Max & Erma’s

I’ve been to this location a few times before and never enjoyed it. The meal here today was more out of convenience than anything, and my companion enjoys this restaurant, so I figured I’d try again. We both had the burger combo. I had a house salad, the burger, and an oatmeal cookie. She had soup, the burger, and a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. Wow! Max and Erma’s has stepped up their game! My salad with a warm breadstick was delicious to start, and the burger was incredibly juicy and well cooked on what I believe was a soft, toasted brioche bun. Fries were hot and tasty, and the cookie was the perfect sweet treat. I will be back!

My waitress was great, very nice and polite. Accommodating. The restaurant was nice and clean. I love the little single person booths because I LOVE a BOOTH SEAT!!! And restaurants often like to save these for larger parties for people like me dining alone. They usually want to seat me in a hard chair. I liked looking around at the vintage décor as I waited for my food. I do think that the lighting over the booths along the walls are way too low!
My food: The chicken fajita was okay. Nice and cheesy, Good spice. But the chicken cubes are larger than I’d like. The chunks of onion were just too much for me. The sour cream that I dipped each triangle in before every bite was delicious. The guacamole was beyond disappointing. I’d ask them to substitute the guac for extra sour cream. FYI I am a GUACAMOLE lover (especially Chipotle’s) and I love just plane olé avocado right off the seed. But skip it here.
Pomegranate Italian Soda is a must! I personally think that paying almost $ 4 for a soda beverage is ridiculous. But I had this drink many years ago and remembered it fondly. I need to try it again. The good thing is that there are endless refills so make sure you stay a while and get your money’s worth. They gave me so much ice, so I need a few refills.

Party of 6 and we had an hour wait for our food to get to the table. Asked for a glass of water 3 times and another guest asked for a beer that arrived in error (wrong beer). Waitress was not able to answer any questions about the menu.

I attended Max and Eras a few weeks ago with 3 of my closest friends. Most of the eateries on the 1^st floor seemed to be premium level restaurants so I expected as much at M&Es, To my surprise we had a terrible experience there. The waitresses were very slow and seemed unhappy to be there. We received our appetizers but the dishes were very dirty. We asked them to return the place which they did but that took over 15 minutes.
Once we got the appetizers and main course at the same time eventually but they gave us the WRONG order. The waitress was unapologetic and quite frankly seemed highly annoyed that we brought this to her attention. We eventually asked for the manager in which she gave us a 10% discount. That experience was just TERRIBLE. I highly recommend NOT to go there

Let me start by saying that our food was pretty good. I ate the Garbage Burger. While the burger was good it was also extremely sloppy, and it just collapsed once I tried to take a bite. I had to proceed to eating with a fork and knife because otherwise it would have been a complete mess.
Now the reason that this establishment receives a 2 star rating is based on the experience. Our server tried, but failed at being a good waitress. She told us that the seasonal Samuel Adams beer on tap was the Summer Ale. So I ordered it, come to find out it is not the seasonal on tap. Ok no problem, so what is the seasonal? She said «I don’t think we have one yet, the new one hasn’t come in.» You would think that she would find out exactly what is available for not only us but future customers.
Beside the mix up of what is available, it took to long for refreshments and check to come out. Also there was a lot of side conversation between waitresses that the customers should not be privileged to hear.
After this entire experience we will more then likely not be visiting restaurant again.

Brought a big group, think 16 people, here last week for dinner. When you’ve got that many people you need somewhere where everyone can get what they want. I had no idea that this place was a chain.
I called about ten minutes ahead and they were able to seat us at two tables side by side. It was great. The server was on her game and really knew how to work with a big crowd. She split the checks up front which was appreciated.
We all had different drinks and everyone seemed to enjoy theirs. Our table shared the pretzels appetizer which I would have loved more of. I ordered the pulled pork sandwich without the bun which seemed like a request they get often. The pork was great. The coleslaw could have been a little wetter but it wasn’t bad and I asked for queso with my fries… yum!
Overall a really good experience. We even had more people meet us there later and the waitress didn’t skip a beat.

I used to love this restaurant because it was a great place to stop at while shopping in the mall. The last few times the service has been terrible. If you see the hostess taking you back to the bar section, tell her you want a table in the front. Sitting in the bar section is like being in the land of the lost. Very poor service, forgotten about. The food is pretty good. I love the club sandwich! Almost all of the appetizers are good too. But based on the service I probably won’t return here. :(

Initially disappointed by ordering the no longer available crab cakes even though they were listed on the menu, I thought this experience was going to go from bad to worse. However, the service and the meal were decent. We had the lemon salmon served with mixed green salad and asparagus and the fajitas. A pleasant and tasty surprise was the free cookies served on Wednesday, two per customer!

The fiancé and I stopped in for lunch after an afternoon of shopping. Max & Erma’s was conveniently located by the last store we shopped at. We were immediately seated. Our server must have just started working there — he was very soft-​spoken and timid. He brought our drinks out… My lemonade was very syrupy — BLECH! The food was just… okay. I doubt we will be back.

It ended up taking 20 minutes to get our drinks because the server didn’t know what beers they were out of. We ordered the ones that were on special because we thought they were cheaper and when she came and told us they were out we quickly picked a different beer on tap and they ended up being $ 6.50 each…
I was bummed with the burgers and the service here. Or server wasn’t attentive (it was a Tuesday night and we were one of the few in her section). Our burgers were over cooked (we ordered medium) and tasted as if they had been under the heat lamp for awhile.
Overpriced beers, inattentive servers, and overcooked burgers (at a burger place). We’ll try somewhere else for burgers next time.

We went on a Saturday night and were the only people in the restaurant eating. There were 2 other people there but they were only drinking. Anyway, we came in from the mall entrance and had to walk through and find our way to an employee. Once we found one, we were seated in a booth. From there it took 15 minutes for someone to come get our drink order. Now remember, we were the only people in the restaurant. It was a disaster from there. The employees, including management were sitting 2 booths away from us chit-​chatting about all their personal issues. Our food took 30 minutes to come out and it was cold and old! We told the manager and she apologize and removed it from our bill. That’s besides the point though. Again, we were the only people there! Will never, ever return!

Had the steak salad. The lunch version was more than filling.

The food is just below mediocre and they charge 12.5% for tax when every other local restaurant charges 11.5%. Is that even legal?

Max & Erma is not somewhere that I think to myself, «oooh, I can’t wait to go back to» simply because one is hidden inside of the Hilton on Military Highway and the other is tucked inside of Mac Arthur Center. The service is good, I’ve never had any complaints with my service or my food. Side note: It’s kinda dark in here, or maybe it’s just me. I feel like I’m on a date and I should be gazing across the table into my dates eyes. I digress.
I only tend to eat here if I’m already at the mall and I want a good burger. THEY HAVE REALLY GOOD BURGERS. They have a number of specialty burgers that I’ve tried over the years, my favorite being the garbage burger. It states on the menu that this burger is everything but the kitchen sink. It has hickory-​smoked bacon, cheddar, Swiss, American, mozzarella, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, guacamole & marinara. I get it with a fried egg and minus the marinara and it was soooooooo yummy. Yummy in my tummy! I also enjoy the tortilla soup, it’s one of the best that my taste buds have had the pleasure of enjoying. Fries are good but nothing to write home about and I also like the philly cheese sandwich as well as the chicken tenders. On Wednesday, you get two free, FRESH-​BAKED cookies with your meal — WINNING!!!

The food was very good. That’s the only positive.
The restaurant was messy. They need to clean. The television was set to a channel with material that was grossly inappropriate for children (adult, male-​oriented fare). Business was slow, and about a dozen employees were using the adjacent tables as a break room. They were loud and the language they used was not child-​friendly. The back door to the restaurant opens to the street, and random people can and do wander in. They put tables right next to these doors, so it feels like you are eating in the middle of the sidewalk. It did not feel safe.
The experience is pricey too. About 25% over AppleBees or Chiles.

I love their tortilla soup. I think it’s the best compared to other tortilla soups I’ve had in this area. I always order a cup with my meal. Today, I had the Cabo Shrimp salad lunch portion. It was yummy. Although after I ordered it, I commented that I can make my own at home as it looked pretty standard and easy to make.
Our server was friendly and accomodating when I had asked if she could correct my bill so that the charges were credited to my M&E Rewards card.

I came to this location only because the one in Virginia Beach at Pembroke closed. I still had some gift cards left over, so I decided to come yesterday to some of them.
Overall, the restaurant is similar to the one that was in Pembroke. However, one big difference is that this location (and all of their locations now) are franchises instead of being corporate owned. This restaurant is located in MacArthur Center.
On this visit, I did the three course combo. I had the tortilla soup as usual. The soup is still good, but one thing I noticed right away is that it was much more saltier than the times I had at Pembroke. This was the biggest difference in the food that I experienced between the two locations.
The burger was good as usual and was done just like every other location. It was good and juicy, and not overcooked or undercooked. For the cookie, I had the white macadamia nut cookie, as it was one of my favorites. They finally brought it back.
Overall, this place is good, but it was a bit better at the corporate owned location in Pembroke.
On a side note, while I was here, I was talking to the staff to see if I could get some insight as to why the one in Pembroke closed, especially after doing a significant renovation in the spring. I found out that Chick-​Fil-​A gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse, so it looks like the building is going to be torn down there and turned into a Chick-​Fil-​A.

The food here was not good at all!
It took our food forever.
But the manager was very nice to give us 15% off. We didn’t even ask for a discount. If it wasn’t for the discount and the server being very nice this place would have been a 1 star!
I have been here before and the food was better.
Soo many options to eat downtown norfolk. Seems like the mall just falls short for good food!

Strange that I had never been to one of these before, although not really, given that it is exactly like any American cuisine chain restaurant.
We went as a group of 5 on our lunch break and had a decent enough time. We have one person that is gluten free, but other than that, no picky eaters. Unfortunately the only app that they had that was GF was their Mediterranean dip combo, and even that was piled high with pitas and limited in the advertised fresh veggies, we had to ask for more. We also had the black bean roll-​ups and they were pretty under cooked.
For lunch I had the tortilla soup and a salad and was really impressed with the soup. Nothing healthy about it, but it was super yummy with a good amount of spice.
The salad was decent, too. Chalk full of cheese and chicken, just like a salad should be.
In a vacuum, I’d probably give this place 4 stars if I lived in a tiny town where this was the only option for sustenance — but it really hurts to have to walk past the amazing places on Granby St to get to a place where fried chicken 16 ways is the highlight of the menu.

We had to wait ten minutes to be seated while they «cleaned a table» for us yet when I walked to the seating area there were only three tables occupied. (???)
I do not recommend the cheese skewer unless you like your cheese hard and rubbery. Probably the worst margarita I’ve ever been served happened at this place. The veggie burger is a step up from what I usually make at home from a frozen patty.