Save room for Wonderfall at Golden Corral

DESTIN — We’ve all been to an all-you-can-eat buffet at one time or another, maybe even to the Golden Corral. Of course, I’d been to the Golden Corral before, but it had been years, and I was super excited about their newest addition, the Chocolate Wonderfall.

The food

The Golden Corral has home-cooked favorites including steaks, barbecue, meatloaf, fried, grilled and barbecue chicken. They even had a little taco bar and Asian-inspired orange-glazed chicken.

I took my friend, Colton, with me on this pick-your-own adventure on New Year’s Day. We decided we were going to pace ourselves and try as many favorites as we could, and of course, leave room for the Chocolate Wonderfall.

I was eager to try the meatloaf. My first plate had that and mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and macaroni and cheese.

While the sides were as good as I’d expected, the meatloaf was a letdown. It was extremely moist, and the texture alone put me off. In the end, I left it on my plate.

Colton, however, raved about the fried chicken, so I decided to try it. It was very good fried chicken with a crispy, crunchy and well-spiced crust and moist white breast meat. I only had one piece, but Colton went back for thirds.

While I had forgotten to get one of the Golden Corral’s famous rolls on my first trip, watching Colton dip his into the honey spread made me envious, so I grabbed a roll and ate it as prescribed – not spreading the honey-butter onto the roll but dipping the roll right into the honey spread container.

At half-time Colton decided he wanted to go back for one more “greatest hits” plate. This, of course would probably have some fried okra and macaroni and cheese on it – and another roll. However, our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, so we waited a bit and skipped on to dessert.

We tried the bread pudding and banana pudding both of which were delicious. Then for the finale I spear a strawberry and baby rice cereal treat on a wooden stick and twirled it under the Chocolate Wonderfall.

The chocolate quickly hardened on the strawberry since it was cold, but remained wet and warm on the crispy treat. The chocolate-covered strawberry tasted exactly like what it was. The crispy treat was crunchy and warm with the chocolate dripping off it.

In all, I was sad that I hadn’t saved more room for this. They also had little pieces of sponge cake to dip in the fountain, which I didn’t have room for.

The atmosphere

There was a fair mixture of people at the Golden Corral on New Year’s Day from full-fledged families to older couples. At the Corral, you pay for your food then pick a table where your waitress greets you. She’ll refill your glass and take away your old plates.

The service

Our waitress did her job well removing plates when needed and making sure our sweet tea glasses were filled.

A final taste

The food at Golden Corral was hot and tasty. They even had black-eyed peas for our New Year’s luck.