14 Most Underrated Foods At Golden Corral You Need To Try Next Time

Simply put, there's a lot going on food-wise at notorious buffet chain Golden Corral. From ample meats to self-serve soft serve to a full salad bar, and much, much, more, the philosophy driving Golden Corral's selection is very apparently quantity over quality. Looking at, say, a list of 20 popular Golden Corral menu items ranked worst to best can help narrow the confines of the buffet and provide a semblance of what most customers usually like to get, but most popular isn't necessarily the same thing as tastiest.

Whether you're a regular looking to break out of your comfort zone or a newbie looking for the buffet's hidden gems, the following are some of the most underrated food items at Golden Corral. I made a point to try as much of the buffet as was humanly possible across multiple Golden Corral trips to determine my picks, so rest assured that these opinions are grounded in personal experience. With that said, here are the most underrated foods from Golden Corral, each of which is worth going out of your way to try during your next visit.

Chicken noodle soup is one of four Golden Corral soups, which — at least at my location — are located beside a sizable salad bar. It might be easy to overlook the soup section in favor of a customizable salad, but after trying every option, I'd recommend three of those four soups over the salad bar in its entirety.

What makes the chicken noodle soup work so well is a surprisingly bold flavor. Plenty of Golden Corral's worst dishes are aggressively bland, and chicken noodle soup isn't exactly a bold dish by definition. Golden Corral's chicken noodle soup, however, is pretty salty, but also brimming with the sort of warm, umami-rich chicken flavor that helps make chicken noodle soup the ultimate comfort food. Because of what tastes like an excessive amount of salt, this soup option probably isn't the healthiest choice compared to a simple salad. But for customers seeking a tastier item, this take on chicken noodle soup is good enough to make for a superior starter to any Golden Corral buffet meal.

While Golden Corral's chicken noodle soup is a dark horse pick by merit of its proximity to the salad bar — both physically and in principle — chicken noodle soup is still pretty much the protagonist of the American soup world. For customers looking to go just the slightest bit off the beaten path, Golden Corral's broccoli cheddar soup is another surprisingly solid soup option.

Whereas the chicken noodle soup is notably bold in flavor, the broccoli cheddar soup benefits from modesty. Its flavor isn't too cheesy, too salty, or too broccoli-forward, but showcases each of those ingredients without verging into excess. Of course, nutritionally, the broccoli cheddar soup is a step down from the chicken noodle soup, but I found it to be even tastier. So, if healthfulness isn't a concern, the broccoli cheddar soup may well be the best first course option available in the Golden Corral buffet.

Finally, the third of four underrated items I tried from Golden Corral's soup section was the timberline chili. Compositionally, the dish is on the simpler end of the chili spectrum, mostly consisting of just beef and beans. While it's not pushing boundaries by any means, I found Golden Corral's execution of such a straightforward chili recipe to taste quite a bit better than I was expecting.

Most prominently underscoring the umami-rich meat-and-bean contingent is a tomato flavor, upping the chili's overall umami factor even further. That's all accented by some spices, though whatever blend Golden Corral uses to season its chili is subtle. With so few ingredients, its body is relatively thin, lacking the chunkiness of a more vegetable-forward recipe. All in all, an uncomplicated concoction still manages to add up to a warm, hearty, and comforting stew well deserving of a place in any chili-enjoyer's next meal at Golden Corral.

In and around the Golden Corral salad bar are a number of prefab salad options, covering the sorts of sides commonly found at deli counters. I didn't enjoy most of the prefab salads I tried and would largely recommend avoiding that section altogether. The sole exception was a surprisingly solid potato salad.

Texturally, Golden Corral's potato salad is soft, forgoing firmer chunks of potato and even potato skin in favor of a sort of pervasive mush. With that said, there are enough vegetables within that mush to keep the dish from veering into slop territory. Naturally, its potato and mayo components are not bold in flavor, but rather, provide a hearty baseline. Most of its flavor, rather, comes from a prominent vinegar taste, which was more prominent than I would have expected from Golden Corral. It's still potato salad pretty much by the books, but its satisfying texture and robust flavor add up to a nice starter or side dish.

Some Southerners may have a history with the dish, of course, but as a longtime West Coast resident, fried okra is simply not a dish I encounter all that often. With that said, I found Golden Corral's take to be more than just a novelty.

Unsurprisingly, the breading on the Golden Corral fried okra is the star of the show. That breading is a minor flavor bomb, between a light layer of breadcrumbs, ample salt, and a satisfying spice blend. The okra contained within that breading is no slouch, however. It's slightly firm and crunchy but not difficult to eat, and perhaps even more importantly, not slimy whatsoever. Altogether, it lands in a textural sweet spot, contributing heft but not excessive resistance. Each fried okra piece is also pretty tiny, making it easy to control portion size. For total newbies and aficionados of the dish alike, then, there's a lot to enjoy about Golden Corral's fried okra recipe.

I'm not a sweet potato guy. If regular potatoes are an option, I'll opt for those instead, 10 times out of 10. I also don't like mixing much sweetness into my savory food, so if I do end up with a sweet potato, I'm keeping it simple and seasoning it with just salt and butter. I mention all of this because I enjoyed Golden Corral's sweet potato casserole so much, it had me rethinking some of my long-held food beliefs.

Altogether, the Golden Corral sweet potato casserole is pretty dang sweet — on top of a mashed sweet potato base are melted marshmallows, and that's accented by a perceptible gingerbread spice blend too. It's a lot, but somehow not enough to push this dish into dessert territory. Between amply cooked sweet potatoes and that marshmallow topping, the texture of the casserole is thoroughly soft and gooey. When so much of the fare at the Golden Corral buffet falls firmly within the confines of stock American flavors, the sugary, soft, and spiced sweet potato casserole is a well-executed detour from the norm.

There's no shortage of rice in the Golden Corral buffet. Some of those rice options, like white rice and Mexican rice, can range from acceptable to poor. Yellow rice, however, is not just adequate but pretty tasty in its own right, making for what I found to be a clear standout in the carbohydrate department.

First of all, my taste buds determined this particular rice dish is yellow from cooking in chicken broth and maybe some butter or oil. Whatever the case may be, there are pretty prominent fatty and umami components on top of its standard rice flavor. Those components were so prominent, in fact, I enjoyed bites of the yellow rice on its own. With that said, there are plenty of protein options — Bourbon Street Chicken, for example — that can benefit from a carb base. The yellow rice is, notably, not a neutral carb but flavorful enough to elevate entrees like the Bourbon Street Chicken without going so bold that it alters their flavor. More than any other bread or grain in the Golden Corral buffet, then, the yellow rice is equal parts tasty on its own and a versatile team player.

Near Golden Corral's salad bar is a taco station, consisting of hard shell tortillas, soft tortillas, ground beef, carnitas, and nacho cheese sauce. While there are a few worthwhile combinations of these ingredients, I particularly enjoyed my hard shell taco with carnitas and nacho cheese sauce, to the extent that it was one of my overall favorite entrees from my multiple Golden Corral visits.

Key to my carnitas taco's success was the taco shell's insubstantiality. Golden Corral is never going to serve a tasty tortilla, so the fact that its hard shell tortillas are so thin that they contribute a bit of a crunch and little else to each taco is ultimately to their benefit. The carnitas, meanwhile, were the star of the show. Between a super tender texture and a rich but not overwhelming flavor — coming equally from seasoning and the meat itself — I found them to be of a surprisingly high quality level for a big buffet chain. Finally, the nacho cheese sauce didn't contribute flavor so much as it upped the overall goop factor, making my taco messier but more indulgent. As one of just a couple of the buffet's Mexican dishes, I was a little wary that the Golden Corral tacos might not taste all that great, so I was pretty pleasantly surprised with just how much I enjoyed my carnitas taco.

Golden Corral serves its BBQ pork shredded, like what comes in a pulled pork sandwich, albeit with some chunkier pork pieces than are standard for a pulled pork dish. Like the cheddar broccoli soup, what made the BBQ pork work so particularly well for me was its balanced flavor. Its BBQ sauce coating is tangy but not vinegary, and the pork is fatty but not overwhelmingly so. The dish, then, adequately hits every note that pulled pork should.

Beyond just resulting in a nice taste, that balance also makes the BBQ pork a great candidate for combining with other items. With the yellow rice, for example, it can become a nice pork bowl. Or, cut open a bread roll for a makeshift pulled pork sandwich. While a spoonful of shredded pork might not be the most appealing entree at first glance, the BBQ pork's versatility in particular is a boon to pretty much any Golden Corral meal.

First things first — I would describe the item labeled by my Golden Corral as "chicken pot pie" to be more of a chicken and dumplings dish, similar to Cracker Barrel's chicken and dumplings that divided Reddit. There was no pie crust to speak of, but it did pair a thick, liquid chicken base with soft, starchy pieces that, together, sort of approximated the bread-and-filling character of a savory pie.

Confusion over its name aside, I really enjoyed this dish. I thought its flavor, which exuded more than even a pot pie or chicken and dumplings dish, resembled a comforting matzo ball soup. That was due to how soft those starchy pieces were, combined with that signature sort of hearty chicken flavor that was likewise present in the chicken noodle soup. In effect, the so-called chicken pot pie is like the entree version of that soup, hitting on some of the same flavor notes but with more substantial chicken pieces and more carb content. Weirdness over its very nature might make this an unlikely pick, but its pronounced comfort food flavors make for one of the true hidden gems of Golden Corral's entree lineup.

There are a lot of straight up meat options available at Golden Corral, from whatever's featured in the carving station to signature creations like Bourbon Street Chicken. Sirloin tips are perhaps a bit unassuming in comparison, consisting of steak chunks in a gravy-like sauce. While its appearance may be reminiscent of a microwavable Salisbury steak, this is considerably better than most freezer-aisle fare.

That gravy is not compensating for a bland steak like might seem to be the case, but merely providing some moisture to what are admittedly drier pieces of meat. But making up for an unideal level of doneness is a pronounced char on each sirloin tip, and it's that aspect that makes the dish shine. Simply put, that charred steak flavor is really satisfying. Plus, like the fried okra, each sirloin tip is pretty small, so it's easy enough to either try just a couple bites of the dish or literally make a meal out of it.

So, the steamed cabbage isn't really great by typical food standards. It belongs on this list of underrated Golden Corral items, however, because the quality of the buffet's veggies is pretty dang low across the board, and the steamed cabbage was the one vegetable option I didn't just tolerate but actually enjoyed.

The downfall of virtually every Golden Corral veggie dish is a complete lack of seasoning. In the case of the steamed cabbage, that's not the worst because cabbage is more flavorful plain than a lot of other vegetable options. The method Golden Corral uses to prepare its cabbage also keeps it super soft and easy to eat, like a sauerkraut but without such a funky flavor. Based on just its appearance, I thought the steamed cabbage was likely to end up an afterthought, but it turned out to be my single favorite veggie from the entire buffet. The steamed cabbage is worth highlighting, then, as the item I would consider the foremost side for adding some nutrients to a carb-and-salt-heavy meal.

Pies are ample in Golden Corral's dessert department. On the Mashed ranking of desserts at Golden Corral, chocolate silk pie came in at number two and apple pie at number seven out of 12 items, with a few additional pies in the lower ranks. But that list lacks the blueberry pie — items can change from location to location or even based on time of day, after all.

That said, the blueberry pie isn't necessarily the single tastiest treat in the dessert department, but rather, it shines in its totality. Of note is an advertised lack of added sugar in Golden Corral's blueberry pie recipe. As a result, my slice was more subtly sweet than overwhelmingly so, but still rich and indulgent like a dessert should be. Of course, that lack of added sugar helped its natural blueberry flavor shine, which complemented its buttery pie crust nicely. The fact that it tastes so good despite a health-oriented recipe, then, really helps the blueberry pie stand out from some of the sweeter items in its immediate vicinity.

The single most pleasant surprise in Golden Corral's dessert department was my piece of white chocolate fudge. While the bulk of dessert station real estate at Golden Corral is taken up by pies, cakes, cupcakes, and puddings, a few trays of cookies are scattered throughout. Practically shoved into a corner on one of those cookie trays during one of my visits were preportioned squares of white fudge.

Unsurprisingly, this white chocolate fudge is uncomplicated — it's plain sugar, really, that serves as its dominant flavor component. But what elevates that simple sugary character is a creamy consistency that seems to expand in the mouth. It's both texturally satisfying and contributes to a feeling of sweet indulgence. Especially since I enjoyed it more than any of the cookies surrounding it, I would handily recommend at least trying a piece of white chocolate fudge if not making it the star of a trip to the dessert section.

To determine the most underrated food items from the Golden Corral buffet, I visited my nearest location in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas, on two consecutive days. While that didn't allow me to try every single Golden Corral food item, I witnessed how item availability can change even in the midst of a single visit. So, knowing that things can change from moment to moment or day to day, a comprehensive sampling is pretty much logistically impossible, and I tried to get as close as I possibly could.

With that said, I did sample more than 60 different items between those two trips, each of which I characterized with some brief notes. Based on those characterizations, I narrowed down the 14 items that I felt were the most underrated. While there was some overlap between my favorite items and what became the most underrated items, I eliminated from contention anything I felt was among Golden Corral's more popular offerings. Golden Corral had no indication prior to or during either of those trips that I was visiting for the sake of this article, and not merely enjoying an everyday meal.