Max's Restaurant Virginia Beach, Cuisine of the Philippines

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 stick to takeout.

This place is not worth the money.
I am unsure why there is a line coming out the door.
I paid $17 for 14 Tiny lumpia.
The pancit In my opinion is Un edible.
I guess they are doing for their fried chicken.
I will admit that the chicken was very good.
I will be returning to my favorite spot immediately…..
Kainin Cuisine.

Food was amazing just takes 45-1hr to come out but worth the wait.
Service is great, just short staffed so it takes a minute to be served.
The atmosphere is warm but tolerable.
Overall not bad for first few days of opening, I believe it’ll get better overtime.