Morgan Atha brings out fresh baked rolls before opening to the public at Golden Corral in the Town of Poughkeepsie on November 13, 2018. Atha, an Idaho native is part of Golden Corral's A-Team and travels to new locations to help train staff. (Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)

Polly Campbell finally went and reviewedOlive Garden after 23 years as a food critic. You all couldn't get enough of it. Someone on Twitter even suggested that next week she should review Golden Corral. Turns out, she already did. In 1999. Here's what she wrote:

Friday, June 18, 1999

It's anall-you-can eat chain buffet, but it's pretty good.

Last weekend, my family and I had dinner at the Golden Corral, an all-you-can-eat "grill buffet" in Fairfield. The four of us had complete dinners, including two steaks, and we certainly left feeling filled. The bill: $27.

Now that's the price of just one person's dinner - heck, one entree - at many restaurants where they don't serve seconds. I felt I had wandered into an alternative economic universe where the rule is the more you eat, the less you pay.

It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm sure there is a solid business explanation for this paradox that makes such a format a sure-fire moneymaker. Frisch's must think so; they have an agreement with Golden Corral to open 23 of the restaurants in Greater Cincinnati, Dayton and Louisville over the next seven years. The Fairfield location opened in January. Four will open in 1999: Eastgate, West Hamilton, Turfway Park area of Florence and Fort Wright.

(Find a currentGolden Corral location near you.)

Of course, one way all-you-can-eat buffets make money is by serving cheap food. But Golden Corral aims fairly high, as buffets go, and offers some quality amid the quantity.

There's certainly plenty of choice, including a varied and fresh salad bar, and evidence that not everything is simply dumped from a can onto a steam table.

You'll be familiar with the format from Ponderosa or similar steak places. You order a steak or chicken or shrimp dinner, add on the buffet if you want, or get just the buffet. Pay up and then proceed to a table where a server picks up your order and brings your drinks. (Another mystery: If you're helping yourself to mashed potatoes, why not to Pepsi?)

You might as well skip the steak dinner. The sirloin's OK, but on the chewy side. Country-fried steak is cheap meat encased in a hard crust, with gravy. Chicken breast filets are just chicken fingers. They have roast beef and fried chicken on the buffet line, so why pay for a dinner?

Food ready to serve at Golden Corral in the Town of Poughkeepsie on November 13, 2018.(Photo: Patrick Oehler/Poughkeepsie Journal)

The salad bar's the best part of the buffet. You could make a respectable chef's salad, with lettuce, julienned turkey and ham, pepperoni, peppers, olives and a wide variety of raw vegetables. Or a spinach salad, with bacon and hard-boiled eggs. There's a dressed Caesar salad, plus a couple of nice mixed salads, like cherry tomato and mushroom or fresh broccoli with bacon. You could do a cottage cheese and mixed fruit salad. Some of the fruit is fresh, such as strawberries. If you're into healthy, you could quit there or add a baked potato and have had your money's worth.

Right.

Most people are eating like they think the food pyramid refers to the best way to stack a burger, pizza, fried chicken and steamed carrots on one small plate.

Most people are eating like they think the food pyramid refers to the best way to stack a burger, pizza, fried chicken and steamed carrots on one small plate.

I tried as much as I could. Soup (high-quality prefabricated). Chips with chili (fine.) Roast beef (a little tough) and mashed potatoes (surprisingly good) with gravy (amazingly salty). Barbecued chicken (thumbs down). Thick, doughy-crusted pizza (thumbs up). Meat loaf (quite good). Fresh yeast rolls (too sweet, but nice and fresh).

I didn't manage the spaghetti and meat sauce, rotisserie chicken, fried fish, baked fish, pinto beans or turkey in gravy. I skipped the greasy-looking hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill.

The buffet line is set up with much of the working area in full view. People are prepping salads and cutting cakes while you watch. The buffet line is attractively laid out, lit and labeled, though of course it gets messy. A nice decorating feature is the stacks of raw materials, such as fruit, vegetables, boxes of onions and potatoes. This is less effective by the bakery, where dessert mixes are decoratively stacked. I guess "from a mix" now counts as "homemade."

I tried peanut cream pie (weird), warm cherry cobbler (not bad), thin lemon bars (bad) and the expected soft-serve ice cream. This is where the kids got creative. I never had seen a candy corn-gummi bear-Oreo sundae.

Golden Corral exterior.(Photo: File photo)

The gimmick in the bakery is that a brass bell rings every time something fresh is put out. I never heard the bell. I think they were so busy putting out food for the crowded house that they would have been ringing it constantly.

It was astounding how busy the place was on a Friday. People were lined up when we got there at 7 p.m., and as we left an hour and a half later.

It seems to me that one of the most important things a buffet restaurant can do is make it easy to get in and out of your chair, and Golden Corral flunks that test. The place is so packed with tables and chairs that you can barely lift your elbow, let alone push back your chair.

It's a good thing most of the food is self-serve because the restaurant service is inept. I think it was our young server's first night, because he didn't know the answer to anything.

While Golden Corral is a remarkable bargain, I wonder how many people leave an all-you-can-eat experience feeling the same as I do: I would have paid more to eat less.

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