Golden Crust Pizza — Restaurant in Red Lion

I read all the great reviews on Google for Golden Crust, so my wife and I had to try it. We were greeted by friendly staff, but noticed right away that there was no "Italian Vibe", this is a rural pizza and beer joint. The restaurant is nicely decorated. The sounds of the restaurant while we were there were very Chuck E Cheese, screaming kids running about, not the kind of place you take a date to have quality time, but not really offensive either. The menus were very worn and dirty with food of previous customers, same with the additional menus that stay on the table, torn and soiled. They could stand to spend a few bucks to replace their worn menus.

We got french fries and a white pizza. The fries arrived in about 10 minutes and were decent, hot, and about average, so C+ on their fries. The white pizza took closer to 35 minutes to arrive, presentation was grocery store like, and after a few bites our fears were confirmed. It appears Golden Crust uses frozen crusts, at least that's the look, and that's the flavor (or lack there of). It's bowling alley pizza at best, some people love that stuff, but it's not what we expect from a small pizza shop. The tomatoes on top were chopped and very sparse, not like the typical tomato slices you expect on white pizza, especially when you have to pay extra for them, honestly the tomatoes may have come from a can. The small amount of cheese was rather flavorless, and that's the issue here, no flavor, vapid pizza.

Golden Crust does not deliver burnt or disgusting pizza, they deliver flavorless discs that you could easily get for $5 at the supermarket, bowling-alley, or convenience store. The reason for the highly rated reviews was obvious, they have beer, and one thing we have learned in York PA, is that beer increases your rating by at least one full star. If you want a traditional hand tossed pizza, this is clearly not your pizza joint, look elsewhere.

I reduced my review from 2 stars to one star after seeing Golden Crust has attack-hound, and admitted "friend of the owners", Beth Carico make disparaging remarks about people who give less than stellar reviews. You have to be willing to accept less than glowing reviews in a free market. It's VERY telling that Beth's other review is a negative slam against the other pizza shop that's close by. I stand by the "bowling alley pizza" assessment, if they are making the crust by hand, then it's time for a recipe that could make it outside of a very small town without much competition. Although, I really think it's a frozen crust, it had the perfect circles on the bottom like grocery store crusts have, and it was a cardboard-like flat circle (this was not their thin crust), and no flavor. Red Lion deserves...

I tried this restaurant for their Maryland Crab soup and my husband likes the other food on the menu I can't eat unfortunately but the soup was wonderful. I've ordered from there several times with no problem. I called Wednesday morning when they reopened after 4th of July vacation. I requested 2 bowls of the MD crab soup and the young lady on the phone said they were out. I told this young lady that it was on their website before I called. She said someone didn't update the website yet. I waited a little and went back online and menu still showed soup was available so I placed my order online for 2 bowls of MD crab and it was delivered with no problem. Yesterday I placed an order online requesting 1 bowl and other things. I received call back and a young lady said they only had a cup of soup which I agreed to and asked to be refunded the difference which didn't happen. I opened this pitiful cup of soup which was watered down with very little consistency. I had 3 spoonfuls and what was left was just 3/4 liquid which I poured down the drain. Even had to add old bay before cuz first spoonful was very weak in flavor which never happened to me before. I spoke to Supervisor Vince because I requested a callback this morning and provided same information. He tried to politely argue with me that the order in his system was switched to a cup, not a bowl and said he could give me a credit towards the difference which I declined because I paid the difference and wasn't refunded the difference. My husband even gave extra tip as he didn't know i had included the tip already (which i wasn't disputing). I told this man that I wasn't going to come back ever because i could prove by my card history. Finally the Supervisor asked for my card info so he could put the money back onto my card. By this point I was so annoyed I said I'm not giving that info over the phone because by this point I didn't trust Golden Crust. Especially after eating or attempting to eat the cup of soup they sent which they said was the last of it!! I'm from MD and NEVER had a problem with the flavor of it until now. Normally the MD CRAB soup is amazing!! Getting 3 different versions of explanations from employees and Supervisor Vince along with whatever was in the soup I ate yesterday!! Be careful ordering online or even trying to call in order cuz you may get more excuses, misinformation and something done to your food!...

This review is for the bottle shop, as I didn't have time to grab food during my visit.

Finally got a chance to check out the bottle shop during a recent visit. It's a pretty small/tight quartered area when you walk in to the right. The selection though, is outstanding for the area. I've been to all of the usually places in the greater York area, and none have had the selection Golden Crust has.

They have 2 or 3 shelves of bombers/750s as well as 2 or 3 coolers of 12oz bottles. I ended up picking up:

Spring House Big Gruesome @ $8.25 Troegs LaGrave @ $4.00 Central Waters Peruvian Morning @ $5.00 Maine Brewing King Titus @ $4.75 Victory Oak Horizontal (bourbon) @ $17.25

I later was at another bottle shop and they had 2 of the above bottles priced at 3-5$ more than what I paid here. The prices are extremely reasonable.

I was there in the middle of the day during the week, so there wasn't anyone to talk to, so I can't comment on the service per say, but the cashier was very friendly.

I didn't have food while I was there, but look forward to it next time. They also have 20 craft beers on tap with a very nice selection (and do growler fills). Only 2 or 3 of the taps were swill. They are also opening up a taproom in the near future, which should help really put this place on the map.

Bottom line is that this is the best bottle shop in the...