What in the world? I felt like I was waiting for a ride at Disneyland with the long and ridiculous line.
Leonard W and I always see commercials for Golden Corral and even thought about stopping by Victorville next time we head to Vegas, but what do you know, a Golden Corral opens in 626!
We got there around 11:20am and we were greeted with this loooong line out the door. Turns out this place also serves breakfast so there's a crowd since morning. The outside portion took a good 20 minutes before we got into the door, thinking that we are getting closer to food, but reality slaps us in the face and the line actually curls a few times like at Disneyland before you head towards the register to pay! Finally, after a total of 40-50minutes of waiting, we were seated and we began to explore the buffet.
There's a salad station, Mexican, Chinese, Southern, grill station, small seafood section, and a big dessert section. The standouts for us was definitely the Mandarin Chicken and the fried chicken! We loved the Mandarin Chicken because it isn't drenched in sauce and they actually stir fry it with Chinese fermented black soybeans! It adds a different flavor to your normal orange chicken and we ate a ton of those.
Now, the fried chicken was ridiculously juicy. Good seasoning on the outside and we thought that only the dark meat was gonna be juicy, but even the breast meat was awesome.
After those two items though, we didn't care too much about the others. They had pork chops for lunch instead of sirloin steaks. They also had sliders but a little inconsistent. Our first sliders were great, but sliders after were all overcooked. Pizzas, pot roast, chicken fajita, cajun fish, and fried catfish were a few items that I tried and they were all alright.
The weirdest thing on the menu was fried chicken gizzards. That was... interesting.
Didn't try much of the dessert, but the cookies were extremely buttery (yum) and they got some legit legit mint chocolate chip ice cream! Of course, there was the famous chocolate fountain but kids were hogging up that area so I didn't bother with it.
Service was a standout. Our server had this Southern hospitality-quality to him and just from watching him interact with other tables, I can tell this guy is gonna get a lot of tips!
For $8.29, it's not bad at all for buffet. It doesn't include a drink, so if you add a drink, it costs about the same or a little more than Hometown, and I gotta say, Golden Corral is waaaay better than Hometown.