Max - South San Francisco

This really was the worst service I 've ever had at any restaurant I 've ever been to. My wife and I were treated like garbage at this location. It 's unfortunate because we were looking forward to eating; we don 't look like it, but we are Pinoy to the soil and we were genuinely excited to eat some Pinoy comfort food.Firstly,, my wife had placed our name on the walk-in wait-list, and the employee decided to seat the person who just walked in behind us who literally just parked outside, to a table after we have been waiting there.We were eventually seated at a corner table (meant for parties larger than 5 people , our order was taken after 10 min. As we were waiting for our order to arrive at the table, we saw 2 parties get seated after us, order, and meals served to both of our their tables before we recieved anything. We didn 't even recieve any water we requested.As our impatience was wearing thin, my wife got her personal reusable water bottle from the car because she was thirsty as no waiter decided to check on us. It 's been over 45 mins before getting any word from the waiter on our order, but only after my wife had to call over the waiter. She explained to them in Tagalog (note: my wife who 's biracial is half Black half Filipino, born and raised in the Philippines . We noticed the waiter 's eyes widened as she expressed her concerns with our order in Tagalog.The waiter said they are working on it. Literally the main items we ordered were actually the same items on the other people 's table whom are walk-ins that arrived after us (so we knew it wasn 't a problem like a complicated order or a dish that takes longer than others . The waiter then came back to our table with your ticket (our order was never put in to the kitchen by the waiter who took our initial order. Wow. I 'm already at this point disappointed with the service but there 's even more terrible service woes. Did they not notice the table with a couple who 's been there for an hour without food? Would you not check on a customer?We recieved one of our main entrees maybe an hour into waiting, and had to wait 15-20 minutes in between before having our entire order arrive at our table. We ordered a soup (Sinigang , Bangus Sisig, and garlic rice. And yes, still no water. Yes, I had to ask for it. When the water did arrive, the waiter put it at the very end of our long table that they sat us in. I literally would have to get up and walk over to get the pitcher and glasses. Annoyed does not begin to describe my thoughts. (Mind you, our table was long, so am I going crazy? The waiter passed by, and noticed how far he placed the pitcher and glasses and slightly scooted it down. I still had to get up to reach for the water. Wild...feels like this is deliberate.So, maybe a couple minutes into digging into our meal, the waiter comes back to our table and tells us that 's not allowed, he was pointing out my wife 's clear reusable water bottle. Literally, water. I understand rules about outside drinks in restaurants, but we just recieved the water we requested for, and I let the waiter know we actually were patiently waiting for water for over an hour already. By the way, another person at a separate table literally had an outside drink (I think it was a boba drink, which is not on their menu .He said, for next time, we don 't allow that. If I was my in my younger days, I would not have been so calm and collected. Literally got me all types of irate internally at this point.BUT, as we continue to dig in to our meal, I 'm noticing our rice is bottom-of-the-rice-cooker-type-rice. Literally hard rice covered with garlic crisps, and not the enjoyable kind of hard rice. The soup, filled with bottom-of-the-pot-type-cuts of meat mainly with cartilage and fat, and the most darkest murky unstrained broth of Sinigang I 've seen. I been eating Sinigang my whole life and cooked it myself, so I know what this serving o

Food as usual was on point with the seasoning. But the service could use some improvement I waited for my food to come out at least 20 minutes and another 20 minutes to close my check out. The restaurant operates on 2 servers staffing was a bit under staffed. Other than that make sure you have time allotted for the slow service. I gave 4 stars for the food. Not the service

Food is okay, nothing to brag about, I was impressed on how huge of a portion they have for an order of halo-halo

Max's is one of my family's go to Filipino restaurant. They have all of the standard Filipino favorite dishes. Today, January 3, I ordered their Kare Kare (oxtail in peanut sauce stew) and mixed sautéed vegetables to go as we needed to do a Costco run and the restaurant is just across the street from Kaiser on El Camino Real in South San Francisco. The Kare Kare did not disappoint. The oxtail is tender and the vegetables (eggplant, bok choy, and string beans) is plentiful. The sautéed vegetables did not fair well and it really is my fault. We were delayed at Costco so by the time we picked up the food and sit down to eat, the veggies were wilted and sad looking! Note to self not a good idea to order sautéed veggies to go!

Food is always delicious here never disappoints me. Service is overall good but maybe because of covid they're very short staffed so service has gone down long waits even for take out. And they close early even on Saturday nights. Pretty dim in the restaurant and a little chilly at times.