Pappas Restaurant and Sports Bar — Restaurant in Maryland

Yesterday we went to Pappas Bel Air for an early dinner. Many available tables were empty, but not a clean one. Tops of partitions were covered with grease and dust, as were the windowsills. This was a warning of a mismanaged restaurant. My wife & I started with Maryland Crab soup. Neither of us could find a piece of crab. Large lumps of potato half-filled the small bowls and the surface was solid with chopped vegetables. The flavor was thin and vaguely fishy. The soup's not worth it. Go anywhere else for Maryland Crab Soup. My side Caesar Salad had good sized pieces of lettuce and plenty of Ceasar dressing. But the croutons overwhelmed everything with a deadly crust of heavy garlic salt on all sides. The chef should know that garlic is supposed to be blended with the salad, and not just crusted onto the croutons. Worst of all was my main course. The softshell crab platter. The two less than medium-sized crabs were good, in themselves, but the cooking was horrible. All shells and legs were an odd dark brown color, and crunchy. Every mouthful tasted of burnt crab shell, and left a bitter taste inside my mouth that lasted for an hour after the meal was over. Perhaps the kitchen is applying additives that make the crabs bitter (like the MD Crab soup also was). Perhaps the chef is just incompetent, and fails to supervise the kitchen. You hope the kitchen is not as dirty as the table-area. Perhaps the dirt adds to the flavor? The service was good. Our very young and innocent waitress was charming, but lacked knowledge of food on the menu. All in all, Pappas Bel Air looks like it wants to compete for the worst-managed restaurant (with worst recipes) in...

I'm sorry but I feel cheated and bamboozled. Food quality was disappointing and excessively overpriced, but service was very friendly.

I was hoping for the same great experience as their Baltimore location but nope.

The "Atmosphere" is made up of left over chairs and tables from the old Applebee's and a few TVs. It is nothing to write home about. It is too noisy a place for comfortable conversations. I hate to say it but I actually plugged my ears with tissue paper for comfort. I'm sensitive to loud noises so others might not be affected as such.

The food is of most importance and this place is lacking the touch.

The "fish and chips" was weird. There were something gritty and gummy in the mix. I believe it to be corn meal for crunch. It had turned gritty instead. I was disappointed.

The complementary bread and butter were very nice and delicious.

Other folks in our group had cold food (expensive crab cakes) served to them.

In the words of president George Bush the senior, "not gonna do it" when it comes to going back there again.

Lastly, I don't understand why the waitresses have to be so scantily dressed. This is a conservative community and these young ladies deserve more respect. Very sad. The men working there did not have their persons exposed as such. Thank God.

Addendum: To whomever responded back from this establishment, thank you.

But, I stand behind my morals that women are not sex objects and they deserve every respect. This here is Harford county. We are not in Las Vegas or another dark corner of this world. We respect...

My husband and I went for lunch. Have been dying to get to the new location and have a crab cake (Taylor Ave being the only other location I have been to) Greeted quickly by the hostess, sat and greeted by the server getting our drink order. Everything’s good so far. Got our food, I was so disappointed in my crab cake. It was dry and no flavor. Even after some doctoring I ate enough to at least fill my belly Along with the green beans being very bland. We finish and go to pay (using partially a gift card I got for Mothers Day). We were told by the server when the card was noticed that they were not accepting gift cards because the machine wasn’t workin? And there was a sign when you came in. So i went because I had the gift card and could not afford the whole meal; which I had to pay for anyway. Would I have known I could not use my gift card I would have left and came back another day. When I left I saw the “sign”. It was on a regular size piece of paper written so small you would have had to had it in front of your face to read it. It was at the hostess stand which was a good 8 feet from the front door; which means we could have not seen the paper, and should have been told to us when we got there, or posted on the front door. I will not go back to this location, as excited as I was for Pappas to come to Harford County. I will travel to go to...