Ciro's Pizza E Cucina — Restaurant in Culpeper

Ciro's USED TO BE GOOD, but not so much anymore. The staff was wonderful, happy & cheerful, & Mama would go from table to table checking on everyone. The food was fabulous & you just felt good being there. Then they moved to what used to be A&W Rootbeer. They did a lot of renovation & redesign of the space & I must admit it looks pretty nice, & certainly much larger than the old place. So for more space & attractive decor, that's where they get the 1 star. After that, all downhill. :( This time it was just myself & my hubbs. With memories of the old Ciro's still in our minds, we were really looking forward to an enjoyable evening. However, we waited at the door for over 10 minutes hoping to be seated but staff was too busy chatting it up with each other to even notice they had customers waiting. Finally we were able to wave a server down & we were seated & drink orders taken. Then we waited for about 15 minutes till finally I walked up to our waitress & asked if she would please bring us our drinks & we were ready to order. Right away, attitude. She brought our drinks & took our order. We each ordered a garden salad with extra dressing on the side, hubbs ordered spaghetti & meatballs, I ordered eggplant Parmesan. Just like with our drinks we for nearly 30 minutes. When she finally came back she brought EVERYTHING! Why? Because she had resumed the chat-fest, of course, so our food sat for too long under the heat lamps. The salad was limp, brown, not appealing by taste or appearance. I asked her to take the entrees back to the kitchen & have fresh ones made. You could tell, just by looking at them, that they were not worth eating. I figured by the time we could choke down the gross salads, at least our entrees would be ready. We ate about as much of our salads as we could stand (not much) & even waited a bit to give ample time for the kitchen to prepare our new entrees. After a reasonable wait, I flagged for her attention but now she blatantly ignored us. I was about to go hunt down the manager when a young man appeared with our entrees in hand. He was very polite but became uncomfortable when I asked where our waitress was. She was of course at the chat-fest site only she was watching our table & glaring at me.She no longer wished to be our server which was fine with me.So now we come to the food. OMG! Hubbs: HUGE amount of overcooked pasta, thin, watered down marinara sauce with nearly no taste, and 2 measly meatballs that tasted more like breadcrumb balls than meat balls. Unbelievable! Then mine: another pile of overcooked pasta and soggy, limp, obviously defrosted eggplant, the breading completely detached from the eggplant with the same runny sauce, and a gooey glob of mozzarella . I swear to you, the ONLY THING that was edible of that meal was the garlic bread! Hubbs was gonna just suck it up & eat his slop but I said no, I'd had enough! I signaled for the young man & asked him to bring the check please. When he asked how our meal was I just looked at him and said "Are you kidding me? It was awful! Every bit of it was just awful, not even edible!" I was expecting an apology & some sort of compensation, like don't charge us for the meal at all considering the crappy treatment, the fact that she bailed on us because we dared to expect to be served in a timely manner, & we kept interrupting her social time. The nerve of us to expect our server to actually be there to wait on customers, whatever were we thinking? We got the apology, but then we also got a ridiculously huge bill!! Suffice to say I was not only hungry but just livid! We paid the ridiculous bill, no tip, & then immediately went across the street to Burger King & very much enjoyed our burgers and fries. That's the last time I will ever pay $56 for garbage that I doubt even pigs would touch, & it's most certainly the last time we will enter that place, not even if the food was free!! I'm pretty sure Mama was rolling in her grave that night! But hey, at least we have our memories of the good old days not so long ago. RIP Mama,...

My son wanted tortellini alfredo so we thought getting this dish from an Italian restaurant would be better than Panera's tortellini. We were wrong and completely disappointed. The tortellini was hard, odd flavor and extremely dry. The "cheese" inside of it was a cheese we'd never seen or tasted before. The amount of sauce was so minimal, it may have been enough for a few pieces. I expected higher quality from a restaurant claiming to be authentic Italian. We rarely eat here and this is why. Poor quality and high prices. This small dish was $13 and wasn't worth $3. We also purchased mozzarella sticks to eat on the way home. There is nothing worse than cold mozzarella sticks and unfortunately that's what we had tonight. After getting the food from the pickup window, driving around the building to get the sticks out for my son to eat, they were already cold and hard. We had to bite through the cheese, they weren't stringy and hot like you would expect. The marinara was cold as well. Needless to say, we wasted $22 tonight on food that was thrown in the trash. There's no point calling to complain because it won't get you anywhere which is why I decided to write a review to warn others. Don't spend your hard earned money on cold, non authentic...

2nd time I've gone this week as a little date. Moderate prices for a good diner overall. We both enjoyed ourselves each time.

First Time: Her Crab Ravioli was delicious and My Cheeseburger was the absolute best I've ever had, and at such a good price for a quality burger. The breaded mushrooms were merely okay... Disappointed by those.

Second Time: She had a delicious Cheeseburger Sub. I had a spaghetti with meatballs, mushrooms, meat sauce, and sausage. The meatballs were VERY disappointing. Their size was immense and their color beautiful, but they tasted only okay... Noodles themselves were soft, smooth, and all-around perfect. Meat sauce didn't have much presence. Mushrooms were prepared well. Sausage was the star of the show. Some of the best sausage I've ever had. I think I would recommend the Marinara sauce with Sausage for spaghetti. Mushrooms depending on your mood.

Onion rings were good. Would definitely recommend asking for some ranch and thousand-isle sauce to go with those though.

Service was good both times in a very clean and cozy restaurant. We plan to make this our regular stop for dates and look forward to trying the rest of the menu out...