Maxine's Cafe & Bakery — Restaurant in Bastrop

Maxine’s, more like Max-obscenely poorly run.

I hate to leave a poor review for any restaurant. But I feel that the experience I had today warrants leaving such a review. Let me start by saying, I work in the food service industry. I understand staffing problems and poor management, and I deeply sympathize with the overworked staff. It is not their fault that my experience was so poor, and I don’t wish to put any blame on our waitresses.

Firstly, I have no problem with a long wait time. I do however, have a problem with super underestimated wait times. My party of 2 was told that it would be approximately 8-10 minutes. We did not get our table until an hour later. If I was told upfront how long the wait would be, I would be much more understanding and chose to dine elsewhere.

On the day we were dining, we were told that they did not have any water by our waitress. This was odd, but whatever. The table directly next to us ordered water and received it, even though we were told there was no water available. This was bizarre and seemed like a lack of communication between staff and I have no idea how the other table got water but we couldn’t.

Our waitress changed 3 times over the span of 10 minutes, and we got our drink order taken twice. Odd, but I can look past this. We were sitting right next to the place where food is set to be ran to tables, and there was constantly a pile of food sitting waiting to be run with nobody coming. Multiple times I heard staff saying how they should be on break and were still working. Overall seemed very confusing and disorganized.

I ordered the Texas Benny, which was mediocre. I was only served one at first because the waitress said the egg was overcooked. This is ironic, because when I went to eat the Benedict they served, the egg was overcooked. (See photo) Why not just remake both eggs? I didn’t make a scene because at that point we had been waiting 30 minutes for our order and it didn’t seem worth it. The second Benedict did come back, with the egg cooked properly, so that was good. Really the food was nothing special and not worth the wait.

Staff were friendly, and again, none of this is their fault. Management needs to step it up and give their staff an environment they can actually provide good service in. I’ve heard this place has been voted the best breakfast in Bastrop, I feel bad that THIS is the best Bastrop has to offer. Y’all deserve better, and Maxine’s staff definitely deserves better. Probably...

Maxine’s is a restaurant in the small town of Bastrop, Texas. Many people talked about how good the food taste. Today, 20 March 2023, I was invited to meet some friends at this restaurant.

In this review I am going to cover 4 areas that I believe will explain my rating of 2 stars. The first area is location, the second area is service, the 3rd area is food price & the fourth area is the food look & taste.

The restaurant is located in a downtown area of Bastrop and surrounded by a number small local businesses. There is plenty of free parking so on my opinion the location is worth 5 stars.

The server started out with a friendly smile and made regular checks on the table before meal arrived. If this was all that was required of the server the star rating would be at the top. Let’s talk about service after the food was delivered and how the server handled a single complaint of an unhappy food order.

Once the food was delivered the food server failed to follow up & check the quality of the food orders. The server finally followed up on the food orders and failed to notice that one person had not touched their food. The person politely advised the server that the order was over cooked & over seasoned. The server offered to have the cook recook their order. The server returned with an order that was inedible. When the person explained that the order was inedible the server became emotional and stated she could no longer wait on our table.

This emotional outburst may have been totally unrelated to the order, but in my opinion the server should have simply removed the order & offered to take the item off the ticket. For the aforementioned reason I cannot give the service 3 stars.

The food is priced in the medium to high price range. I find it difficult to see how a family of four could eat at this restaurant for less then $60USD.

The food presentation on the plate would rate 3 stars, but the food itself had too much batter and was cooked too long, which made it look over fried. I am not a big fan of heavily battered deep fried foods, therefore my review may be unjustified regarding food appearance & taste.

My friend who is a big fan of fried food orders stated that the food was over cooked causing the meat to become dried. I observed the mashed potatoes on the plate looked like they were either instant mashed potatoes or dried. This is my reason for giving the food a one...

The food is great, just as we remember from the location in our last time, Elgin. We just moved to Bastrop 11/7 and decided we should try out the food at Maxine's here.

It was not a busy morning, maybe 5-6 tables with folks at them. There was no line waiting for seating but there is a sign that says please wait to be seated. It did take a few minutes for anyone to greet us and seat us. I was a little taken back by the lack of attention to us even though several made eye contact. It felt as if, it wasn't their job attitude was present. The first one was the young lady at the front counter on her knees reaching for items on a high shelf. She turned, looked and then went back to what she was doing. The 2nd was a lady walking to the front area (nothing in hand), made eye contact and then went about what she was doing. The whole time, no smile, no hello, no other greeting or confirmation that someone would be right with us. Either way, we waited because we are patient folk and new to the area.

Someone did get to us, helped us to our table and proceeded to take our order. Again, just done without any smile or sense of cheer in their life. I am not one to feel that anyone needs to be like that their entire life, but in the service industry at minimum, a quick smile and a hello go a long way.

We chalked it up to just an off day, no big deal really.

The food is and was great....

On our 2nd visit, the Good Morning was there from the staff that day. It made us feel more like locals that time. We love the food here.

Texas Benny, Jesus Christ, that stuff is good. There is always a lot of food on the plate.

I am sure the more we return, the better the experience will be. Coming from a small town, I understand that some "Mom and Pop" joints need a little time to warm up to newbe's. We also understand that, in some cases, it is best to give a big smile and light airy small talk in order to get the same back.

We appreciate the staff here, we understand. Overall, our experience here is great and it will get better over time as we learn their names and...