THE GOOD LUCK RESTAURANT
CORPO-SPIEL: When our first Golden Corral ® restaurant opened in Fayetteville, North Carolina back in 1973, a fledgling Golden Corral Corporation took a confident first step in the restaurant business, beginning a tradition of offering all of our guests real, wholesome foods in a family-friendly atmosphere at a great value. Nearly 40 years later, Golden Corral ® is well known as American's #1 buffet and grill.
Golden Corral's legendary, endless buffet features an abundant variety of delicious familiar favorites and continuous new menu offerings for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Golden Corral's legendary, endless dinner buffet features an enormous variety with 15 proteins including USDA, grilled to order sirloin steaks, pork, seafood, shrimp, and chicken. We are especially proud to serve USDA sirloin, aged and hand-cut daily by our in-restaurant butchers. END OF CORPO-SPIEL
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HEALTH DEPARTMENT: Golden Corral, New Port Richey, Florida. Investigated by Action News ABC
PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Golden Corral is known for its endless buffet. But just last month, the restaurant was shut down for rodent activity, with the inspector commenting that the number of rodent droppings found were "too many to count". Our camera discovered maggots, flies, and garbage littering the ground near the dumpster, just a few feet from the location on U.S. 19 in Port Richey.
This is the same violation state inspectors found just last month. And according to recent reports, they've had other problems, including rats. Daisy and her husband Henry are regulars at the Golden Corral and were surprised to hear the Port Richey location was shut down in April for rodent activity.
The inspector found fresh rodent droppings and wrote, "there were too many to count" under all the buffets, on dry food in the storage room and on kitchen baseboards and equipment. "I just told her I thought this place was dirty," Henry told us. So we went into the restaurant to get some answers.
"Recently, you were shut down for a rodent infestation?" we asked. "No, we had a hot water heater that went out," said Glenn Curtis, the Golden Corral manager. However, inspectors indicated on their emergency suspension of license report that the facility was closed due to a rodent infestation.
And state inspectors had been back eleven times over the past 14 months to make sure critical violations were fixed. "You also had some temperature issues as well, especially with food on the buffet. Does that concern you as the manager?" we asked.
"It's always concerning when they're not at the right temperature. But we're in full compliance with the health department. We take temperatures 4 times a day to make sure we are in compliance," Curtis responded. But that wasn't the case when inspectors checked on the restaurant last month.
On May 25th inspectors found beef, plant foods, milk, and ice cream all above 41 degrees, which could make customers sick. And on May 6th, May 18th, and May 19th inspectors found chicken on the buffet not hot enough, which can also sicken patrons.
"In looking at just the last year of reports...130 critical violations, 160 non-critical. That's really high, does that concern you?" we asked. "Oh yeah, it would be very concerning. That's why we take it real serious with the health department. Whatever they find, we try to react immediately to that, whatever the situation," Curtis said. And he's confident his restaurant is now clean.
"We wouldn't open if we didn't think it was a safe environment," Curtis said. We spoke to Golden Corral's corporate office. Bob McDevitt, Senior Vice President of Franchising, said, "The goal of every restaurant is to get the highest inspection grades. This kind of inspection is unacceptable."