Ponderosa

I don’t know why I agreed to eat here. This epitomizes the term «pondegrossa.» The cheeseburger was disgusting. My husbands sirloin tips were mediocre. The kids liked their food. Pallets are not yet refined.
Bathrooms are very dirty. Ceiling tiles throughout restaurant are water stained. DO NOT EAT HERE.

Avoid this place at all costs. Ordered the salmon and buffet — not expecting a gourmet meal, but something other than fast food since that’s about all you can find in the miserable little town of Bath. The salad was alright. Other buffet items looked like dog food. Salmon started out as bland and rubbery, and a few bites later I discovered that the salmon was still frozen in the middle. Got my money back. At least the manager was apologetic. Call to the Steuben County Dept of Health will be on tomorrow’s agenda. I just hope I didn’t get sick from salmonella poisoning.

Wow. Just horrible beyond words. And more expensive than it should have been. No steak, so ordered sirloin tips. They were ok. They had a chicken wing sign and I remembered the wings were great back 15 years ago. Guess what? No wings. We asked the waitress (who had a wing on her name tag) 4 wings n were told not until the crusty some type of casserole was done would they be able to bring wings to the buffet. My fiancée urged me and I almost agreed to take 3 playes, scoop the casserole out and put them randomly around the dingy building. Would’ve been fun n maybe people would have got wings. Regardless, if it’s hospital food or here, hospital it! I can’t wait to email corporate. Oh yea and there was some abrasive looking substance on the toilet seat in the men’s room. Can’t go into detail due to my disgust.

It was worth it to eat here just. to see what some people are ok with. I mean. This was an amazing experience. But amazing in the way that if like, your family was kidnapped and held at gunpoint, blindfolded in a basement for weeks on end –the only sounds being the baleful cries of mercy from everyone you love. but somehow you make it out alive. You’re worse for the wear but alive and you look at your family through bloodshot eyes and tears. and by golly you’ve made it. It’s that kind of amazing.
Places like this are the sole reason for communism and suicide cults. I don’t even know what that means it’s just what I feel.
Really though –this is why I can’t go to sleep on roadtrips with my family. Usually they leave the task of picking the food up to me. But the few times they don’t we seem to wind up at places like this.
The parking lot looked like the bombed-​out leavings of Kosovo in the late nineties. the pavement was untended, cracked and shifting like it too was trying to free itself from association with the Ponderosa.
We get inside and our young waitress looks like the after-​shot of the before/​after pictures of the dangers of methamphetamine and appeared to be a burn victim around the vicinity of her face and neck. The wounds look Ill-​tended and the bandages old, curling around the edges. The tattoos on her hands were really the most redeeming quality about her, the high-​quality sort you might get done in someone’s kitchen or in prison. She pronounced ‘buffet’ with a hard-​T, like Jimmy of «Margaritaville» fame.
We scanned the buffet before deciding to order and it looks like what would be in your trashcan after a cookout at a family reunion. I knew there was nothing to be had so I ordered the BBQ burger. I hate BBQ sauce but it seemed like something that would be the least likely to be screwed up. but that thought bubble burst when she she asked me how I wanted it cooked. I replied medium which for some people sure –that may be a little under, but she went on to inform me they only cooked them well and and extra-​well. Extra well?! I don’t even know what that means, nor do I want to know. At that point my leather sandals were starting to look like a reasonable alternative.
The seating area was dingy, tacky and slightly depressing but. that’s whatever. Our charming cashier with the misspelled version of her own name seats us and is our waitress –oh joy– and she brings our food.
I can tell from ten feet away the supposed med-​rare steak my mom ordered is on the darker side of charred and of course, she cuts into it and the mystery twilight-​zone effect of this place takes hold and the inside of the steak is cooked so well it looks like pork and not beef anymore. My burger looks like someone flattened it out with the weight of their entire body, and is just made of
burned crispy things. They must have known I was returning from Niagara Falls and were seeking to mimic it’s flow of liquid because there was enough barbecue sauce on my plate to serve all nine guests in the dining area. The bottom bun had basically liquified and there was also BBQ sauce somehow underneath it as well like they were trying to float the crispy meat-​innertube on a river of gelatinous, sickeningly-​sweet sauce.
I started giggling during dinner and my mom was like «I bet you can’t wait to write a Unilocal review on this place» and I replied that I was indeed chomping at the bit, that colorful prose was springing forth like some gift from heaven and I was but a mere conduit for it’s undoubted length and wordiness. Sorry for that. I get excited.
And it’s not like I have a history of scathing reviews, in fact i write like a 10:1 ratio of good to bad reviews. But this place? Ugh.
I’ve had better food In the hospital and the people there look more healthy and cheerful. I might be getting a meal there in a few hours anyway after this food digests and some foul bacterium rips it’s way through my GI tract.

ok so i have been to ponderosa 4 or so times and hated it everytime and could not understand why people going here regularly and i decided it had to be for the meals not the buffet because that cant be it. so tonight we went and decided to get a meal i got steak and it was really good only complaint was half of it was amazingly seasoned and the other half wasnt but it was a good steak so it didnt ruin it. with the buffet coming with the steak for only $ 4 more really made it more reasonable. the buffet though is very hit of miss everytime except this time tonight i had nothing really worth mentioning it was just flat out not good or way to old to bother eating more then a bite. this time there were a few things that i actually enjoyed so pretty much my words of advice would be get a meal and if theres something good on the buffet great if not you only wasted $ 4.

Wish I could give this no stars… we took one bite of our food and asked for our money back. As in the whole experience, we should have known better, they offer steak, chicken, seafood, hamburger they also offer buffet with the meal or buffet by self. We choose the buffet paid walked in. Went to wash our hands and that is when we had a sick feeling about this place. We could see into the kitchen and DIRTY does this kitchen justice. My son wouldn’t even eat the pizza or mac n cheese both his favorite. …the ONLY good thing about this place is we did get our money back… hopefully we will not get sick from the one bite everyone had.

Absolutely unbelievably DISGUSTING. We arrived from out of town for a week long in the Finger Lakes and couldn’t have started out on a worse note. The food selection consisted of about 6 different varieties of which brown lettuce was one. I bit into a buffalo chicken nugget to find it cold and completely PINK inside. There was a bug the size of my thumbnail crawling around on the table and another bigger one on the floor. The staff was a bunch of teenagers with zero customer service skills. The place reeked of some moldy old disgusting stench and not one thing we tried was edible. We left moments after sampling the old stingy stale and leftover food and will never return. Unfortunately, we all ended up sick the entire night as well. I now understand why the chain is no longer around in our area. They knew better.

Horrible, the food was old and dry on the buffet, I was very disappointed!

I could not disagree more with the previous review. We’ve been going to this Ponderosa for over 15 years, and have enjoyed every visit. The food is good, kept reasonably fresh for a buffet, and is served by a friendly and courteous staff. Everyone there is eager to please.
Don’t come expecting fine dining, to be sure. But if you expect a decent family-​restaurant experience, you’ll enjoy yourself.

NEVER NEVER NEVER eat at this place. It appears that they will be out of business soon enough but Ponderosa will make sure everyone who eats there suffers first. I can’t say that I have eaten at a Ponderosa in years but I don’t ever remember the experience being so bad and the food so inedible. We were there for the breakfast buffet and the eggs weren’t eggs, the bacon wasn’t bacon, the pancakes and french toast were dried out and stale… lets top it off with with spider crawling on the booth… done. Ponderosa… please just close your doors now before anyone really suffers.