Max’s Summer Menu: Chicken Fried Lobster and Champagne? Why the Hell Not?
Max’s Chef Patrick Russell
I was invited last week to the debut of the summer menu from Chef Patrick Russell from Max’s Wine Dive. Color me impressed. From the food to the wine to the general cool mantra of “Fried Chicken and Champagne? Why the hell not?!”, the place is cool, fun, funky and my kind of place. Throw in the Monday to Friday Happy Hour from opening to 6 pm, which features wines like Far Niente Chardonnay Nickel & Nickel State Ranch Cabernet, along with the “patio pounders,” which features mix and match cases, six packs and three packs to allow you to try a number of wines at a value, and you had me at hello…
This was our line-up. We started with a pre-course of chicken fried nothing with a goat cheese dipping sauce, duck meatball crostini and blue crab and bacon dip with house-made pepper crackers. This was served with Moet Imperial bubbly. Wow!
We moved on to butter lettuce wedgettes with pan-roasted asparagus, bacon lardons and baby fennel on top of butter lettuce with green garlic parmesan dressing. This was followed by short rib sliders and a chef’s nine cheese mac topped with bread crumbs. This was served with a fantastic (can’t tell you how great this was) 2009 Chave Hermitage. The sliders are really really good.
Our main course (was full on the second round) was pork spare ribs, a lobster tail 2.0 (chicken fried lobster tail atop a jalapeno sweet corn waffle topped with parsley butter served with a Moet Nectar. This was accompanied by roasted mushrooms, barbeque sweet potato chips and creamed corn.
The cheese course was a selection of local cheese out of Patchi Patchi (need to confirm) out of Waco served with a 2011 Nickel and Nickel Ranch Cabernet.
I look forward to my next visit.
