Asian Court is located at 9180 Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City, Maryland. Asian Court is known as a Chinese restaurant for Chinese people. Their menu is very ethnic and foreign to many who frequent a typical Chinese restaurant. We have eaten here about a dozen times in the past few years. Places that serve dim sum are few and far between in Baltimore. Needless to say, China Court is a very popular place because of this. I believe it must have been featured in a review recently because usually the crowd is mostly Chinese. Not this Sunday, it was about 50/50. We arrived early to beat the crowd but even at 11 am it was completely packed and the wait was at least 10 minutes for a table(30 by the time we left). We were seated at a booth right next to the reception desk. This posed a series of issues I will lay out for you. The first issue was that every 10 seconds the door opened and yet another family squeezed into the already packed waiting area. The wind would whip right in and hit us. This forced us to eat with our coats on.
Another issue with our table, was that the carts barely ever came by. After the first cart came with virtually nothing on it it was a full 20 minutes before we ever saw another one. During that time the fork and the glass of water we requested for our 7 year old never came even though I politely asked three times. Eventually I just got up, walked across the room and helped myself.
Then all the carts came at one time. And went right on by our table.
They could not see us however because the crowd waiting for tables were literally blocking us from the rest of the room. The next booth in had the exact same issue. I had to stand up and wave my arms above the crowd to get the ladies to see we wanted service. At one point the crowd pushed in so close that a husband and wife sat there butts on the edge of our table. I jabbed the man's butt with my chopstick to point out the rudeness of his actions.
Previously, we have had a fairly good experience at Asian Court. We have looked past the grimy interior. We have pretended we did not notice the filthy bathrooms. When a dirty plate or glass was put on our table we have always politely asked for a clean one. We even pretended not to notice that the Chinese patrons are served and seated first, this is an ethnic restaurant, you expect that to some degree. Unfortunately, this time, our experience could not be over looked. We will never return to this place.
Rating 1-5? 0.5
I am sorry to my readers. I never panned a restaurant like this. It was however a very bad experience. I would hate for you to have the same experience.