<p>EK4 and Bunsen, there are 2, formerly 3, Golden Corrals in Washington, the closest one to Seattle being in Marysville. It is actually a very good franchise that has been there for 25+ years and owned by the same family the entire time. It won the award for best Golden Corral a few years back and has outlasted the Royal Fork by a decade.</p>
<p>Overall, it is a good buffet for the money. $11.99 for dinner with water (coffee is free during dessert), less if you arrive before 4PM Monday-Saturday. Guests aged 90+ are free. It is definitely a middle/working class restaurant and allowed smoking until 2005. In the 20+ years that I’ve eaten there, the quality and variety of food has improved, steak is now included in the price of a meal, and the dessert bar has improved. The company itself is very religious, its motto being “profit by the grace of God,” and gives free meals to anyone who has served in the military on Veteran’s Day.</p>
<p>My university’s (Alabama) dining halls advertise themselves as being like the Golden Corral except that drinks are included and the price for dinner being $9.45. What is strange is that most students have likely never been to a Golden Corral and that the nearest Golden Corral is over 60 miles away. The university also limits portions by having employees serve most foods.</p>
<p>If you go into a Golden Corral thinking that it will be a Las Vegas or fancy tribal casino buffet, you’ll be disappointed. If you go in expecting hearty foods at a low price, you might want to return a couple weeks later.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen that one, but on a similar note: what about the commercial for Carl’s Jr.'s new “Southwest Patty Melt”? Seriously, look it up on YouTube if you haven’t seen it.</p>
<p>We don’t have GC that I know of, we have Fresh Choice which is pretty good and Souplantation which I think is very good for a buffet-style place. I go there with my high school friends when we want a good meal for not too much money.</p>
<p>It reminds me of the chains we see come and go around here. I see nothing wrong with the commercial on YouTube. And If it feeds people who otherwise may not be able to afford a meal, so be it.</p>
<p>Occasionally I’ve eaten at GC. Your dining experience really depends on the location of the particular GC as the quality is not consistent. I also avoid them at peak hours as the table manners of some of the patrons are absolutely gross. i also don’t find it a particularly enjoyable dining experience if its very crowded and I’m surrounded by morbidly obese patrons piling their plates to overflowing as if it was their last meal.</p>
<p>That new GC commercial has me flummoxed - as in, what’s the big deal about cotton candy? Why is it so attractive (?) to potential diners? When was the last time you had a nice dinner out and then thought “Man, some cotton candy would really hit the spot about now”?</p>
<p>^^^ It’s like the cinnamon sticks some pizza chain (Pizza Hut?) is selling in a combo with pizza and wings. Really? After pizza you’re thinking cinnamon sticks?</p>
<p>I work in senior care and once a month we organize restaurant outings for lunch. The staff usually chooses somewhere with a fairly healthy menu but one guy would not rest until we went to a Golden Corral-type place. [shudder] Never again. The food didn’t inspire confidence and neither did some of the guests.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of Golden Corral or seen any commercials for them. I dn’t get the cotton candy thing, either. In my neck of the woods, all you can eat buffet seems to show up mostly as “Chinese buffet” (which usually has lots of un-Chinese food, too.) I don’t think I know of any buffet style restaurant chains.</p>
<p>The YouTube link was offensive. You don’t see anything wrong with an African American couple (but not their white companions) being portrayed as too stingy, poor or undiscriminating to appreciate eating out in the more upscale, expensive place with smaller portions and higher price? And if that’s not bad enough their reaction is to make the stupid, risky and impulsive decision to fall out of a moving car and run to a stereotypical all you can eat buffet?</p>
<p>“I also don’t find it a particularly enjoyable dining experience if its very crowded and I’m surrounded by morbidly obese patrons piling their plates to overflowing …”</p>
<p>My MIL/FIL like those “all you can eat” places. Golden Corral is considered upscale in their part of the Midwest. The last time they took us there we were seated next to a young couple … perhaps 550 lbs the pair. Their table already had a half dozen empty dinner plates on it when we arrived. Over the next hour the pile of empty plates grew higher. But finally … FINALLY … they had a few desserts and seemed to be done. Then they got up, moved to another table, and began again.</p>
<p>Thank you, roshke, for explaining that better than I ever could. Even if you ignore the color of their skin, it makes getting out of a moving car look fairly easy. I worry about kids seeing this commercial.</p>
<p>I always assumed that they primarily served fried food, which I don’t care for. There is one about 30 miles from my town , but I doubt I would ever walk through the doors and eat there…my husband knows better than to ask me if I want to go into places like that</p>
<p>I haven’t eaten at one of all you can eat buffet steak houses in a very long time because we don’t eat that type of food anymore but we did it a lot when our kids were small. Kids loved it. I’m not saying it’s fine dining but it was a option when you had kids who didn’t like the same kinds of foods. There were a least a few things they each liked at the buffet. There really wasn’t much to choose from in our town 20 years ago.</p>
<p>DH and I grew up in very small southern towns. We’d have to drive for an hour just to get to someplace like Golden Corral. We didn’t even have a McDonalds nor a pizza place until I was in h.s. Every church youth group or school field trip always ended up at the buffet in the “big town”. It was a treat for us. Guess it all depends on your perspective.</p>
<p>To be perfectly honest, I don’t sit glued to the TV studying the race of the actors and actresses in TV commercials for crappy chain restaurants. :)</p>
<p>It’s the 21st century. Do people even notice, let alone care about that stuff anymore?</p>
<p>The commercial, which touts the addition of cotton candy to the extant “chocolate fountain” - and does not mention any other foodstuffs, as best I can recall, is truly gross, on multiple levels.
Well, thank you for your gut-wrenching honesty, intdad. For those of us who spend our days doing exactly that - which is clearly the relevant factor in the discussion - we’ll have to muddle along as best we can, operating under the pathetic illusion that the world isn’t completely post-racial in every way. And caring about it.</p>
<p>I’ve seen the commercial and my take is that the commercial is trying to show that the African American couple is actually smarter for seeking out the better value.</p>
<p>The one we had in MT was really good. The management always kept the place nice and clean and the patrens were mostly elderly people. Then the car dealer next to it bought it for the space and they went out of buisness.</p>
<p>However, the one in my current location is terrible.</p>
<p>That’s how I saw it, too. Plus, who wouldn’t want to jump out of a moving car to get away from that really annoying white woman? Heck, it looks like her husband wants to jump out of the car, too…</p>