BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse — Restaurant in Bowie

TLDR — Visited with a large party and was quoted a 30+ minute wait. Waited an hour+, and they had a clean table but refused to seat us. After wasting 90 minutes, we took our business elsewhere. Details below…

Don’t bother with this place. We sure won’t again. Our visit on 12/17/23 will be the last time we ever try to eat at BJ’s in Bowie. In the past when we have gone, the food is always hit or miss and the service is highly lacking. However, we had some family visiting that picked BJ’s out of all of the nearby restaurants, and they really wanted to try it out. We arrived around 3:00 pm and put our names on the list. Host (same guy we’ve usually seen at the host’s stand, who is never friendly or smiles) says the wait will be 30+ minutes. Okay, fine. Family is willing to wait.

There are 12 of us total — 8 adults, 4 kids. We wait around in the lobby. As the time passes, we never get updates unless we approach the host and ask for them ourselves. 30 minutes pass… 45 minutes pass… Nearing an hour… Eventually, another large party gets up to leave, and we are told that will be our table once it is cleaned. The host goes over and cleans this large table by himself. He moves slower than molasses, and takes forever preparing the table (I don’t understand why no one was helping him). Here’s the kicker — when the table is finally cleaned, we still aren’t seated!

When we ask the host what’s going on (because he still isn’t giving us updates) he says he needs to ask his manager if it’s okay to seat us. Excuse me? That makes no sense. At this point we have been waiting over an hour (double the quoted wait time) and are hungry and frustrated. Host says they need to take the orders of another large party before they can seat us, because they don’t want to “crash the kitchen” with too many orders. We ask to simply sit at the table, with the understanding that they won’t get to us for a bit, because we wanted to get out of the lobby. It would have been nice to just sit at the table and let the kids sit in high chairs and color, while we chatted and waited. Host asks the manager if we can simply just sit down. Manager apparently says no.

As we near the 90 minute waiting mark, we ask to speak to the manager directly. The manager (I don’t remember his name) comes to speak to us. He is less than apologetic or empathetic to our wait time, which we stress was wildly mis-quoted. He reiterates the whole “crashing the kitchen” speech and says we can’t just sit at the table. He says he will seat us in the next 10 minutes, but we aren’t buying it.

After waiting 90 minutes, we went to another restaurant that was arguably just as busy as BJ’s was (I saw a handful of large parties). We were sat immediately and received wonderful service there. If we had just been quoted an accurate wait time, we could’ve decided to leave BJ’s sooner. I can understand that wait time is an estimate, but being quoted 30+ minutes and waiting 3 times that long (90 min) without ever being seated is ridiculous. If the wait was going to be longer than originally quoted, we should have been given periodic updates to reset expectations. Horrible experience and...

On Thursday, May 22nd, my family and I arrived at this location with a 7 PM reservation to celebrate my younger cousin’s graduation. What should have been a joyful evening quickly turned into a deeply unpleasant experience, thanks in large part to the behavior of the manager on duty, Timothy Relph.

Let me be clear: I have worked in food service management for years, and I have never encountered such unprofessionalism, rudeness, and complete disregard for customer service in my life. Despite having a reservation, we were told upon arrival we would need to wait an additional 45 minutes. I understand busy nights happen — but the attitude we received was completely unacceptable. No apology. No courtesy. Just cold, dismissive behavior.

The situation escalated when another staff member politely attempted to help us, and Mr. Relph stepped in to chastise him — in front of us — while physically inserting himself between my aunt and the server. When my aunt questioned his behavior, she was met with an extremely rude and condescending attitude.

Once finally seated, our server explained the Thursday special, which included ribs. I opted for a full rack with an upcharge. Moments later, we were told only one portion of ribs remained, and we’d have to change or split our meals. I respectfully asked if we could substitute the ribeye for the same deal with an upcharge. The waiter wasn’t sure, so I asked him to check with the manager.

Mr. Relph returned with an aggressive, confrontational tone. When I asked my question, he snapped, “I didn’t hear you. Say it again,” with absolutely no courtesy. Even if the answer had been no, a simple, professional explanation would have been fine. Instead, he responded with unnecessary sass and blame, saying, “That’s not our fault it’s sold out — it sells well.”

He then sarcastically remarked, “Oh, you only want the ribs?”, and after realizing how inappropriate his tone had been, tried to backpedal by having the server offer a discounted ribeye meal. At that point, I had lost all appetite.

I left this restaurant feeling disrespected, disappointed, and honestly shocked. This kind of behavior from a manager is beyond unprofessional — it’s damaging to the brand and the morale of the team working under him. One thing I’ve learned in this industry is that kindness matters. What I experienced from Timothy Relph was the complete opposite.

I strongly urge corporate to take a serious look into the management practices at this location. This wasn’t just bad service — it was...

So first impressions were that BJ’s was going to be a delightful dinner in a great atmosphere. When we arrived, the restaurant was nearly at half capacity. We were seated fairly quickly as they were in the middle of turnover. We were handed the menu when we sat down, and roughly 5 minutes later our waitress arrived. We had already figured out what we wanted and were able to order everything then. She was very kind and respectful. While looking around, we noticed there were dustballs all over the pictures on the wall. Which didn't settle great considering they put my deep-dish pizza right below the photos. There was a decent amount of dust around the area but nothing too crazy. The bathrooms were clean, the booths were clean, and the floors appeared to be clean as well. As I unraveled my utensils, my forks had remnants of someone else’s meal on them. Oh well, there were two available so no big problem here. We ordered fried mac balls as an appetizer. They were sub-par. They came out hot which was great but just lacking in flavor. For the main course, I had the pepperoni deep dish and my counterpart had the BBQ smokehouse burger. The pizza came out warm, but definitely not what I expected. There was actually no sauce on the pizza, for some they may enjoy that but as I was expecting a saucy deep dish. The burger came out well done, after requesting medium-rare. But the flavor was pretty good. The fries were cold and really just uneatable. After this, I requested some sauce for the pizza. Our waitress was dealing with a party of 20 that had been put into her area. As expected she had her hands full. We were definitely overshadowed by the party and waited 15 minutes after finishing our meal for a check up. Which we wanted to get the Pazookie to go and bill so we could just leave as things were taking too much time. We waited for 15 minutes before noticing there was a sign on the wall to pay for your meal. I scanned to notice that our dessert was never added. After asking another waitress if she could check on the dessert and the status of the bill, 5 minutes later our waitress arrived with the bill saying our dessert would only be 2 mins more. We paid our bill while we waited for the dessert. It took 10 mins before it arrived, assuming it was never ordered until we re-engaged with our host. Overall, I'd give BJs a 5/10. I think our waitress had too much going on and needed assistance from others. Overall, she was very kind, just too much to handle.

Food: 2.5/5 Cleanliness:...