A&J Restaurant — Restaurant in Rockville

There used to be an A & J near my home in California, and my family ate there quite often. Surprisingly finding one in Rockville was a pleasant surprise, and I looked forward to going. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as good as I remembered it to be. I went on a weekend and it was packed, but I got seated immediately at the only table left. I was given a paper menu to circle my order and another piece of paper for breakfast items. I ended up getting (knowingly) way too much food: sticky sweet rice roll: Rice was overcooked and smashed together. The contents inside the roll was a bit stingy (sugar, smashed peanuts, fried donut), and the fried donut inside wasn't very big. It wasn't too sweet which I appreciated though, and the peanut bits were good. cold no sugar sweet soybean milk: good, hard to mess this up. It was served in a bowl which was interesting. suan la mian (noodles in hot and sour sauce): I regret not getting thick noodles, but I've never had thick noodles with this particular dish. But, the thin noodles were spaghetti noodles or something; slippery and cold. It was cold, which is not how this dish was when I had it in the past. The flavor was awesome as usual, but the noodles themselves were just really disappointing. On the positive side, the noodles didn't stick together in the to-go box, and I ate them later. guo tie (pan-fried pork pot stickers): The bottoms weren't crunchy, and it wasn't very flavorful at all, despite all the meat. The meat was juicy and not dry though which was good. niu rou juan bing (Peking beef wrap): I have no idea why this has the word "Peking" In it, but this was by far my favorite dish I had. The wrap they used was great, and the meat inside was really flavorful. The sauce made it a tad too salty, but in general, this dish was great. Highly recommend. It's funny too because I didn't grow up eating this particular dish at this restaurant. My meal came out to be around $30 post-tax, which is acceptable. The amount of food I got can definitely comfortably feed two, if not three. Ambiance is a bit loud and seats are a bit uncomfortably wooden, but service was quite friendly, even with...

Let's get something straight, this place has one of the best fried dumplings around! I ALWAYS get an order of it whenever I come. However, that doesn't excuse them for lacking in other areas.

My last visit there left a bad impression on me. I'll go through the good stuff first though.

Their cucumbers were really good, the potstickers were good, and the beef and tendon noodle soup was pretty good. The other items were just okay, nothing to write home about. The food came out fairly quick, and the tea was good.

Now, on to my complaints.. the soup dumplings had NO SOUP! The servers were rather unresponsive to us, ignoring us a couple of times. The thousand year old egg and tofu came as a plate of tofu with an intact egg in the middle, along with a knife and fork. I've never been to a restaurant where they expect the customer to cut this up and mix it!

Then, they also forgot to give us a dish and just gave us the check. Finally, the check was not itemized, all it had was a total, so I'm not sure if they charged us for the missing dish or not. Unfortunately, I didn't even think about this or realize it until after the fact.

I suppose it's not the worst place to go, and if they only had one mishap, then I wouldn't care all much. But it's the combination of some bad food, bad service, and shady check dealing that prompted me to give them a crappy rating. I'm only giving them 3 stars because the rest of the food was still decent and the meal was pretty cheap, only $52 for 4 people.

Anyways, the place has gone down in quality imo and I will not be returning anytime soon.. unless I really want some fried...

I’ll start this off by saying what most reviewers are claiming too; the food is absolutely delicious, and it all came out relatively quickly as well. After hearing about this place on social media, we weren’t at all let down by the quality of the dishes and ideally, I’d be able to say that we left completely satisfied. When it came time to pay the bill, however, the woman who came over to handle it, who we believe is the manager of the business, began hounding us for at least an 18% tip minimum, despite the menu clearly stating that such a tip would only be required with party members of 6 or more. While I was more than willing to pay for it, if only to get the other people in my party out of the situation, she began making things difficult by asking me to download Zelle, as someone else had paid the bill. This entire interaction rubbed me the wrong way, knowing that my payment through Zelle went straight into her personal account, and not to the younger woman who served us, as well as the fact that I simply did not appreciate the manner in which she stopped us from leaving without paying what felt like gratuity, and by the end of it, our otherwise delicious meal left a sour aftertaste out the door. As many people before me have said before, do not come here expecting to be greeted by welcoming staff, and be especially careful when it comes to...