and a half, it seems like every article, TV program, and person I know who raves about pizza in Downtown Phoenix that isn't at Bianco has been telling me that I must try Cibo. "It's amazing! The food is fantastic! The service is wonderful! They're so friendly there!" they all cry with passion.
After my experience tonight, the only things I can think of are either (1) I somehow entered a parallel universe around that block and entered a different Cibo, kind of like that episode of "Star Trek," or (2) every one of those sources from my first paragraph is full of beans. Given that no one working in the restaurant had the necessary Evil Spock-esque goatee, I'm going to assume the latter. Lest you think I'm being too negative about this place, let me say this: Cibo is definitely a place that serves food.
We (there were three of us) came in at 6:45 on a Friday and were able to get a seat within 5 minutes, even though the patio and inside were both packed - score! It was a table tucked away in a corner, which we felt would be good for keeping ambient noise to a minimum,
After scoping out some of the food at the other tables, it was determined that a shared appetizer and two pizzas should have been enough for the three of us. We chose the Schiacciata Maremma, which, besides being impossible for me to pronounce, was described as a roasted vegetable on focaccia-type sandwich, and the margherita (traditional) and funghi (mushroom) pizzas.
The sandwich came first, and we thought that the order may have been put in wrong. While it was definitely two pieces of bread (that looked and tasted nothing like any focaccia that I've ever had, and not in the good way) with stuff in the middle, it seemed to be missing half of the ingredients. Billed as being filled with "mozzarella, roasted bell peppers, eggplant and zucchini," we discovered that there was neither eggplant or zucchini anywhere to be found. Additionally, the whole sandwich was cold, depriving us of gooey, melted mozzarella-y goodness. We would have complained to our waitress, but she had disappeared, deciding early on to abandon our table after taking our order, serving every other table in the section except for ours.
When the pizzas came (brought by a different waitress), things looked up. THIS is what Cibo is known for, right? Quality pizza with fresh ingredients! Tasty, simple pizza. Maybe it was a bit TOO simple.
The margherita pizza was a disaster. The sauce was thin and runny, tasting like the tomato water left over from the can after the tomatoes were used to make the actual pizza sauce, with a lot of salt added in to attempt to cover for the lack of actual spices and seasoning. The basil was haphazardly thrown on top, most of it still attached to one sprig. I suppose that if Cibo was billed as an interactive cooking and eating experience, I might have appreciated that a bit more. After the first slice was eaten, I figured that maybe I had grabbed a bad one (which can happen sometimes with pizzas), so I tried a different slice from the other side of the pie. It was cold already, and quite soggy. Since Cibo makes their pizzas with those "brick oven blisters" on 'em, this means that the remaining slices all had that watery charcoal flavor that tastes like the cooled-down grill you licked on a dare while drunk last Memorial Day.
The funghi pizza was passable. The mushrooms did a good job of hiding a lot of the issues (mainly the sauce) that the margherita pizza had. It too, however, decided that it should freeze up like the surface of Hoth (sans tauntaun innards) after the first slices were taken.
Fifteen minutes after we'd decided that we were done eating soggy pizza, our server decided to stop by our table again. After all, the folks who were seated ten minutes after we were had completed their dessert, so she realized that she should probably see how our meal was going. Drinks that had sat un-refilled since our appetizer was served were topped off without warning, and she walked away again, our napkin-covered plates still waiting to be picked up. "Do you want any dessert..." she muttered in an almost muted tone after a different waitress cleared our table. We said no and asked for the check. Seven minutes later, she remembered to bring over the check.
We paid in cash and got the heck out of Dodge, wondering how so many people could have led us wrong, how the place stayed so busy, and if maybe, our taste buds had betrayed us. After all, the denizens of the Arizona Republic, Yelp, and even "Check Please! Arizona" had vouched for this place, to say nothing of our friends and work acquaintances. We decided that there's a massive conspiracy going on, and Cibo has either paid you all off, or laces their food with hypnotic suggestion drugs to which we are somehow impervious.
The food is bad. The service is awful. Stay away.
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