Golden Corral Buffet & Grill — Restaurant in Garland

This location was one of the worst I've been to in the entire nation and I'll explain why... I've been lucky to be able to travel all over the US since '98 to the present day and as such I'm quite familiar with this franchise so I have something to compare with considering I've tried other locations in cities and states all over the US where one is in operation. Last a few months ago in Gallup NM and before that about 4-5 months ago one in Phoenix AZ area...

This review is only for this location:

Pros: friendly and helpful staff at the register, and all (1-2 employees) that can efficiently communicate in passable English are professional and ready to assist variety and diversity of the products offered is as expected from this franchise, nothing extra though exactly what'd you expect in any other location our waiter was nice checking often our table, so good service aside from self serving that's traditional for this type of establishment clean looking areas and plates and silverware

Cons: most of the other staff, line cooks and the ones attending the food servings cannot understand English as such we can't alert them if an item, like fries, or lemons, or lettuce, or whatever else is missing or too old, outdated by the color of it extremely high traffic over the weekend Saturday and Sunday with extremely long lines waiting outside the building to get in - we've come three (3) weekends in a row, waited in line outside for about 5-8 minutes and left frustrated because the lane was advancing extremely slow, by our own estimates would've been over half a hour just waiting in line to get in at a table - DON'T GO DURING WEEKENDS NOON TIME so we finally managed to get in on a Monday evening actually celebrating with my friends a personal accomplishment, and no large soup bowls, no soup spoons, they give you a small dessert teaspoon, but they have no clue what a soup spoon is or how it looks like very few employees speak English enough to understand we need soup spoons and not teaspoons for soup, or to let them know what's missing again no lemons no fries no lettuce no croutons, a lot of items missing and was hard to point them out unless we were talking to one of the CSRs at the register who was speaking English - and believe me I have a high tolerance considering English is not my native tongue - yet there was no one around able to understand enough so we can let them know what's missing and what we'd like since we've paid over $17-18 a person with taxes and all high price for the service and the quality of the food the food itself is of low quality with a lot of preserves and chemicals enhancements give us unpleasant side effects just hours after eating

I for one I'll never return to this particular location, it's barely passable by average standards and the entry price is too high compared to the value of the food and service.

I wouldn't recommend this particular location to anyone. It needs a lot of improvement in many areas, but they - their management team - don't care because due to its location near the freeway a major intersection they have enough customers even without you or me not visiting this one anymore.

This is the plague leading to low quality food and service in those kinds of establishments, extremely high traffic and volume of customers combined with understaffed and underpaid staff very few able to handle high traffic and volume.

Avoid this one, cross it off your list for a few years hoping they'll improve...

My daughters and I went to this location this evening and were incredibly disappointed, especially with the manager on duty. We had an employee barrel over my daughter, almost knocking her over. She’s already had a spinal fusion, she’s in a lot of pain from the incident. There was watermelon in a fruit salad that had been bitten and returned to the salad, it had teeth marked and a chunk missing - the employee I told took it out of the fruit salad and threw it away- leaving the rest of the fruit salad in place. The slushy and ice cream machines had been a pile of mess the entire time we were there, the steak was bad enough to be spit out & smelled like it was left on a counter too long.

When stopped to talk to the manager on duty and I was blow away by how many excuses he provided, he didn’t ONCE ask if my daughter was ok, “I’m sorry” was the very last thing he said, after about 10 minutes- just before letting us know we had to come back and see him. He tried to tell me his employees aren’t from America and do things different- the food handlers course is the same no matter what language it’s in. Grown adults shouldn’t be pushing through anyone, certainly not carrying hot food. No incident report was filed, but she limped the whole way out to my car and will be feeling this for days.

The manager told me his hands were tied multiple times and he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t control other people, but he wanted to make a “deal” so we would be happy. He offered us 5 $5 gift cards, trying to excuse it all away. Not once did he take responsibility, just made excuses about things out of his control. I don’t want to return at any point, those gift cards are a waste- he said we could go to a different location. After this experience I wanted to throw up at the thought. Refund half of it and we’ll call it good. He kept with excuses about how things are out of his control. We told him to keep his gift cards, I’ll write a review. VERY QUICKLY he refunded the full bill, then told us we needed to return to see him and he was sorry it wasn’t the best this time.

I’d recommend...

1 Star (because 0 isn’t an option and negative stars haven’t been invented yet)

If disappointment were a restaurant, this place would be the CEO.

Where do I even begin? Walking into this place felt like entering a time warp back to 2003 — and not in a nostalgic way, more like, “Hey, let’s relive all your worst dining experiences in one sitting.”

The environment? Imagine a cafeteria married a bus station and then gave up on life. Dim lighting, sticky floors, and an atmosphere so depressing it should come with a therapist.

The food? Oh, you mean the lukewarm mystery sludge served with a side of regret? Most of it was either chewy like old shoelaces or dry like someone dared the chef to remove every drop of moisture. Nothing was hot — unless you count my temper by the time I left.

The ice cream? I don’t know what flavor it was going for, but it landed somewhere between freezer burn and broken dreams.

The staff? Rude. Hostile. At one point I genuinely wondered if we were on a hidden camera show. I saw employees eating dessert behind the line in gloves like it was their personal kitchen, while another employee yelled at a paying customer like it was Fight Club: Buffet Edition.

Cleanliness? What cleanliness? There was actual vomit near the washroom entrance — and more in the parking lot. Either this place is cursed or their food has a 2-minute expiration window. I didn’t know whether to eat or call a hazmat team.

Food variety? Don’t bother. I’ve seen gas station snack aisles with more exciting choices. The “dessert section” was a joke — not a funny one, just sad. I saw one lonely brownie that looked like it had been sitting out since the Bush administration.

By the end, I wasn’t just disappointed — I was offended. This wasn’t a meal, it was an ordeal. A test of my patience. A buffet of bad decisions.

Will I be back? Absolutely not. Not in this life, the next, or any alternate timeline.

Save yourself. Eat literally anywhere else. Eat grass. Eat drywall. Just...