Max's Restaurant Cuisine of the Philippines — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

Max's Restaurant is a historic Filipino food chain that brings traditional, Filipino comfort food to Virginia Beach. Yet for now, stay away from dine in and stick to takeout until they figure out how to run things efficiently, and move past the growing pains of opening a new restaurant.

First off let's start with the positives.

The food is affordable, and delicious (despite arriving cold, but we'll touch on that later). Pricing is affordable with generous portions, served family style. Between myself and my wife, we spent around $75 ($includes 20% tip) for a whole fried chicken, laing, fried rice and a side of lumpia. The chicken was perfectly cooked and seasoned, crispy and flavorful on the outside, yet juicy, fatty and tender on the inside. The laing was flavorful, balancing the umami and salt from the shrimp with the fresh, sweetness of the coconut mil. All of the food had tremendous flavor, and consistent with my experience in other Max's I've been to in the Phillipines. The service was great as long as I proactively approached my servers and the manager. The staff were confused, stressed and fatigued, but nonetheless were friendly. The restaurant having only been open for three days.

Seating is comfortable, and our table was clean. The atmosphere is what you'd expect from any Max's, modern-chain logos with a traditional flair. The establishment had about 20 or so tables, with a sealed off space for special occasions and events.

Now on to why we waited for over 2 hours and some feedback from and outside perspective for improvement.

We arrived early for dinner, at 5:30pm. We saw a small line of maybe 20 people outside, but being a new restaurant, it was expected. We walked up to the host and she said we would be number 10 in the party queue. So we waited. At around 30 min with the line not moving (nobody had not been called) I started to notice things. First, food ordered from phone pickup was filled in quicker than dine in. I noticed a table order an appetizer, and that appetizer not be served for about 30 min, while the host took 3 large phone orders, filled them, and had them ready for pickup at that time. This continued to happen on other tables while we waited for 2 hours. Second, the queue moved very slow, despite only having 10 parties in a restaurant with a 120 occupancy and over 20 tables, at a rate of 2 parties being sat every 40 min. This was probably due to big parties of 5-8 people being put in the same queue of small parties of 2-3. If a table for two had opened up, that table remained empty while the host waited for 45 min for two other tables to open up in order to seat 1 big party of 8 for example. This meant that the line kept growing. In the future, it might be a good idea for them to take people's numbers so that customers can at least comfortably sit in their cars, and have a separate queue for bigger parties. It being the start of summer in VB, people were beginning to get annoyed mostly at each other than the wait. Babies crying and people smoking and blowing smoke into people's faces. Everyone had no choice but to wait outside, since the only way you were sat is if your name was vocally called by the host. After being seated, the manager apologized to us. We waited at our table for 10 min before getting menus, and then at the 15 min mark, I noticed the table next to me needed waters just as much as I did so I stood up and asked one of the staff to get us all water. When our water arrived, we placed our order. Twice, servers that were not our waiters tried to give us food we did not order. After that, we got our whole order all at once, appetizer and mains. We were surprised to see it arrive so quickly, and hungry after over two hours of waiting. We dug in, and on the first bite realized the food was cold. The manager and our server were very friendly and polite and apologized for the long wait and offered to make us a new batch, but not wanting to wait even longer, we asked for the bill. Overall an okay experience, I'm sure with time will be improved. Until then, I'll...

People be going to a sit down resto to expect fast food results lol. Please keep in mind that food here is made to order, so it takes a while before it comes out the kitchen. You can tell right away that food comes out freshly cooked. We were quite wary with this expectation in mind, but we took a risk anyway and dined on a Sunday at noon, after mass for my kid's first communion. We called a day before to make reservations, but they said that it's on a first come, first served basis. We went anyways to see if we can get a table, and our party was seated within minutes. The seating areas are cozy, the place looked very clean. Hope this will be maintained as time goes.

It was quite a long wait to be honest, as tables have filled up quickly. Our order came within 30 minutes. It was a large order so they tried to bring everything all at the same time.

Garlic rice was delish, so was nilagang baka (beef soup). The chicken cooked perfectly and fell right off the bone! Sisig was a little underwhelming, but the barbecue was moist and well-marinated. My whole family, including the children loved everything we ordered. Service staff was the friendliest though you can tell they were really trying their best to accommodate each request while putting a smile on their faces, reminds me of that Filipino hospitality that we are all known to have. So kudos to the staff who are trying their best each day!

If you want to stick to the regular Filipino restaurants here where the food's been sitting the whole day, that's fine, your choice. But nothing beats freshly cooked Filipino cuisine that only Max can provide. Hope whatever shortcomings other reviewers had in the past can be rectified by the team. But our experience definitely deserves another visit...

Newly opened Filipino cuisine restaurant in a good location, but limited parking. We were greeted by courteous staff, but the floor was very slippery. Service was prompt and ordering was pressure-free. Despite being nearly full, our order arrived in about 15 minutes.

We ordered my favorite Pinoy dish, Crispy Pata, my granddaughter’s favorite egg rolls (though she needed convincing), Chicharon Bulaklak, and fried rice. We also had Mango Juice, Sago’t Gulaman, Calamansi Juice, and Lumpiang Sariwa for my wife.

The Crispy Pata was crispy and the meat tender, but it lacked seasoning. The dip tasted like diluted soy sauce and didn’t improve the flavor. The Lumpiang Sariwa tasted bland, and the wrapper was undercooked. The egg rolls were overcooked and dry, lacking the usual sweet and sour dip.

The Chicharon Bulaklak was perfect—crispy yet chewable and didn’t need any dip, though it was served with Heinz ketchup instead of traditional spiced vinegar. The fried rice was plain and tasteless, missing the richness of Max’s fried rice in the Philippines.

The Mango Juice I ordered initially came with too much ice and was diluted. After requesting a replacement without ice, it was still too watery. I didn’t try the Calamansi Juice or Sago’t Gulaman.

Overall, the restaurant didn’t live up to the “Parang nasa Pinas ka pa rin” experience I hoped for. This branch needs improvements to match the quality and nostalgia of Max’s Restaurant in the Philippines. I hope it can eventually live up to its franchise standards. And diligence should be made so no fly goes around from one table to the other while people dine!

Looking forward to improvements! Max’s Restaurant’s presence in Virginia Beach is a gift for Filipinos and Filipinos in...