The Trolley Stop — Restaurant in Maryland

I eat regularly at 3 Restaurants , Honeybee Diner in Glen Burnie, EC Diner Ellicott City and Trolley Stop Restaurant in Ellicott city. Honey Bee and EC Diner have a Breakfast Special Mon. thru Fri. 6 am to 11 Am for $10 Bucks includes Coffee, 2 Eggs, Toast, meat and potatoes, which you may substitute grits at no extra fee. The Food is great there. If you wish to add an extra Egg or Cheese, it costs an additional $1.00 Dollar. Tolley Stop has great food as well but there is no Breakfast Special and the Breakfast Menu is very Limited and needs re- doing. The Prices need to be lowered to be competitive to other Restaurants. Service is great, with exception of the Owner when she comes in to collect monies etc. for 5 minutes, she has never in the past 2 years, that I witnessed while sitting at the Bar, she will never ever say good morning or ever interact with the customers at the Bar, as she is 3 feet away from them. Never asks them if their visit was pleasant or how did the like the food. There is no apparent day to day Manager to greet customers and ask them during their meal if all is OK. Where as at the other competing restaurants mentioned the owners and or managers are very cordial and they interact with the customers so they can get input on how to make their Restaurants a better place and thus increase volume of customers. The average Breakfast at trolley Stop is about $20.00 to $25 Bucks incudes coffee. The other Restaurants are half the Cost on their Special breakfast meals. The competitor restaurants wear professional and perfect Uniforms as opposed to Trolley where the servers wear basic street clothes. Several outstanding Employees there to mention a few, Herman, Chris, Tish, and Wilma employees of Trolley Stop that come to mind give great service. Hannah in my experience as a frequent customer being served by Hannah, she is absolutely the best server I have ever had. Hannah goes over and above to make sure your visit to The Trolley stop is perfect. I have noticed due to the extreme prices charged by Trolley Stop that is the reason I and many customers have cut back our visits from 5 times a week to 1 time, thus minimizing profitability to the owners of Trolley Stop. Parking for Physically Challenged Customers with a Wheelchair or a Walker are not in line with Federal and State requirements. Often these Customers have stated these concerns to myself many times. The recently installed 1 Handicapped parking space in front although it is so narrow and a vehicle parks next to the narrow space not giving any room for a wheelchair or walker to exit the vehicle without hitting the vehicle so close to it. Many times a driver must block the road in front to unload these customers first then the driver can pull into the much to narrow space. This issue is very serious and the owners need to widen the Handicapped Space to properly accommodate Physically Challenged persons. This is a NO Brainer, Shame on Trolley stop for not taking care of these Physically Challenged customers. The Men's Restroom appears to need a total remodel as it is very unpleasant to use, very shameful. It appears to not have been remodeled in the last 50 years. Actually the whole Restaurant needs much attention remodel. One can still keep the Historic effect with new floors and a redesign to make your visit more pleasant, this also is a no brainer to the Owners. I hope my suggestions will be helpful to the Owners of Trolley stop coming from someone who wouldn't mind coming to eat 6 days a week as opposed to 1 time a week due to the above...

We arrived around 7pm on a Friday, and found a space right in front. There’s plenty more parking in the large well-lit lot 120-feet up Oella Av. The restaurant was pretty busy, and the bar was nearly full, but we were able to walk to one of a good number of available 2-seat and 4-seat tables. A number of people wound down dinner through 8pm, so more tables and front-door-parking kept opening up.

It’s a casual retro interior with dark wood and exposed brick, true to the building’s 1833 origin. It’s darkly lit and welcoming in a homey way. Nice people, many from nearby towns. The lunch-dinner menu is casual, from sandwiches to a variety of mains. It’s average-priced, not expensive, and the servings are very generous. We had a hot Chicken Riggie linguini with artichokes, and a cold over-stuffed shrimp-salad sandwich on a hoagie roll with fries. They were both fresh and flavorful. The fries, since you asked, were piping hot, lightly crisp, and perfectly soft inside. We were served without a long wait, and the floor staff was constantly attentive.

Throughout dinner, it was mostly middle-age and older. The bar side nearest the door seemed like mostly regulars. But surprise, they have restarted their Friday 9pm karaoke, and by then a younger crowd really filled the place along with the regulars. This was “Christmas in July”, with some fun decorating and several themed songs, some by decades-long regulars! You have to see nattily-dressed Mike, well-known over for his spins and kicks! And you havent lived until you’ve heard Tim’s bawdy version of The Night Before Christmas :-). Singers ranged from could-be-pros to I-just-love-to-sing. The best part was that the great crowd joined in boisterously with the singing, and applauded every performance. It’s probably the most fun karaoke I’ve been to! We faded out around 11pm, and it was still going strong.

It’s a great casual restaurant, and a really fun Friday...

The food was good but service was very slow. My father said it has been the same all three times he had been there. I would not go here again. When we came in with my grandmother who uses a walker, they took at least five minutes to acknowlegde we were there. Then a server held up a finger at us to indicate we should wait while they cleared a table. Absolutely no consideration for an older customer. Not at all apologetic or even a normal level of verbal greeting for a customer. It took a long time to clear the table where they were going to seat us. There were two people clearing it, on and off, and it seemed to take ten minutes to clear a table for five. How did it take so long!? Then everything was such a long wait - to order the drinks, then to order the food, and when we asked for boxes to go we still had to ask for the check after our server disappeared for a surprisingly long time. Also, I handed my credit card to the server as soon as the check appeared so we would not be there another half hour. But he did not return the itemized receipt, which showed that gratuity was included for a party of five. If my mother hadn't told me that it was included (and I confirmed with the server), I wouldn't have known. Really some of the worst service I've...