Max’s restaurant – Dineout Vancouver

Max’s is a Filipino restaurant located in the Killarney area. I’ve had Filipino food before in Richmond at Kumare so I was looking forward to trying more from the country.

Max’s restaurant interior

The first thing we noticed upon being seated was the banana sauce. While I’ve heard many things about this sauce, I’ve never personally tried it before. It was sweet and savory at the same time and reminded me of ketchup in flavor but hoisin sauce in taste.

We were here for dineout but we only ended up ordering 2 sets from the dineout menu because we didn’t really like the appetizer options and didn’t want to have too much of hem. Instead, we ordered 2 extra dishes.

Pancit Bihon

★★★★

This was the first of the dishes we ordered outside of the dineout menu. We were pretty hungry at this point since we waited 30 mins for a table and then another 30 before our first dish came. We found it interesting that it showed up before the appetizers.

It was rice noodles sauteed with shrimp, pork, and veggies. I think that it was a tamarind sauce and we all enjoyed this dish thoroughly. The rice noodles soaked up all the sauce so everything was flavorful.

Kare Kare

★★★

This was a peanut oxtail stew. We did not expect that the portion was going to be this small considering that it was from the dineout menu. There wasn’t very much meat and most of it was made up of bokchoy and eggplant. Mother deer really liked the peanut stew and the shrimp paste they put on the side though.

Max’s restaurant appetizers

★★★

Finally appetizers! This was an assortment of lumpiang shanghai (ground pork and vegetables in a wrapper), veggie bites (veggies wrapped in a pastry wrapper), lumpiang ubod (heart of palm egg roll) and calamares (calamari).

The first thing we thought when these arrived at the table was “why is it so small…” because they were. Each pastry was no bigger than the length of a finger! With that being said, everything was super crispy without being oily and we enjoyed trying them all in the different sauces. At this point mother deer wondered why every dish had at least two sauce to go with it.

Crispy pata with pinakbet

★★★

This was crispy pork hock with a vegetable stew. This pork hock was definitely crispier than the one we had at the Vancouver Christmas Market. Both mother deer and old bean enjoyed the crunchy texture of the skin. The vegetables were soft and had the savory flavor of shrimp paste mixed into them. There were pieces of shrimp, kabocha squash, bittermelon, eggplant, and okra in the mix.

Crab fried rice

★★★

This was the other dish we ordered on the side. The ring of rice enclosed a giant scoop of crab, egg, onion and mixed vegetables so you can mix it into the rice as you eat it. We all found this to be interesting since we’ve never seen it presented this way before. The rice wasn’t oily or anything but it was very flavorful. I don’t usually like fried rice but I’d have this again.

Buko pandan

★★★★

we found this to be an interesting dessert it was nothing we had before. There were pieces of chewy pandan in there along with the jelly. The rice flakes on top were hard and crunchy. The dessert was definitely nothing we’ve had before and it wasn’t really sweet.

Ube Creme Decadence

★★★

This was soooo creamy and rich! It was like eating panna cotta but with a taro surprise in the middle! Definitely a great way to end the meal

So what did we think of this dineout experience?

1. The $20 menu price was not worth it because the portions were small for each course
2. You’d probably get more food if you ordered everything separately. I mean the portions for the rice noodles and fried rice were huge and they were only about $12 a plate the size of your head!
3. Great service but long wait for food

Catch up on my Dine out Adventures The Park, Dosanko Japanese, and Rocky Moutain Flatbread Co.