A Home Cooked Dinner... Out
For anyone wanting to taste some exotic, authentic, and most importantly delicious, Max's Restaurant of the Philippines in South San Francisco is definitely the place to be.
With a menu of Filipino dishes, the restaurant is filled with people wanting to enjoy food they have grown up with as well as people ready for something new.
The restaurant has a cozy, warm feel to it with soft lighting and a wall chronicling the history of the restaurant chain in the Philippines. The windows had wooden blinds and lights hung from the ceiling which had one large exposed aluminum vent tube, giving the restaurant a modern yet colonial feel.
Max's menu includes both individual meals as well as platter-style, large servings, which is what most of the diners in the restaurant opt to order.
Max's signature house specialty, and what started the restaurant franchise back in the 1940s, is their fried chicken.
Max's Restaurant began during World War II when Stanford-educated Maximo Gimenez befriended American soldiers stationed in the Philippines and served them their family's own friend chicken recipe.
Another house specialty that people come back for is the Crispy Pata, which is crispy, deep fried pork knuckle served with a special vinegar-soy dipping sauce. And steamed rice is almost always a part of the dining experience at Max's or any Filipino restaurant.
Other dishes include several kinds of pancit (egg or rice noodles with vegetables, pork and shrimp) and Kare-Kare (beef oxtail in a sweet peanut sauce).
Dining at Max's is usually problem-free with your food arriving within minutes. On this night however, giving our orders was not as easy as it should have been.
To our surprise, the waiter told us they were out of Crispy Pata, as well as their appetizer sampler and bulalo soup.
Max's appetizer sampler, Max Teasers, includes fried calamari, lumpia (spring rolls), and crispy tentacles. Each of which can be ordered separately as individual dishes. Bulalo soup is beef shank in onion broth with fresh cabbage leaves.
Instead, we ordered Beef Tadyang, fried sliced beef ribs served with fried garlic rice and Sinigang na Tiyan ng Bangus, a tamarind-based seafood soup of bangus belly and vegetables.
After a minute or two, the waiter returned and asked us if we still wanted the crispy pata and the bulalo, which apparently they now had. We said yes and replaced the wonton soup with the bulalo.
The food arrived another couple minutes later and it was smooth sailing from there. As we ate, the conversations of about 10 tables filled the restaurant. Families, couples, and friends around the restaurant enjoyed their dinners with the clang plates being passed around joined the conversations.
We too enjoyed the dinner and finished the night with scoops of mango and ube (sweet yam) ice cream.
Overall, despite that very rare occurrence of running out of house specialties, the service was very good and the food was delicious.
As diner Alwyn Dee said, “It is a fun and interesting experience to go out to eat dinner, yet still feel like you're eating in your own Filipino home.”
With a menu of Filipino dishes, the restaurant is filled with people wanting to enjoy food they have grown up with as well as people ready for something new.
The restaurant has a cozy, warm feel to it with soft lighting and a wall chronicling the history of the restaurant chain in the Philippines. The windows had wooden blinds and lights hung from the ceiling which had one large exposed aluminum vent tube, giving the restaurant a modern yet colonial feel.
Max's menu includes both individual meals as well as platter-style, large servings, which is what most of the diners in the restaurant opt to order.
Max's signature house specialty, and what started the restaurant franchise back in the 1940s, is their fried chicken.
Max's Restaurant began during World War II when Stanford-educated Maximo Gimenez befriended American soldiers stationed in the Philippines and served them their family's own friend chicken recipe.
Another house specialty that people come back for is the Crispy Pata, which is crispy, deep fried pork knuckle served with a special vinegar-soy dipping sauce. And steamed rice is almost always a part of the dining experience at Max's or any Filipino restaurant.
Other dishes include several kinds of pancit (egg or rice noodles with vegetables, pork and shrimp) and Kare-Kare (beef oxtail in a sweet peanut sauce).
Dining at Max's is usually problem-free with your food arriving within minutes. On this night however, giving our orders was not as easy as it should have been.
To our surprise, the waiter told us they were out of Crispy Pata, as well as their appetizer sampler and bulalo soup.
Max's appetizer sampler, Max Teasers, includes fried calamari, lumpia (spring rolls), and crispy tentacles. Each of which can be ordered separately as individual dishes. Bulalo soup is beef shank in onion broth with fresh cabbage leaves.
Instead, we ordered Beef Tadyang, fried sliced beef ribs served with fried garlic rice and Sinigang na Tiyan ng Bangus, a tamarind-based seafood soup of bangus belly and vegetables.
After a minute or two, the waiter returned and asked us if we still wanted the crispy pata and the bulalo, which apparently they now had. We said yes and replaced the wonton soup with the bulalo.
The food arrived another couple minutes later and it was smooth sailing from there. As we ate, the conversations of about 10 tables filled the restaurant. Families, couples, and friends around the restaurant enjoyed their dinners with the clang plates being passed around joined the conversations.
We too enjoyed the dinner and finished the night with scoops of mango and ube (sweet yam) ice cream.
Overall, despite that very rare occurrence of running out of house specialties, the service was very good and the food was delicious.
As diner Alwyn Dee said, “It is a fun and interesting experience to go out to eat dinner, yet still feel like you're eating in your own Filipino home.”
Max's Restaurant of the Philippines |
posted by ... at 10:39 PM
5 Comments:
Good first slideshow! Good views of exterior and of food. Can you put some music under it?
I liked your pictures a lot! The background sound of the people talking mixed with the pictures of the empty restaurant created a cool effect. Good job!
Jenn is right. Just background noise of talking works. If you get a chance to play with audacity a little more, you can alternate music with talking. But save that for the summer. When you start playing with music, it can kill hours.
Thanks Jenn!
And I agree Prof Robertson, slideshows and editing videos can be very addicting.
It's like a video game, a nice substitute for "serious" work.
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