lucky panda
If Max’s is the house that fried chicken built, then Ruby Trota—Maximo Gimenez’s niece—may as well be the woman who built the storied restaurant after creating its iconic chicken recipe. The group behind the beloved Filipino restaurant pays homage to the trailblazing culinary figure with its latest concept: a speakeasy tucked inside the first-ever Max’s in Sct. Tuazon, Quezon City.
Ruby’s is an intimate 12-seater space that used to be the receiving area for guests making reservations at Max’s Groups concepts. “This room is symbolic of that transaction,” Max’s Group’s chief marketing officer Jim Fuentebella says. “When they end the tour to decide where to be, they end up here. We treat them to coffee or whatever they want to eat. It’s a signal also for them that ‘We got you.’ So it’s kind of a full-circle moment.”
Today, it’s a cozy and warm bar that reflects the generosity of Gimenez and Trota—a winning formula that made Max’s a household name over 70 years after it first opened.
“It’s small, the scale is intimate, and it’s not chained out [like Max’s]. That way, you feel like a guest in our house,” Fuentebella says.
Open from 5 p.m. to 12 a.m., Tuesdays to Saturdays, Ruby’s feels like a natural extension of the Max’s experience. “You can have the same experience at Max’s and then transition to drinks.” And since you can book the place for your own parties, too, “You can host like Maximo did back in the days,” Fuentebella adds.
From 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., you can also start your day at Ruby’s—sans drinks, but with a cup of coffee from Yardstick and pandesal made fresh daily at Max’s very own bakery.
Paolo Salud, Max’s marketing manager and Trota’s great-grandchild, says that while Ruby’s has always been on the back burner, the concept came together when they redesigned a portion of the compound.
Led by architect Sarah Canlas, they started redesigning the space from the right side of the entrance to the restaurant, where a Yardstick coffee counter now stands, to the far end where Maximo’s Room, a function hall, is located.
“It was actually simultaneous,” Salud says. “[We] started with fresh coffee and pandesal with Ruby’s in the back of our heads. That’s when me, Sarah, Anton [Lopez, who helps in Max’s design aspects], and Jim conceptualized this: from the cashier to the bakery to Ruby’s and then Maximo’s Room. We segmented it that way.”
A receipt for a reservation that Ruby Trota signed herself
A nice place for nice people
The 48-sqm. nook is replete with memorabilia from Max’s early years (receipts from 1966 when a meal for a party of 100+ people cost less than P300, for one) as well as a blown-up black-and-white photograph and an oil portrait of Ruby herself by the bar.
Even the signature drinks are nods to Max’s history.
Maximo
Maximo, a boozy, savory cross between a dirty martini and a Gibson is named after the patriarch. It’s gin steeped overnight with mirepoix sauteed in butter then mixed with orange liqueur, assorted bitters, and chicken broth(!); a drink enough to raise eyebrows but one that is actually complex in flavor and ties perfectly with Max’s—the restaurant’s—star dish, the fried chicken.
The amaretto sour spin-off with gin and Angostura bitters, Forever Amber, is named after Maximo’s signature sign-off whenever he would write to someone. It’s a familiar drink that draws most of the crowd of all the items on the specialty menu.
Clockwise from top left: 1945, Maximo, Scout, and Forever Amber
Scout, a sweet and smoky concoction of Islay Scotch Whisky, Laphroaig 10, Maker’s Mark bourbon, housemade horchata, Orgeat almond and orange blossom syrup, hazelnut liqueur, chocolate bitters and nutmeg, takes its name from the area Max’s is on.
The 1945, a take on the soda and tequila-based Paloma, is cocktail consultant Mandrake Ferrer’s ode to post-war optimism during the year that Max’s was put up. It has tequila, passionfruit, soda water, and basil.
All cocktails have a base price of P380.
The bar guys at Ruby’s are not just nice (it is after all “a nice place for nice people” as the doorway reads), they are also attentive. Other than these signature drinks, they can also whip up mean classics, or if you’re trying to stay sober, mocktails that are just as exciting as their alcohol-based counterparts.
An off-menu coffee cocktail
During our visit, we also got to try an off-menu coffee cocktail that incorporates Yardstick coffee with rhum, Aperol, vanilla, and orange bitters. It is then milk-washed before serving garnished with a torched cinnamon stick.
Ruby’s is one of the Max’s Group’s latest push to diversify its portfolio and to usher in a new era outside of, but still parallel with, Max’s Restaurant’s overarching story of unceasing Filipino culinary traditions and hospitality.
An archival photo of Ruby Trota welcoming guests into the house
The idea of the casual restaurant chain delving into a speakeasy concept may at first seem discordant. But if you look at the original menu from 1945, the one plastered in every Max’s branch, drinks and cocktails have been there since the beginning. “Cocktail,” scotch with soda, bourbon, and whiskey were priced from P1.50 to P2.
“The original menu had cocktails and [Ruby’s] is an homage to that timelucky panda,” Fuentebella says. “We’re not making anything up and we’re not trying to be what we’re not. There’s so much of our history that can be retold and it now gives you another layer of the brand of Max’s. It’s a progression to the future because you are so aware of your past.”