bb.q Chicken Ellicott City — Restaurant in Ellicott City

Food 👍🏽 | Service 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 Do yourself a favor and visit another bb.q chicken location OR visit one of the various other Korean restaurants in the parking lot near this location.

At arrival I walked in with a bubble tea, the host said “no outside drinks,” so I asked if we could instead eat outside on their patio.

The hostess said sure.

I asked if we should go order at the counter or if he would wait on us - he said he would come to the table and take our order outside. After taking our order he said it would take 20 mins. Fine.

After waiting 35 minutes for a simple order (two 8-piece wing orders and fries), AND seeing many people who came in after us leave with take out orders - we started to suspect that they either forgot about us or that take-out is just the priority at this location.

So we went inside to ask about our order status. The server let us know that there was a “mix up” in the kitchen and it would be another 8 mins. He offered my sister a can of soda for the mix up. So we decided to just go eat inside. (There was only one other set of people eating inside, the restaurant was not busy for dine in at this time.)

Then he started bringing out part of our order (fries) in a bag. We were confused and he said that if we sit outside it’s to-go orders only. Well - we didn’t know that since he literally came to take our order AT the table outside.

So we said we’d just like to sit inside and eat after all since we had been waiting outside for a while - and he asked if he should bring the rest of our order in dine-in baskets. We said no, the to-go boxes would be fine.

Then another worker - perhaps the manager - comes to bring the remainder of our food to the table in boxes and says we are not allowed to eat to-go food inside! SERIOUSLY?!

So we communicated that the host did not tell us that our food was only to-go while we sat outside and that we only came inside because the food was taking a long time to come.

The manager was NOT apologetic but was argumentative about the time we waited for our food (he even referenced the receipt for our order time and said it wasn’t that long) - & basically said we can’t eat inside. We decided to just leave with our food.

Their “policies” make this place an unfavorable place to eat and ruined our Sunday lunch outing experience. Never...

I wish I could give it more than 2 stars, but this was not a good experience overall. Firstly, don’t tell me it’s a 20 minute wait when I legit sat there for 45 minutes (time stamped on my phone when I paid) and until I told the server “where’s my food?” There was no effort to even check or update me. The server was nice though, offered a free soda for the inconvenience. The Soju sunrise drink was also tasty, I ordered while I had my “extended” wait.

But the main point here is the food. The chicken, I can’t complain the crunch was good, my wife enjoyed it, but everything seemed too sweet, like every sauce has to be sugar/honey based? Also, why Why WHy WHY would you put French fries into a foil lined bag? Whose chaotic idea was this? Literally is made to capture and recirculate all of the water vapor and acts like a sous vide for the fries to very quickly become a soggy mess. Both the sweet potato and regular French fries became squishy soggy lumps of potato within the 5 minute drive home (and they had absolutely ZERO seasoning).

Let’s talk about pricing. The total without tip was 65$ for 24 mid-size wings, 2 side orders of (soggy) fries, and a sauce cup… really? That’s like upper tier restaurant pricing for a spot one drive-through hole away from being a fast-food spot (not that it could EVER be one with the wait times…). I had high hopes for Korean fried chicken, as it’s so (over)hyped on the internet… but this spot just...

We tried this spot for the first time last night and made it a good time despite some set backs. We loved the taste of the different chicken wings and the kimchi fried rice. We tried 3 different flavors and each one was tasty. The only suggestion I would say is less batter and more chicken on the wings!

One improvement I would recommend is to work on the speed of service and checking in on your guests more often. We waited longer than other guests for our food because our waitress forgot about us. We had to flag her down to get her attention and then she remembered our order. We also had to wait for napkins and water refills and had to flag her down again to remind her. When we finally caught her attention she thought we wanted the check, however we actually wanted to order more food and she asked if we wanted the food to go. It made us feel kind of rushed because we said we would like to stay here and continue to eat.

The placement of the tables near the front door makes it very cold every time the front door opens. We kept getting cold drafts of air every few minutes. We weren't even near the door but to the left of it, there were tables even closer to the door. I can't imagine how cold they were.

Overall the food was great, the customer service needs a little work and this place...