Golden Corral Buffet & Grill — Restaurant in Winston-Salem

Not for us. Very young rude girl looked at us and said "40+". We had not ordered anything yet! We were shocked at the lack of training! Had we not had a gift card, we would have walked out. Don't plan on visiting Winston Salem location ever. Very unprofessional. Moved on to plate, carefully looking for something clean, well prepared, etc. Poor guy, no English. Oh no. Roast beef with gravy, moved on to veggies. Broccoli, baked potatoes. OK, where's something to use in the trough for sour cream, butter? Not there. Hum. Going in toilet bowl quick. Carefully watching for people coughing, children out of control, poor families trying to mix in. OK. Alternative protein, lots of choices. Hum. Meatloaf. Approached salad bar, small bowl to balance food choice. OK. Got it. Made it back to table. Sweet husband buzzing around for his plate. Waitress stops by, we smile. I know her job well. Not easy. Long hours. Joined hands prayed our blessing. Amen. GRAMPS had a nice big fried chicken breast as backup. Hum. He wrestled his knife and fork to the best of his ability, can't chew that tough hunk of hide. Slide it over. Next choice. And so on. He removed the skin so he didnt get choked. I asked him if he wanted anything else? Not really. What's our options? Bread, tacos, or the deserts, fruit choice maybe, some sugar free? We doodled over carefully between folks. Hum....he got a blob of banana pudding, a couple of small spoons of his favorite flavors. I carefully looked at our options. OK, maybe a spoon of warm cobbler, maybe ice cream on top, dream on! I don't know who's back in the kitchen doing the best they can, so very sad. I choose tiny piece of chocolate, spouses favorite flavor to take home in napkin. Could not get thru big crowd for toppings. No worries. It's OK. Got this. Asked busy waitress for the check. Bingo. Read the charges first. OK. I gave her cash tip 20 percent. She can't fix anything. For people who are not accustomed to service work. State, federal tax, bank fees using cards, if you can't afford to be descent, stay home. Enough said. The quality of employees. Training, expectations has taken a downward spiral. Our generation was the last ones still here; we have forgotten more than some very rude young people could ever learn. 💔 we worked like beavers, to support our families. It's upside down now. No wonder folks get sick. Everybody mad at something, somebody, anybody. Managers stretched like a rubber toy. We are much better off to stay with folks who deserve our company, that's for sure. Been there done that. Stand up adults, here's a thought, give your time, experience, love. Coaching. Guidance to everyone 🙏 that needs a boost. Giving expensive gifts, for bad behavior has created a society of out of control little people. Pack a picnic, enjoy calmness, music. Nature. Smell the flowers, unplug all the cords. Roll fown windows. Fresh air is healthy. Look if you have vision, listen if you aren't impaired. Teach if you are successful. Listen if a little child approaches. It is our business, be the church! Share your wealth. Wow! What a concept! I 🙏 the hedgerow of protection around little children, everyone I meet, God's creatures for us to enjoy, I respect nature. People, places. Opportunities. Ect. We free will according to scripture. Here's several words: stop, hush, look, pray, love, help, hurt, mean, kind, etc, etc. See how that works? Try it. The Golden Coral's reputation is a coral. For sure. Nothing golden. With disease rampid, air quality, water a premium resource, gas. Electric, all of our resources, and the paper $$$ coins. The USA is in a "bit of a dither" "pickle", "mess". Now what? We are depleting all of our resources like a runaway train. I pray we don't run out of food this winter. I pray for all countries to work together ❤️ . Show kindness, not torture. To be empowered by a change of their 💕. Stop the pornography! Filth,...

More than likely I will be labeled a “Karen” for posting a truthful review, but when you spend almost $82.00 for a family of 4, you feel the right to be candid, so here goes:

Tuesday night, my husband wanted to take me and our adult sons out to dinner to celebrate the great news about my cancer diagnosis. I wanted to go to Golden Corral and we got there and they had lost power due to the storm that came through on 01/09. So we postponed the meal and celebration until tonight (Jan 11) and boy were we ever disappointed. To say it was about the biggest disappointment in a meal was an understatement, especially for spending $81.67 – I would have been much better off (and happier) if I had spent 3 hours in my own kitchen cooking.

I had only been to Golden Corral once before and that was on a date night in November and it was really good food, so I encouraged this outing to celebrate the “only stage 1” diagnosis and I really regret it.

None of my food was “HOT” it was, at best, “warm” and the waitress in charge of looking after us to refill drinks was not good at her job at all. We had to flag her down almost every time one of us needed a refill and we had to literally ask her to take away any dirty plates and she never once removed dirty glasses that piled up. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting a clean table, is there?

I love pizza so I approached the pizza on trip one to the buffet and the pizza looked like it had been sitting there for about 3 hours, so I passed. I went back near the end of our visit to see if they had put out any fresh, desirable pizza and … nope. That same old, dried up pizza was still sitting there, as no one else wanted to touch it either. Very disappointing!

The salad bar was decent except I thought (and my adult son agreed with me) that the eggs were undercooked. And the chicken breast I had was also undercooked, so I left it. I just couldn’t eat it.

The only positive I can think of about the entire meal was that the fried fish fillets were really good, though they could have been a little crispier (and hotter), but they were the best thing about the meal.

Both my sons had some shrimp, and it was NOT hot at all and their biggest complaint about that was that the shrimp or cocktail sauce was ice cold! Who wants to dip their shrimp into ice cold cocktail sauce? Cocktail sauce is meant to be room temperature. So yeah, our night of celebration was a bust. We can’t in all good conscience recommend this restaurant for what...

Went for the .99 cents kids special, which is definitely a steal. It had been a long time since I had been to golden corral, so I was excited, but soon became pretty disappointed. To begin with, I was given a very obviously dirty plate at the register. This made me question the cleanliness of everything to be honest. The buffet seemed pretty clean though. The food was not nearly as good as I remembered it being, but it was ok. When ordering a steak, I had to wait for a while for someone to show up at the grill. When he finally did, he tried to give me a well done steak even though I asked for medium. I refused it, and he finally gave me one cooked to my liking. Unfortunately, it was mostly fat, but what was edible was good. The restroom was a mess. Every single toilet in the ladies room was filthy and toilet paper on the floor.

The one great thing I can say about my visit was that the waitress Kelly was phenomenal. Very attentive and pleasant. Our drinks never came close to empty, and she brought me coffee with my dessert.

I doubt I will be returning. I see lots of reviews with the same complaints I had, which tells me they arent trying very hard to fix the problems. I'd rather pay full price for my child and know that its clean as opposed to getting a discount and questioning sanitation

UPDATE

I was contacted by the manager and invited back to give them one more chance. I was reluctant at first, but agreed, and I must say it was the polar opposite of my first visit. The food was very hot and fresh and everything seemed clean. My advice to anyone wanting to eat here is stick to peak times - the food is so much better.

I greatly respect that the manager called me and actually cared that I had a bad experience. That says a lot. I do believe he is trying to improve the restaurant based off of what I saw tonight and some of the things he said to me. We all know Rome wasnt built in a day though, and depending on the staff you have, change can be nearly impossible without complete turnover. I understand that. Best of luck to him, and I will...