Best american restaurant in Bowie, Maryland (MD) 2024

Friendly hostess and server, but service was pretty bad. Ordered chicken nachos, pretzel sticks with beer cheese and chicken Alfredo. The pretzel sticks were ok but the dipping sauces were really disappointing. Nachos came out soggy and somewhat warm. None of the ingredients except jalapenos were fresh on the nachos, even found some fries in it. Chicken Alfredo took 45 min to come out, it tasted microwaved. At no point did the server come back to check on drinks or let us know where the chicken Alfredo was. Also ordered a long island ice tea which tasted awful, like half the glass was syrup and the other was bottom shelf liquor. Pretty disappointed in the overall experience. The restaurant itself seemed clean but had a mildew type smell. ~Julian

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This was our first visit to Rips. I’ve heard good things about it so I called ahead and made a reservation so we would miss out on the opportunity to try it while we were nearby. We were coming from an event, so got there 30 minutes early and went inside- it didn’t look too busy. We were told we would still need to wait til closer to our reservation time. Fine, whatever. However 2 more parties walked in after us and were seated before us, so we got up from the waiting area and asked- apparently they had the same reservation time too…. We were then seated right after we asked. We waited about 5 minutes for a server to come, ordered drinks and appetizers (they were out of potato skins). We got Calamari and Nachos. The nachos were pretty good and flavorful, although I wish we could have chosen a different meat. The calamari wasn’t terrible, but also not the best- my partner said it was edible. Next came our meals- the fried fish plate and Maryland fried chicken. My partner said the fried fish was good, but he was expecting more (it said plate full and it was only 2 pieces). His fries were pretty good too. I got the fried chicken- the Mac n cheese was good but not great, green beans were good but clearly canned green beans, and the fried chicken was crispy but very dry and flavorless. I only had a few bites of the chicken and decided it wasn’t worth eating and there was no point in bringing home leftovers. The best part of all was definitely the complimentary corn bread with sweet butter. The light at our table was really dusty and grimy. I was hoping this would be my new favorite place, but I don’t think we’ll be returning. ~Candice

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