Maxwell's — Restaurant in Kirksville

TLDR: Huge beer and whiskey selection, in the hundreds. Sandwiches and salads. Pleasant vibe. You can play board games if you want, and they have a weekly trivia night.

MENU: Mainly sandwiches and salads. Lots of potato stuff. Focus is on the beverages.

FOOD QUALITY: Everything I've had here has been fresh and well made. One tip I'd offer you is: if you order a dessert to go, ask them to leave out the wax paper. When they put a slice of pie or cheesecake in the styrofoam clamshell, they lay it on a folded piece of paper, and most of your sauce and whipped cream is going to be irretrievably trapped in the folds. If you ask them to leave that out, no problems. (If the management reads this, please consider ditching this practice. I'm assuming you're trying to make it easier for folks to extract the serving from the clam shell, but it isn't necessary.)

MENU FAVORITES: Maxwell's is the only place in Kirksville, that I know of, where you can get fried catfish - either in a sandwich, or just on its own. Try the homestyle potato chips. I'm a big fan of the peanut butter pie - leave it out on the counter for a couple hours to let it warm up a bit and soften, and the texture will be so much better.

MENU FAILS: Skip the sweet potato fries. They cover it with cinnamon and sugar, AND serve it with a caramel sauce. I can't imagine anyone wanting to eat sugar on top of sugar as a side to a burger. (I suppose they would leave the sugar dusting off on request, and swap the caramel for sour cream or something, but I've never attempted that.)

FRONT OF HOUSE SERVICE: I always get food to go, so I haven't experienced dining room service here. From what I have encountered, the staff is friendly and helpful. It seems like the staff is instructed to give out longer wait times than necessary - they usually say it will be about twenty minutes, but there have been times when the food was ready in as little as about seven minutes. Shout out to the hostess with the buttery phone voice.

KITCHEN SERVICE: The food is nearly always well made. The only bad experience I can recall is on one occasion in which the crust on my fried catfish was soggy, as if it had been fried in advance and left sitting under a cover to steam.

COMPETITION: I'd say the most comparable place is the Dukum Inn, which has a pretty mean burger. I'd say the food quality is about the same in both places. Both are worth a visit.

ATMOSPHERE: The restaurant is clean and pleasant. If you like bars, this one is probably the most extensive in Kirksville. Really comfortable waiting area. Clean bathrooms. There is a shelf of board games that you can select from, if you want to play a game with friends and have a beer. They also do a trivia night from time to time - weekly, on Tuesdays, if...

Been going to Maxwells for years but will not go back after tonight. The food is great and the staff has historically been great. However, tonight we ordered and my dish came out incorrectly (pulled pork rather than pork tenderloin). While frustrating, this initially wasn’t a dealbreaker. Mistakes happen especially in loud restaurants. However when our waitress came over there was:

No apology.

I was told the voice one would use to explain to a child that a pork sandwich and pork tenderloin are different. Note a few things: first I said “fried” when I ordered, there is no “pork sandwich” on the menu and another at our at our table got the tenderloin and I said “I’ll have the same thing as her” before stating my order. It was incredibly rude and off putting to say the least.

No discounts/compensation/coupons (we were not charged for the incorrect order).

The correct order took over 30min to arrive by which time everyone else was finished.

Another server came over and did apologize after and, I’m assuming after this server talked to the initial one, the first server came over and gave a lukewarm apology.

Honestly after having some of the friendliest servers at Maxwells it was shocking and I will be finding a new place to go for pork tenderloins...

Having been there several times and tried several entrees, the food was okay—not great, but the service was friendly. After a six month hiatus, my fiancé and I decided to try out the establishment again. It was getting late on a Thursday night, so we called ahead of time to make sure the kitchen would still be open by the time we arrived. After driving from out of town, we made it inside with 15 minutes to spare (the bar was going to still be open for three hours, so the establishment was not closing any time soon). Instead of being seated so we could order, we were told that the kitchen was already closed and only drink orders could be placed. I’m sure this wouldn’t bother some people, but when I worked in the food industry, when we said that the kitchen closed at a certain time, it actually closed at that time. We made an unneccissary trip into town to visit an establishment that wouldn’t honor its own hours. For a restaurant with average food, that doesn’t give us much...