Max’s Chicken Take Out

Max’s Chicken is finally open! I still haven’t checked out the restaurant, but one of my aunts stopped by this weekend and was nice enough to bring some over. Like Red Ribbon and Jolibee’s that came before it, Max’s is the newest restaurant transplant from the Philippines. I’ve had it over there, and well… chicken was scrawnier and saltier than what I’m used to back here. But that was the Philippines and chain food in general tasted off to me (except for Chow King).

 

Here is the take out order: the famous whole fried chicken and pancit canton. Even though she called in the order, my aunt still had to wait almost an hour for the food. The wait to eat in the restaurant was even worse. With this in mind, I’m thinking either I hold off on eating there, or just get there early.

I’m not familiar with their serving sizes, but I want to say this was a large order. Pancit canton uses the wider egg based noodles, so if you wanted to find its counterpart, the Chinese’s lo mein and the Japanese’s yakisoba. This style of pancit isn’t my favorite, due in part to those noodles. I prefer pancit bihon (rice based, aka “rice sticks”) it holds up better during the cooking/serving/sitting around/reheating process. Canton noodles have a tendency to get mushy, and you rarely see that with bihon.

With that said, I was cautious about trying this. After the urging of my gramdma, I dug in and was relieved that there was no mushiness. The flavor was alright, although I tasted more of the egg noodles than other components of the dish.

The first thing I thought when I saw this chicken was “is that it?!?” You can’t tell from the picture, but this chicken was on the small side. You can get rotisserie chickens from the supermarket that are bigger than this chicken. I made a comment about the size and asked if they had shipped in the chickens from the Philippines to re-create the Max’s experience.

The chain is known for their fried chicken, which is much different from what we see here. For starters, they fry the chickens whole… which I don’t fault them for doing because it leaves the meat nice and moist. Also, there isn’t breading on their chicken, which can take away from the food (although I really do like the breading on KFC chicken… shhhh!) I wonder if they brine their chickens prior to cooking, or slap on some spices.

However they do it, I didn’t think I was eating fried chicken. I thought it was rotisserie chicken, because it tasted like rotisserie chicken. When it comes to how it tastes… meh. It tasted better with some sweet chili sauce.

To conclude, the food from Max’s was okay. The food travelled from Jersey City, and that’s about an hour drive, so that may have altered how the food should taste. And even though I had so-so feelings on the food, I still want to head over to the restaurant and eat the food there. Hopefully I’ll have a better experience (and miss out on the wicked lines).