14 Foods You Need To Avoid At Golden Corral

Golden Corral offers homestyle foods on seemingly endless rows of buffet tables, allowing just about everyone in your family or friend group to find something they want to eat. Well, maybe. Based on experience and reviews from others, it's a sad truth that not all food on the Golden Corral menu is worth trying. And while some dishes are crowd pleasers, others are inconsistent in quality and taste, depending on what location you visit and the time of day trays hit the buffet. Even some Golden Corral workers don't love the food if one employee's unappetizing description of burned and overcooked food is any indication (via VICE).

We've frequented Golden Corral locations in different states and found some inconsistencies in some popular dishes and a few foods that we typically steer away from, no matter what restaurant spot we visit. We're dishing up all the details on a few foods you might want to save for elsewhere or make yourself rather than spending your money on them at Golden Corral.

The flavor of Golden Corral pizza isn't necessarily its problem, at least not in our opinion. However, this Twitter user disagrees: "Just had a harrowing flashback to eating golden corral pizza as a child." Still, we think that this meal has the potential to be good — when it's fresh. Unfortunately, the popularity of the pizza at Golden Corral seems to vary significantly by location. Some locations seem to have more pizza lovers ready to go, grabbing the pizza off the pan as soon as it's made. This means that it's almost always hot and fresh. Others locations we've visited have slow-to-disappear pizza, leaving it to sit beneath the heat lamps and become increasingly unappetizing.

If you're a true pizza fan, you're probably better off going to a dedicated pizza place or a pizza buffet to get your fix. Otherwise, you could end up waiting a while for Golden Corral to either meet the crazy pizza demands of a busy dinner rush or for its workers to replace the not-so-fresh pizza no one's grabbing off the buffet line.

Golden Corral claims that its beef pot roast is cooked slowly overnight to achieve the perfect texture. Now, that could very well be true. We've tried the pot roast at multiple locations, and some of them have tasted as though they were home-cooked by our moms and grandmas for a classic Sunday beef pot roast meal.

But others ... not so much. It seems that, as with many Golden Corral flubs, the timing might be an issue at some locations. That's made all the more true if the pot roast really does have to cook for several hours. Those texture issues can also be compounded by a lack of availability. It's not uncommon to stroll into Golden Corral hoping for some pot roast in between typical lunch and dinner times, only to find no pot roast on the buffet line and a bunch of lonely vegetables swathed in gravy. During lunch and right before dinner rushes, it also seems more likely that you'll find an unappealing dry pot roast that looks like it hasn't been stirred in a while.

Ultimately, this is a mixed bag. If you're going to Golden Corral to load up on pot roast, you could be a super happy diner or leave very disappointed. There's no knowing for sure until you get there and scope out the offerings.

It's true that some Golden Corral patrons visit mostly for the fried fish, it's true. One thing that we've noticed, though, is a significant problem. No matter how much people love this dish, they still rarely know what kind of fish has been fried. Even Golden Corral itself doesn't make this information clear on its website, further adding to the confusion.

Now, we love a good fish meal at a restaurant, but only when we know more precisely what kind of fish is in front of us. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, fish can carry some potential dangers, like mercury and pesticide contamination. That's especially true for specific kinds of fish (like large, predatory species) and fish that have been farmed using unsafe practices. Therefore, it's always best to know where your fish comes from. Unless you know how to get the specifics from your Golden Corral restaurant, it might be best to avoid the fried fish for now.

Not all Golden Corral restaurants serve hush puppies, but at some locations, these little round balls of flavor fly off the buffet table pretty quickly. What's a hush puppy, exactly? It's a southern dish made primarily with cornmeal and fried to a crisp, making for a tasty addition to some of the best dishes of the American South. At Golden Corral, hush puppies are yet another food that people seem to love or hate with no gray area allowed in between.

We think that the reason some people don't like them is that hush puppies are their best when they're fresh out of the fryer. When they sit for longer than 20 minutes or so, they lose that delightful texture and simply don't shine as they should. It's evident in some customers' comments, like this tweet that mentions "stale, set out too long, lukewarm hush puppies." Another customer complained on Facebook that the fried foods they ate at Golden Corral (including the hush puppies) all tasted as though they were cooked in old, broken-down oil. Perhaps honing in on some quality control could make the hush puppies at Golden Corral the stars they were meant to be.

If we've seen one running theme at Golden Corral, it's that some foods just aren't consistent in quality and taste from one location to another. That's the case with the restaurant's broccoli, too. In most places, the broccoli looks great and comes out hot, steamy, and fresh. But we're usually left disappointed when we bite in and discover that it's bland and perhaps a little too crunchy for our liking. However, we've also heard others saying it's way too full of sodium, like this Twitter user who colorfully described their attempt to be healthy by choosing Golden Corral's broccoli, only to discover it was immensely salty.

The true broccoli greatness at Golden Corral lies with the broccoli and cheese. Sure, it's not the healthiest option, but it's seriously popular. If you're not opposed to dousing your nutritious broccoli in some cheese sauce, we suggest you opt for the cheesy version instead of the plain, boring broccoli.

Apparently, the steak is so popular at Golden Corral that it causes fights. In early 2022, a Golden Corral in Pennsylvania saw a massive fight break out between dozens of people when the restaurant was low on steak. The scuffle began when someone cut the line to get some (via NBC12). It's clear that some people really love their Golden Corral steak. For example, one person on Twitter writes that their friend is darn near addicted to the chain's steak. "I am now begging Golden Corral to release her from these shackles," they write.

However, for everyone who loves the steak at Golden Corral, others definitely don't. Frequently, complaints center on the protein's toughness. We think the problem is a matter of skill. You really need to do a bit of homework to cook a good steak, and we aren't sure that chefs at Golden Corral are fully trained to handle the intricacies of crafting a delicious steak. Take the testimony of one worker, who admits to overcooking steaks while they worked at Golden Corral for three years (via VICE).

The chocolate fountain has become one of the most talked about attractions at Golden Corral. You can dip marshmallows, crispy bars, cookies, fresh fruit, and just about anything else your heart desires into the flowing fountain of chocolate. It's delicious and a spectacle, for sure. But its sanitation is questionable. That's especially so when you've witnessed children sticking their hands in it and people dropping bits of food into the lake of recirculated chocolate.

We aren't the only ones who have seen some interesting things happening at the fountain. Redditors have commented quite a bit about events they've witnessed at the Golden Corral buffet that have made them swear off the chocolate fountain forever, like seeing children put their entire faces in the dripping chocolate.

There may be some issues on the staff side of things, too. One Redditor who said they worked at Golden Corral claimed that the staff would recycle the chocolate at the end of the day, reserving it for tomorrow's crowd. Whether or not that's true, there are enough worrisome stories about the infamous chocolate fountain that keeps us staying far, far away.