Goldens on the Square Review

Address: 9 E Ct Square, Newnan, GA 30263

Tuesday	11 AM–8 PM
Wednesday	11 AM–8 PM
Thursday	11 AM–8 PM
Friday	11 AM–8 PM
Saturday	Closed
Sunday	11 AM–8 PM
Monday	11 AM–4 PM

Let’s be honest. I am insanely popular. I am like if Jessica and Heather fixed their friendship with Tiffani and Taylor, with Brandon and Hunter dating T & T without Jessica getting jealous at all. Can you imagine those six being best friends again? Newnan High School would never be the same.

Yes, I am the equivalent of six high school students.

I am regularly asked to go out to “drinks” or “coffee” or “lunch” or “help hide a cow’s body” or “kiss me out of the bearded barley.” I can’t go a day without being called out nightly, beside the green, green grass!

I typically say yes, but there are always going to be people I am more excited to meet up with than others. My friend Angela (whom I won’t mention by name) is one of my favorites to be invited to places. And when she told me that her (Angela) and her husband would treat me to lunch, anywhere I wanted, I knew exactly where I wanted to go: Goldens on the Square.

I’ve lived in Coweta County since I was 3 years old (I was born a baby), and have never stepped foot into Goldens on the Square. Even during my tenure as an employee with Newnan Theatre Company, whence we’d go business-to-business and ask if we can promote shows by hanging a poster, I somehow never footed them. Why? What was holding me back? Had they done something to me in a past life? Did the Barney song about “one is silver and the other’s gold” somehow influence my feelings on their name? Am I afraid of cornbread?

The interesting thing about me (Angela—wait, no, Harold), is that I don’t know and I’m OK with that. We live in a world of “every opinion on everything needs to be shared,” and saying “oh, I don’t know. I don’t have the information and haven’t cared to learn about it” is frowned upon. Well, baby boy, turn my smile upside down, cause I don’t know why I never went to Goldens and I don’t care to understand it!

Because the better thing is I DID IT!

My friend I won’t name (Angela), was excited to accept my acceptance of her invite to Goldens on the Square, so we set the date. Wednesday. 1:30 PM. Lunch. Sometime in September, I don’t remember exactly.

In my mind, Goldens on the Square was a sit-down experience, with cornbread, sweet tea, fried steak nuggets, and country twangs so heavy it makes The Andy Griffith show sound like Downton Abbey! I was imagining if The Redneck Gourmet had a baby with Cracker Barrel—you know, before The Redneck Gourmet went woke.

Boy Howdy and Daisy Dooley, was I wrong! (”Boy Howdy and Daisy Dooley” Copyright Harold 2025)

The first thing that popped out to me was that this place is HUGE! Goldens on the Square? More like Goldens on the Entire Square, amiright ladies? Second, I didn’t expect it to be buffet style. Which, since they had employees scooping the food for you, maybe it’s called cafeteria style? I was homeschooled. We ate with the chickens. Turin style. Thirdly, the employees didn’t carry twangs to scare a New Yorker; they were just a handful of lovely, friendly, babyfaces.

Now that my unnamed friends (Angela and her husband) and I had made it into the Goldens, the real, harsh judgment could begin:

What did they do poorly?

The good news about Goldens on the Square and the people making it shine is that not much was done poorly! For the most part, it requires a fine, nitpicky comb to find any lice. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from having kids, it’s that everything has lice, you just gotta find it!

The hallway to the bathroom is tighter than Mr. Personality’s teeth clinching a rose! If you need to hit that sweet potty, you’d better hope no one else is coming out! It’s a very minor complaint, and I didn’t end up peeing on the floor while waiting (this time), but I feel for any mother trying to get a stampede of kids to the bathroom during busy hours. Someone gon’ pee.
No music. And I don’t know if that’s the norm, but having such a big space, with an open kitchen and high ceilings, made the vibe feel a bit hollow at times. I can make y’all a playlist! Alan Jackson, Maroon 5, Cardi B, and Salty the Singing Songbook!
Sticky chair?! Uh oh! My friends (Angela) and I sat at a table for five, and the original chair my friend’s (Angela’s) husband sat in was so sticky that he moved to another seat. There are a lot of things that could make a chair sticky—some far more fun than others, but mystery sticky is one of the least fun. I didn’t have to sit in it. My chair was perfect. A throne fit for a mustached king.
“Newnan Time with Arnold”? And this complaint comes with an endearing kiss on the cheek, but the employee at the register was excited to see I was there, and then went on to refer to me as Newnan Time with Arnold. ARNOLD?!?! That is literally my least favorite A name in the world! (Angela doesn’t even crack the top ten)
Newnan has a flavor problem. And maybe that’s not a fair way to word it, maybe small town eats have a flavor problem? In a sense, I totally get it! Keep your flavors simple and predictable, and you can keep customers jussssssst happy enough. It’s what I feel about The Alamo, The Mad Mexican, Oink Joint, and now Goldens. None of these places serves bad food; they’re serving “safe” food. But it makes places like Meat N Greet, Knife and Stone, and The Redneck Gourmet stand out so strongly! I mention this anytime I review food as a reminder: I am a type 1 diabetic. If you are recommending I eat the sweetest, savoriest, sugariest meal possible, I’m not going to do that, and I’m not going to be able to judge it. My flavor palette has an asterisk, but have you met me? My entire personality requires an asterisk.
They should let me host trivia there.

What did they do well?

As mentioned earlier, the employees at Goldens are incredible. I remember one by name, Eli, that we put through the paces of explaining how ordering worked, prices, food recommendations, and smiling for photos. And not only did he provide us with excellent employee services, but he also just seemed happy to be around us. He couldn’t have been older than 8, 9, 18, or 21 years old, but he treated us like we mattered more than our dollars. Good parents? Good manager? Good all on his own because being a good person isn’t that hard? And even though I pick on the “Newnan Time with Arnold” employee, she fits the same description as Eli. If only she had known my name 😦
Goldens has options at a good price! While I know that buffet-style doesn’t always offer the freshest food, it is nice to be the one who gets to judge if the food looks good. No relying on a menu picture or a whisper from the devil on your shoulder to “just eat the cake, you diabetic bozo!” Goldens had it all laid out with a flat rate, and even if the flavors I did eat didn’t blow me away, there were enough options that SMELLED like I want to try them next.
Goldens on the Square might just have saved democracy, and it’s hidden inside their drink machine. You know the one. The kind that hums with quiet power, like it knows it’s doing God’s work. The ice? Perfect. Not just cold water pretending to be something better, but real, noble ice. The kind you HOPE takes your kid to prom. Crushed just enough to crunch but not enough to betray you mid-sip. And you want some soda? They got your ass. It’s like someone at Goldens made a sacrifice to the soda spirits, “Let there be options,” and the machine said, “Say less, daddy.” There’s Diet This, Zero That, mysterious fruit essences that taste like 2007 in a good way. I pressed a few buttons I didn’t mean to and accidentally made what I now call “Mountain Sprite Zero Fusion,” and honestly? It healed something in me. Forget the food (though, yes, it’s good). Forget the nostalgia of the square. Go to Goldens for the soda machine.
There’s a massive Christmas tree at Goldens on the Square and I love it more than reason itself. It shouldn’t be there — it’s too early, too bright, too merry — and yet it feels exactly right. The owners just did it, no explanation, no fanfare, just pure festive courage. I don’t need to know why. I don’t want to know why. It’s enough that someone looked at a perfectly normal dining room and thought, “Needs tree.” And now every bite of casserole tastes like goodwill and peppermint destiny. God bless whoever plugged it in.
Goldens has an elevator to The Oink Joint, which is already one of the coolest sentences ever spoken aloud. You can eat a plate of vegetables, then lower yourself — literally — into the smoky hell of BBQ punishment. It’s like a culinary doom engineered by people who just get it. Now, full disclosure: I’ve never actually used the elevator. I can’t confirm it doesn’t take you to some kind of BDSMBBQ dungeon, where the ribs whisper your name and the sauce spits in your mouth and tells you to hold it. All I know is, it exists, it’s mysterious, and I love the owners deeply for allowing such unexplainable magic to happen.
The fried chicken at Goldens is solid. The kind of golden brown that makes you nod to yourself a little before you take the first bite. It’s crunchy without being loud about it, confident without showing off. Better than any chain fried chicken, for sure, but not in a braggy way, more like it’s been doing this forever and doesn’t need your approval. You taste it and think, “Yeah, this is exactly how fried chicken should behave.” It’s comfort in a crisp suit of armor. But then the salad arrives, and that’s where things start to feel suspiciously impressive. The greens are crisp, cold, and arranged like someone actually cared about them. You expect it to just exist quietly beside the chicken, but no, it holds its own. Every bite feels like it’s cleansing your spirit in a strangely exciting way. I know it sounds uncool to say, but eating healthy at Goldens might be the coolest move of all. It’s the kind of salad that makes you think you’re turning your life around, even if you’re just eating rabbit dessert.

Goldens on the Square is like stepping into a dream where the furniture might be plotting against you with sticky insults, but the humans are knights in gold armor to protect you. The food is fine: solid, mostly safe, could be bolder, could be tastier, but at least nothing made me vomit face emoji. The salads are the shining star in a constellation of predictability. There’s a drink machine that knows all your secrets, a Christmas tree that exists because “yes”, and an elevator that may or may not drop you into some kind of pork-themed chaos dungeon, but hey, it’s an ELEVATOR! HOW COOL!

Minor annoyances abound; somehow, it all adds to the weird charm. Goldens flexed on ‘em

Grade: B+

Unnamed Angela: 8 out of 10

Angela’s Husband: 7.5 out of 10

How does our grading system work? Everywhere we visit will receive either an A, B, C, D, E, or F. Your typical grading system, with what we call homeschooling added to it. And in the wild wild west of homeschooling, you can get an E grade as well. Here is how the letters shake out:

F – Absolute failure of a business.

E – Everyone should avoid this place, but if you’re dragged there for some reason, at least it won’t leave a scar on your life.

D – I don’t recommend going here more than once, maybe twice. I promise you can do better.

C – It is totally normal to complain while you’re here, but there’s a lot to compliment while you’re Karen-ing it.

B – One of the better options–above average. I can understand why some would love this, but it’s not one of my favorites.

A – I am proudly a regular here and will do whatever I can to promote, grow, and inspire this business. We are blessed by their astounding existence.

Now, what about those pesky pluses and minuses? This is where you come in! Before I review anywhere, I go into the people and investigate a bit on how they feel. If the customers are saying trash, they get a minus. If the customers are saying recycle, they get a plus. And no limit exists to how many pluses and minuses one can receive! But typically, it’s only one. Let’s not get greedy. The locals (well, the locals that love Harold) feelings about the places I visit will absolutely influence the review. I can love a place with all my heart, but if you hate it then baby boy is getting a “-” slapped on its forehead.