Pappas Restaurant and Sports Bar — Restaurant in Maryland

I’m from out of town and we’re visiting friends in the area for a birthday weekend. So we asked around and we’re told I needed to get a true Maryland crab cake and this was THE place to go. If the only thing you care about is a good crab cake then I recommend Pappas and enjoy your food. But aside from the crab cake, I was not impressed with this restaurant.

We show up and the first thing we see is a sign at the front of house with a dress code. No problem with having a dress code. That tells me a lot about what they set their standard to be and that’s cool. Except it seems they have a higher standard for their guests than their service or employees.

We are seated and the place is dead. The waiter takes our drink order of 4 waters and it took almost 10min to get our water. The waiter continued to forget the bread service that comes with the meal even after being asked multiple times. But no worries the bread arrived about 2min before our main course.

So we go to order our food and my wife opens her menu and there is a hole as big as my thumb burned through the menu. She asks about it and we are told to just share menus. Meanwhile mine has the binding ripped in 3 different places to the point where I wonder if I sneeze on it if it will finish it off. Anyway, 3 of us got salads to come out before the meal. They consisted of iceberg lettuce with 1 cherry tomato, 1 slice of a bell pepper, 3 small onion slices and what tasted like store bought dressing that was neatly served in little plastic to go cups that all the take out restaurants use. Again, nothing wrong with using these types of cups or this kind of salad, but this is a place that makes sure the first thing you see is that they have a dress code to make sure the guests don’t bring down the “up scale” atmosphere.

Well my wife goes to unroll the silverware and notices her spoon has dried food on it. So she asks for a new spoon. We get it, things get missed. So the server comes back 5min later and he hands her one of those plastic utensil packs. You know the ones that have a napkin, fork, spoon, and knife along with a little salt and pepper packet. Again, they had a dress code.

At this point we go 20min without seeing our waiter again. And reminder there are now only 4 other tables with people dining in and half of those are with a different waiter.

So back to the 20min we waited between our salads and our food (at this point we had been seated for close to 40min already at the beginning of this 20min, also still keep in mind we are only 1 of 5 tables being used in a room advertised to handle 175 guests for banquets). So during this time the couple behind us got the wrong salad brought to them 3x, 2 other people complained of unwashed silverware, a lady said her coke was flat so the waiter went over and got a cup with ice and then pulls out a 2 liter bottle to fill it up, half the tables never got bread service, we were all out of water for 15 of those minutes and the other waiter would ignore our questions as to where our guy was, and the female employee avoided any eye contact at all as she walked through the room several times. But it’s ok because the little tea candle on the table keeps it feeling upscale and we are still in dress code.

Well at this point the waiter comes back and we ask for refills and he forgot what drinks we had (all waters). So he refills then with a pitcher that had no ice in it and by this point 90% of the ice in our cups was melted too. But at this point we weren’t going to say anything because we got the bread and our food 2min later.

So the food was ok. My brothers burger was still pretty rare in the middle even though he asked it to be medium. My SIL and me both got their “jackknife potato” which we were told was a loaded twice baked potato. Which is was, just not the whole potato. Pretty sure they did the potato then divided it 2 ways because they came in tiny metal to go tins.

I’ll skip on the waitstaff not fitting the dress code. I recommend just going to the bar side. This isn’t the 5* experience you get...

Today was my 4th time dining at the parkville location of pappas. Three prior ones was mediocre but today sadly was the worst. Based on today I oribably will not return. 1st their policy is to do one check. When ready to pay you must add each individual's portion of their check total and give the info to waitress to find on her record and then pay. We initially asked cud we have separate check -4 on one and 3 individual's. She said ok but this is how they do it - utterly ridiculous! She went around the entire table of 7 ppl getting their totals and pymt with a set tip of 20%. That was time consuming and embarrassing for the 2 bday celebration to sit through and hear all. Had we know, we wud have come prepared to put it all on one check and settle up later. For 20% or more, I appreciate a server that's attentive and thinks ahead for refills blah blah blah. For the most part, our server was nvr to be found. I finally got ger attention Fir more hot water but she flew away so quickly I needed another tea bag, sugar and honey. Then the crap hit the fan. One person's medium well burger came out red and running. Sge be anemic nauseated. Sent it back. Burger returned and upon examination, it was her sane burger with melted dripping all round onions bacon looking like new. Got the waitress again. She says she assumed the customer just wanted it heated up enough make it more done. Plus, this burger had BBQ sauce on it and the cook actually put all back together ( from where the customer had cut it up into several parts to eat it bc it was a very big sandwich to handle) like a puzzle to.pass it off as new. Well, she sent that back and I asked for the Mgr to see what cud be done. By this time, we were starting dessert and the customer was very agitated and wanted nothing. The Mgr cane to reiterate what was told to her by her servers which was partly true. Mgr offered to remake the food at the customers cost. I asked why can't it be complimentary fir her triuble. She was nvr able to dine with us leisurely and wud still have to take it home. Mgr agreed. Listen. The food is ok-passable. But I only trust about 3 places to do ribs. I had hard, stringy, splinter of wood or charred ribs - BUT today these ribs were to die for! They were absolutely perfect. Cucumber salad was lacking flavor and dressing. The mashed potatoes seemed instant. My overall experience was a 2 star. I would not pick it if I had a choice to return. But if I had ro go out of a majority pick I'd go with grave reservations. Get the amazing Sante Fe' eggrolls and call it a day. Strawberry shortcake was very good as well. Hope this helps. Keep in mind, results vary depending on the day and time for servers and food prep etc. Guess I'm definitely not going on a Sunday at 1 ever again!

Also, owner / operator needs to find another place for servers to sit in the same dining room working on table settings, beverage stations in the open in the way of hustling and bustling servers not very conducive for having a pleasant calm good meal at not "golden corral", Arby's, pizza hut prices and atmosphere experiences.

We have a new pappas that opened up in churchville in harford cty. I'll try them one more time at the new location and see if the chain can be redeemed in...

I have been to this restaurant only three times. Let me say the third time, I had the most horrible, most rude and most disrespectful experience. My girlfriend and I decided to come here for our anniversary. We got dressed up and arrived about 8:30pm on a Tuesday night. No hostess was at the booth to greet us. After a wait, we were taken to be seated.

The server was going to seat us but the table was dirty and had to be cleaned. We waited a few more minutes for the table to be cleaned. We were seated finally. We were checking out the menu. We ordered an appetizer, two drinks and our meals.

Just to fast forward we asked do we have time to finish our drinks and dessert. The server told us to "please take your time". I paid the bill and gave a 25% tip. The server tells us to take our time again. My girlfriend and I was talking, finishing our drinks and we get approached by a man who was Caucasian and bald.

I am guessing he was the manager. He did not greet us, state his name or position. He just tells us to "take it to the door" extremely rude! We then asked if we could finish our drinks because the server literally just told us to take our time. He then says "Nope, because I need to lock the doors and we are closing" in a rude tone.

The time was 10:10pm. They close at 10pm. Never heard of a restaurant of supposedly good service, fine dining that leave right at close. Most of the time they wait for at least 20 minutes to clean up and etc. Also, we asked if we had time to finish because we could have took the remainder of our food with us. However, the server told us to take our time. The way how we were approached by the manager was, extremely and disrespectful. Let's be honest.. I am 100% sure if we were of a different ethnicity, we would have been able to finish our drinks.. I can tell that by the way we were approached by the manager and talked to by him.

There were many different ways the so called manager, could have approached us in a respectful way. I am not afraid to call anyone out. I don't care what celebrities or whoever claim you have the best crabcakes because to me you don't.. I don't care who's face you smiled in or laughed in to get a so called status. I don't care Tim Miller. Yes!! I just called and asked who was the manager who closed that night and the worker gave me your name. I am a firm believer of, never spend your money where your not treated right. I will never recommend this restaurant to family or friends. I hope others of my community see this review and realize that this is just a place that will take your money and treat you like trash...