Blue Collar Dining Deathmatch: Golden Corral vs Sizzler
In a quirk of fate, I happen to live within a mile of both a Sizzler and a Golden Corral. I've driven past the former hundreds of times in the three-plus years since I moved to Murrieta, California (City motto: "What was that loud boom?") and the latter opened about a year ago, much to the excitement of the local social media community groups. Up until a couple weeks ago, I'd never set foot in either. Say what you will about the Temecula Valley in general and Murrieta in particular, but you can't claim there aren't plenty of interesting places to eat, so neither of these two chain restaurants held any appeal as anything other than a punchline.
Recently, though, spurred by semi-fond memories of Sizzler back when I was in my 20's, on a tight budget, and without a way to cook for myself, combined with my girlfriend's new keto diet, I thought I'd give these two popular, populist restaurant chains a visit. Here's how it went down:
Golden Corral #2675
40345 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
Murrieta, CA 92563
951-696-2452
TL;DR
Food: 👵 (out of a possible 5 grandmas)
Atmosphere: 🌑 (only rates one moon, as there is no atmosphere)
Service: 🙈🙈 (out of a possible 5 see-no-evil monkeys)
Price/Value: 💸(cheap, and it shows)
GC bills itself as "America's #1 buffet and grill" and Google tells me that they currently have 205 locations. The one near me is one of the newest, built about a year ago from the ground up, and it's had a constant flow of customers ever since. We visited on a Sunday afternoon, early enough to get in on the lunch pricing. Despite being in what should have been a somewhat slack period between the lunch and dinner rushes, the place was relatively full - lots of families and seniors - so I can't imagine what it must be like at a peak (or having to wait to get a table!)
Although this location is literally brand-new, you would be hard pressed to tell whether the interior dated from the late 80's to the present. It's straight-up hospital cafeteria in terms of comfort and style, from the muted earth tone paint to the glaring fluorescent lighting in the office-style drop ceiling. Un-bussed dishes piled up on the table next to ours throughout our stay as our fellow diners cleared their own tables before heading back to the trough, and our server also seemed content to use it as a holding area as well.
GC boasts of 150 different buffet items, and I don't dispute that number. The miracle of modern food supply services makes it possible to offer a staggering variety of different things on the menu with a consistent, if not necessarily outstanding taste, and GC is definitely a solution when dining out with people who have specific tastes or dislikes (picky eaters, in other words). If you can't find at least something you can eat at the Corral, you aren't trying.
I tried to get a cross section of some different proteins, seeing as how I was following a sort of "Christmas and Easter" keto faith at the time, and grabbed some of their "famous" pot roast, a fried chicken thigh, pulled chicken in gravy, Bourbon Street chicken (see a theme here?) meatloaf, and smoked Cajun sausage. I didn't step up to a cooked-to-order steak or any of the carved meats, as the BOH staff seemed fully occupied by staring at the items already on the grill, willing them to char. Assorted sides I tried included comfort foods like mashed potatoes and mac & cheese.
The verdict? The pot roast, promoted by several large posters placed around the dining room, was easily the worst of the entrees I tried. Salty, tough, and oddly spiced, I had a couple bites and tapped out. The best? The fried chicken and the meatloaf, which were good enough to go toe to toe with the Vons hot deli case. The other entrees were just tired, for the lack of a better word. Like they had resigned themselves to being left in the steam tray and assumed that dried-out, overcooked taste the moment they arrived there. The sides were also lackluster, proving that despite what Paula Deen may have taught us, butter and salt can't cure everything.
Due to the aforementioned agnostic keto thing, dessert was skipped, but that might have been GC's strong suit as there was a wide selection there, from soft serve (though the machine was making noises like a goose caught in a wine press) to hand-spun cotton candy and chocolate dipped cake pops. I was gratified to see that the chocolate fountain was walled off from patrons behind plexiglas like the teller in a Compton Wells Fargo, unlike buffets of old where the fountain's contents were likely to contain a large fraction of recirculated biological contaminants introduced by the hands of innumerable children.
The Bottom Line:
At under $22 for all you can eat for two (not including tip, but including soft drinks) you are getting what you pay for at Golden Corral. Just don't expect it to be an uplifting experience.
Sizzler - Murrieta Hot Springs Road
40489 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
Murrieta, CA 92563
951-698-5623
TL;DR
Food: 🍖🍖 (out of a possible 5 meat hunks)
Atmosphere: 📺📺📺📺 (Like your standard TGIChiliBees, with plenty of screens to watch sports if that's your thing)
Service: 👌👌👌👌 (Four "OK" symbols, not white power hand signs)
Price/Value: 💸💸💸(spendy for what you get)
On the heels of the Golden Corral Debacle (as it was ever after referred to) we decided to check out Sizzler a couple weeks later. This proletarian steak house chain, with its unusual order-at-the-counter, served-to-your-table system, was the go-to date night destination of my college years because you knew exactly what you were getting, and didn't have to spend a ton of money to get it. Today, some things have definitely improved - the interior is bright without being glaring, comfortable, and contemporary, compared to the way I remember from three decades ago - while other things have remained the same or declined from the halcyon memories of youth.
Food quality was as I recalled. You didn't go to Sizzler because you wanted a great steak. You went because you wanted meat, a baked potato, and change back from your $20. This time around, I ordered up the steak and 1/2 dozen jumbo crispy shrimp ($15.49) and got the upsell to the larger 8-ounce steak (6 is standard, I believe - I tried to look it up, but the Sizzler website is bereft of nutrition information other than calorie counts).
I got exactly what I ordered. The shrimp were good, but anyone with clean fryer oil and a SYSCO account can pull that one off. The baked potato did what it said on the tin(foil), and the steak was more or less cooked to the mid-rare I asked for, trending more toward medium despite having not one but two little plastic stabby things saying medium rare.
But let's be honest. Despite Sizzler's "steak hand cut daily" splash on the website, the beef was nothing to get excited about. If you came over to my house for a cookout and I gave you this steak, I would be apologizing. Like Rudy, it was small and tough, but it definitely stopped trying to make the team and ended up at Sizzler instead. So, pretty much exactly what I remember from my youth.
The Bottom Line:
We dropped $55+ before tip on a dinner for two with a side of nostalgia, and got exactly what I expected. Sizzler's nice enough inside, and our server was great, but if you want a corporate sirloin, you are better off heading for Steakback Outhouse at this price point.
---
That's it for this Blue Collar Dining Deathmatch! If you want to support my snarky prose, consider the following affiliate Link:
Buy a nice steak for your Nana...
Recently, though, spurred by semi-fond memories of Sizzler back when I was in my 20's, on a tight budget, and without a way to cook for myself, combined with my girlfriend's new keto diet, I thought I'd give these two popular, populist restaurant chains a visit. Here's how it went down:
Golden Corral #2675
40345 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
Murrieta, CA 92563
951-696-2452
TL;DR
Food: 👵 (out of a possible 5 grandmas)
Atmosphere: 🌑 (only rates one moon, as there is no atmosphere)
Service: 🙈🙈 (out of a possible 5 see-no-evil monkeys)
Price/Value: 💸(cheap, and it shows)
GC bills itself as "America's #1 buffet and grill" and Google tells me that they currently have 205 locations. The one near me is one of the newest, built about a year ago from the ground up, and it's had a constant flow of customers ever since. We visited on a Sunday afternoon, early enough to get in on the lunch pricing. Despite being in what should have been a somewhat slack period between the lunch and dinner rushes, the place was relatively full - lots of families and seniors - so I can't imagine what it must be like at a peak (or having to wait to get a table!)
Although this location is literally brand-new, you would be hard pressed to tell whether the interior dated from the late 80's to the present. It's straight-up hospital cafeteria in terms of comfort and style, from the muted earth tone paint to the glaring fluorescent lighting in the office-style drop ceiling. Un-bussed dishes piled up on the table next to ours throughout our stay as our fellow diners cleared their own tables before heading back to the trough, and our server also seemed content to use it as a holding area as well.
GC boasts of 150 different buffet items, and I don't dispute that number. The miracle of modern food supply services makes it possible to offer a staggering variety of different things on the menu with a consistent, if not necessarily outstanding taste, and GC is definitely a solution when dining out with people who have specific tastes or dislikes (picky eaters, in other words). If you can't find at least something you can eat at the Corral, you aren't trying.
I tried to get a cross section of some different proteins, seeing as how I was following a sort of "Christmas and Easter" keto faith at the time, and grabbed some of their "famous" pot roast, a fried chicken thigh, pulled chicken in gravy, Bourbon Street chicken (see a theme here?) meatloaf, and smoked Cajun sausage. I didn't step up to a cooked-to-order steak or any of the carved meats, as the BOH staff seemed fully occupied by staring at the items already on the grill, willing them to char. Assorted sides I tried included comfort foods like mashed potatoes and mac & cheese.
The verdict? The pot roast, promoted by several large posters placed around the dining room, was easily the worst of the entrees I tried. Salty, tough, and oddly spiced, I had a couple bites and tapped out. The best? The fried chicken and the meatloaf, which were good enough to go toe to toe with the Vons hot deli case. The other entrees were just tired, for the lack of a better word. Like they had resigned themselves to being left in the steam tray and assumed that dried-out, overcooked taste the moment they arrived there. The sides were also lackluster, proving that despite what Paula Deen may have taught us, butter and salt can't cure everything.
Due to the aforementioned agnostic keto thing, dessert was skipped, but that might have been GC's strong suit as there was a wide selection there, from soft serve (though the machine was making noises like a goose caught in a wine press) to hand-spun cotton candy and chocolate dipped cake pops. I was gratified to see that the chocolate fountain was walled off from patrons behind plexiglas like the teller in a Compton Wells Fargo, unlike buffets of old where the fountain's contents were likely to contain a large fraction of recirculated biological contaminants introduced by the hands of innumerable children.
The Bottom Line:
At under $22 for all you can eat for two (not including tip, but including soft drinks) you are getting what you pay for at Golden Corral. Just don't expect it to be an uplifting experience.
Sizzler - Murrieta Hot Springs Road
40489 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
Murrieta, CA 92563
951-698-5623
TL;DR
Food: 🍖🍖 (out of a possible 5 meat hunks)
Atmosphere: 📺📺📺📺 (Like your standard TGIChiliBees, with plenty of screens to watch sports if that's your thing)
Service: 👌👌👌👌 (Four "OK" symbols, not white power hand signs)
Price/Value: 💸💸💸(spendy for what you get)
On the heels of the Golden Corral Debacle (as it was ever after referred to) we decided to check out Sizzler a couple weeks later. This proletarian steak house chain, with its unusual order-at-the-counter, served-to-your-table system, was the go-to date night destination of my college years because you knew exactly what you were getting, and didn't have to spend a ton of money to get it. Today, some things have definitely improved - the interior is bright without being glaring, comfortable, and contemporary, compared to the way I remember from three decades ago - while other things have remained the same or declined from the halcyon memories of youth.
Food quality was as I recalled. You didn't go to Sizzler because you wanted a great steak. You went because you wanted meat, a baked potato, and change back from your $20. This time around, I ordered up the steak and 1/2 dozen jumbo crispy shrimp ($15.49) and got the upsell to the larger 8-ounce steak (6 is standard, I believe - I tried to look it up, but the Sizzler website is bereft of nutrition information other than calorie counts).
 |
| Yep, that's the Sizzler I remember... |
But let's be honest. Despite Sizzler's "steak hand cut daily" splash on the website, the beef was nothing to get excited about. If you came over to my house for a cookout and I gave you this steak, I would be apologizing. Like Rudy, it was small and tough, but it definitely stopped trying to make the team and ended up at Sizzler instead. So, pretty much exactly what I remember from my youth.
The Bottom Line:
We dropped $55+ before tip on a dinner for two with a side of nostalgia, and got exactly what I expected. Sizzler's nice enough inside, and our server was great, but if you want a corporate sirloin, you are better off heading for Steakback Outhouse at this price point.
---
That's it for this Blue Collar Dining Deathmatch! If you want to support my snarky prose, consider the following affiliate Link:
Buy a nice steak for your Nana...
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