Max’s Restaurant, a leading Philippines’s casual dining chain, opened its first franchised branch in Washington and its 11th location in the U.S. It is between a bargain bookstore and a restaurant in Parkway Square Shopping Center, 16830 Southcenter Parkway in Tukwila.

The new diner is open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., hosting soft opening events until its grand opening later this year.

Alongside its well-loved fried chicken, Max’s Restaurant offers authentic Filipino specialties, such as crispy pata (crispy pork hock), kara-kare (beef peanut stew), fresh or fried lumpiang ubod (heart of palm egg roll), laing (taro leaves in coconut milk), pinakbet (mixed vegetable stew), and pork and/or milkfish sinigang ((tamarind soup). There are several brands of egg noodles: pancit bihon, pancit canton, and pancit palabokand distinctly Filipino special drinks: buku juice (coconut juice), calamansi juice (Philippine lime juice) and sago’t gulaman (tapioca and gelatin).

Interior signage and décor feature Max’s Restaurant’s standard corporate colors of red and black wall murals showing an impression of a chicken, a rooster chasing a hen and sunlit green leaves creating the ambience of a tropical eatery.

The diner’s story is written on the wall across from the door. It started in 1945 when Maximo Gimenez, a Stanford-educated teacher, befriended American GIs stationed in Quezon City, Metro Manila. Maximo or Max, as the GIs fondly called him, invited his new drinking buddies, to enjoy his niece’s chicken recipe for fried chicken. From that auspicious dinner, this fried chicken became a hit, and Max found himself serving his family’s now iconic fried chicken to more friends, both old and new.

Dubbed “The House That Fried Chicken Built,” Max’s Restaurant has grown into a global brand, with more than 200 locations across the Philippines, and two dozen branches in the U.S., Canada and the Middle East.

The Tukwila branch is a business deal of Max’s Group, Inc. (MGI) and a local business, JS Restaurant LLC, owned by Joselito and Lolita Santos.

See more at Max’s Restaurant.