Yeah, I am dating myself, LOL, but it is how I felt this weekend after visiting Max’s Wine Dive, TWICE! That’s right TWICE. I just could not help myself. Picture it Midtown Atlanta, 2015, a girl walks into a bar, not knowing what to expect, and finds a Dive Bar that serves up amazing fried chicken, bubbly and some pretty decent red wines. Crazy I know!! More often than not, you go to a wine bar and find out that you should have worn your ascot as opposed to your florescent top and high top LA Gears (yeah, I wore those too, just ask my Cousin Ronnie about them, LOL). Max’s was just the opposite. It was casual, a little loud, from my signing of course and a ton of fun. The kitchen is open so you can see the chefs, in fedora’s no less, cooking up the addictive fried chicken. The staff was friendly and able to take me through the wine list pretty easily. The wine list is not as long as others, which is fine with me. They have a good selection by the glass and they even sell wine. There were a couple of folks who came in just to purchase wine from the big shelves. We started with the Prodige Blanc de Blanc (sparkling white wine, from the Loire Valley of France) and decided to continue on throughout dinner. I swear the best pairing is sparkling wine or Champagne with fried chicken. The bubbles help to cut the richness of the fried food. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE! Our dinner consisted of fried chicken, collard greens and fries. The coating for the fried chicken included a jalapeno buttermilk batter and it was soooooo juicy! It reminded me of my grandmother’s fried chicken, you know the chicken she made sure we had on long car trips. I am always the first one to ask from some Franks Hot Sauce with my greens, but I did not have to do anything to them. They were tender and seasoned perfectly, for my taste. The craziest thing was the fries actually tasted like potatoes!! Can you believe it??? Usually they taste like the grease they are fried in, but these tasted like they we just cut fresh and they were. After dinner, I decided to “cocktail” one of their red wines by the glass. I tried a blend from California that was fruit forward (dark berries) with a dry finish. I liked the red wine but I enjoyed the sparkling wine much more and I think the temperature is why.
ALERT ALERT ALERT– Red Wine should be chilled! It should not be as cold as white wine but chilled, I like mine around 65 degrees. Do not drink your reds at room temperature as the alcohol will overpower the nose and the flavor of the wine. If you are serving red to yourself or guest, either put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes before you serve it or if you are storing it in your fridge, take it out about 20 minutes before you serve it.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled program……
The other thing that hit the spot was the jukebox in the back (the tunes are FREE). We had the bar singing and dancing to Michael Jackson, Parliament, Madonna, Prince and the Doobie Brothers, even the chefs got into it. All in all, it was a great night and the staff was great (shout out to Sarah, Holly, Michael and Jamilah). If you are in Midtown and looking for some good fried chicken, wine and tunes, check out Max’s!!!!
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