MAX'S vs JOLLIBEE: WHATS THE BEST FILIPINO FRIED CHICKEN? | Fung Bros

Skeddy me bro. Skeddy you. 49 so it is double. Yo Ryan just said skeddy me bro. Skeddy you. Welcome to another versus episode of Fun Bros Food. We're here at Max's. We're here to settle a debate. Who's got the better fried chicken? Max's or Jollibee's? Yes the battle of the international Filipino restaurant change. Let's go. Are you doing the Filipino martial arts? Is that it? Nah, Kali is like this. That's why Filipinos are so good at dancing. Let's check out Max's fried chicken. Alright guys so we're here at Max's chicken. This is round one. We got all the chicken dishes in the beginning. Max's is known for chicken right? That's why we started with round one being all the chicken dishes. I'm not gonna lie I didn't know what Max's was. A lot more non-Filipino would know Jollibee's just because of its commercial success. I think Max's is more for your like real Filipinos. They know the chain from back home because that's I think there's over 140 Max's just in the Philippines alone. I saw a lot of nice families like coming out in expensive cars in the parking lot. Do you think it's for people who are like they want some of the food that you might be able to find it in Jollibee's but like they don't want to be in that environment? Yeah. Alright guys so right here we have the full chicken. We have the half chicken. I mean this chicken already looks a little different than Jollibee's. Yeah. Obviously Jollibee's the chicken joy. It looks more like. I mean these look like smaller artisanal chickens. Yeah. They give you the fresh pork. Everybody gets a half. Of course you got the banana sauce the Jufran. Is that how you say it? Before all the Filipino viewers skewer me for mispronouncing it I'm just gonna say I don't know. And the chicken here you don't eat it like with gravy and mashed potatoes as much. Max's chicken. All right. Naked. Now I like how there's so little batter on that but it's falling off the bone. I heard it's brine. It's a little vinegary. That's why it's so tender. It's such a different experience than chicken joy. Chicken joy to me is more based off the American fried chicken. Southern Tennessee style fried chicken. It's not like your typical fast food. Twelve blends and spices. The skin is not super thick. It's not too spicy. Obviously you don't see that spice like injected into the chicken. You know how sometimes you see the layers of spice into the fast food chicken. It's falling off the bone. Look at this. Look at how it rips bro. Look at that. It's just. If you want a chicken done right and fried well. I would describe this. This is a chicken dinner. This is a chicken dinner. There's chicken joy of Jollibee's and there's chicken pieces but this is a chicken dinner. Yeah. Alright last last word on Max's fried chicken guys. Is it better than Jollibee's? How about this? No. It's not better. I'm not saying it's worse. I know what you mean. It's hard to compare it because one has batter one doesn't. One has more flavor but one's higher quality. You made me use the stimulus of better. No it's not. It's not clearly better. My opinion is and I don't want to have to do this but like obviously in a way it's better. I mean it's it's better quality. It's super tender. I enjoy things that don't have batter too. I love highly battered chicken and and anything else and fries and stuff but I mean to have something so clean and still juicy and tasty. I mean it's impressive. I'm gonna say gun to my head or like stuck on a dessert. If I close my eyes and I picture a fried chicken the one I want to eat is this one. Alright I will say this is like it's this is classy. I just feel whenever I go to a fast food joint I feel so heavy after eating and I know this is still fried chicken but like the eatability factor for me is here rather than a chicken joint. I can have like a couple pieces of chicken joint. This I could demolish probably another full bird. For sure. That I agree with. Yeah. Guys we're not even through the chicken. That was worth the conversation though. We had to talk about it in depth. So I've never had chicken sisig. When I saw it on the menu I figured we had to order it because normally when you get pork sisig it's like a lot of the cuts on the pork head. From the snout. From the snout, the jowl, ears even. Kind of a lot of weird facial parts. So obviously chicken sisig I'm sure there's not beak ground up in there. There's not beak but they did add liver and I am a very big fan of chicken liver. Okay the dark part is liver. That's a chicken liver. Not winner winner chicken dinner. It's winner winner chicken liver. All right. Chicken sisig. They're not a regular chicken salad. Okay so the first thing that hits you obviously you get the chicken flavor but like David said this is like vinegary tang that kind of permeates like through the whole entire like bite and then there's just like a little bit of kick. One more bite. I got liver up in there. Right. That is by far the most interesting chicken salad I've ever had. This is also the only chicken salad that I've ever eaten with rice. So from chicken sisig something that we never tried before we're going to chicken adobo. The classic chicken adobo. You know I thought it was interesting because there was an egg on chicken. You eating the baby and the mom. This is the one when they go to their Filipino friend's house. This is what. This is the dish that's on deck. This is the dish that everybody asks for. No this is like the one that is cooking when you walk into the house. Yes. Like the mom is just she's like oh I got adobo and you're just like tight. Let's go. Max's chicken adobo. I might just have to go in with my hands guys. Going full Filipino. Full Filipino full. I mean the vinegar is there. The soy sauce is there. It's chicken adobo man like there's nothing else you can really say about it. It's very homey. You know there's kind of a lot of dishes in the world that kind of tastes like chicken adobo between the vinegar and the soy sauce and the stewiness of the chicken. Would you guys say that is one of the less pungent chicken adobos you've had in terms of like hitting you with that. Yeah. Pacquiao vinegar right hook. This chicken adobo I would say like it's a lot lighter. It's consistent like I feel like if you order this it's gonna be the same like taste every single time. They probably have the formula down. Like if cheesecake ever were to become that ethnic where they started incorporating ethnic dishes I would imagine that the best cheesecake factory chicken adobo would taste like that. Yeah. Alright we got to compare Max's Filipino spaghetti to Jollibee's Filipino spaghetti okay. But here we're at a sit-down restaurant. Here we have the Filipino spaghetti. I can tell you right off the bat not as meaty not as saucy. Skeddy me bro. Skeddy you. Alright so it's a 49 so it is double. Yo Ryan just said skeddy me bro. Skeddy me. That's not the first time you've said that. No it's not. That's how your other side talks. I know Filipinos don't say that. Skeddy me bro. Alright here. Let's skeddy. Let's skeddy. Max's spaghetti versus Jollibee's spaghetti. I like how the sauce covered all the noodles. All the noodles. It's a lot more balanced than the spaghetti from Jollibee. Less sweet. Less sweet. Still very sweet though. But a little less tangy. Less of the tomato tang. Yeah. Immediately guys I have my verdict. I think that Jollibee's is better. Jollibee's is better. Jollibee's is better. I'm with I'm team Jollibee's on the spaghetti. Team Max's. Explain yourself. Because it's two to one. I don't have the biggest sweet tooth right and for me the Jollibee's spaghetti it's just too sweet. I felt like this was more balanced and I mean at the end of the day it's skeddy. At the end of the day it's just skeddy right? Like when judging spaghetti you're just gonna say oh yo it's just skeddy. It's skeddy. Everything's skeddy. Skeddy is skeddy. Skeddy is skeddy. What's the difference bro? Skeddy. It's close. Guys we are in a spot where they also use it as the set for Fresh Off The Boat. Oh that is true. So this is obviously nice. Guys this is the lumpia. On the menu it's Lumpiang Shanghai. Obviously I do think actually that these came over from Shanghai. That's why they call it that. Filipino food as we've talked about it before has multiple influences. China being a big one. Spain being a big one. Even Japan to a certain extent like after occupation. Oh Indonesia as well right? Indonesia as well. All the Filipino food is gonna be a mix of different cultures. Lumpia Shanghai. You see recently Joe Koi started the egg roll battles. I challenge any goddamn Asian family with your egg roll. Chinese I'll f*** your egg roll. Lumpia versus your f***ing egg roll. Bring it. Bring your egg roll bitch. And then Eddie had to come back and say hey man. Eddie said hey man those are from China. So we're getting royalties on half of everything. I don't really compare lumpias with other egg rolls. I don't. Because they're so much smaller. Yeah. And the composition is different. Yeah. And you dip them. It's like tough for me it's tough to like really compare. By the way guys this is the most famous type of lumpia. The Shanghai lumpia. But we got another one here. I believe that it's less popular. Lumpia Ubon. Ubon. And there's even more kinds than this. This lumpia is actually filled with a heart of palm, shrimp, and pork. And it's topped with like a peanut sauce. Really reminds me of kind of like Vietnamese summer roll. I'm about to just eat it with my hand man. I'm going full. Full manila on this. Heart of palm. I don't know if I've ever had it. It tastes like bamboo. I almost don't want to call it an egg roll. I'm so confused right now because I'm looking at it and I'm seeing something else but what I'm tasting is Chinese egg roll. Yeah. What I noticed about Max's and I don't know if you guys agree with me or not. The food is very inoffensive. Yeah. Like there's no way you can dislike it. Yeah. For a nice family dinner like you definitely come to Max's. I mean Max's is a chain right so they're they're trying to pump out food for the masses. I think if you're not in LA like in historic Filipino town like there's not as many Filipino places to go to so this offers you that kind of like slice from home. And they got a very expensive looking karaoke system. There have definitely been some karaoke wars in this room. Somebody has left hurt and been like oh no the other guy he beat me today. I left my heart on the floor. We gotta say it guys you guys this is. There were so many comments last video because we were saying Palabok. Palabok? So Palabok. Palabok. Palabok. Palabok. Pancit Palabo. Palabo. Pancit Palabo. Palabo. You know what I don't even know if that's a hundred percent right but we're we're almost there. Pancit. Pancit. This one crushed up. Wow. This is where your flavor is. Okay. This from what I have ranks up there actually. I think for traditional. I got it going for some more. I'm just gonna stamp it right now. If you come to Max's obviously get the chicken but please you would be remiss if you did not get the Palabok. Crispy Pata. And that's a gigantic. I don't know what kind you know the chickens were small but I don't know which kind of pig they got this off of. And when you rip this you just gotta eat. Crispy Pata. Alright guys so here's the vinegar. Do you dip this first? I grew up with my grandparents. The Woodside Queen. My grandparents are my Filipino side. I'm a Lola. I'm a Lolo. And we would go out to Ihawan. We got Filipino barbecue and then we would order this dish. That's so good. That's really good. What the hell. That is some of the best Crispy Pata I've had like ever. That was sitting there for like 10 minutes first and it's still. You're peeling it apart. Your fingers are getting sticky because of the collagen. And you got this little salad on the side. This and the Palabok. The Palabok and this Crispy Pata. They were in my top tier. Yeah. Like of three different tiers. Of any Filipino restaurant that you know. I personally had it. Yeah. Hear this crisp. Guess what guys. We have the Kare Kare. Sketty bro. People are like oh yo you guys are Lil Pump fans. And you're like no no no. It's Sketty. Sketty. I'm a fan of Spaghetti. Every cuisine has. Woah woah woah. Hold on there Andrew. Hold on. Before you serve the Kare Kare. You gotta add the Bagaon. Which is the shrimp paste. You gotta mix it in. My bad dog. So this is gonna give it like that little bit of like seafood shrimpy taste. You know what I love about shrimp paste though man. It adds something so unique that you don't find anywhere else except for like dried shrimp paste. Yeah. Here's the Kare Kare. Here's some oxtail for you. I'm not gonna lie Ryan. I didn't get any oxtails. Did you not? I can't judge it. Because Papa here just referred to himself as Papa. Don't I heard that. Kare Kare. You said that really loud. Okay. Smooth. Shrimp paste in general though. Have you ever tried another dish that had peanut butter in a stew like this before? There might be like an African stew. To me I would just pass over it not because I would be like From what I read, Chinese immigrants have been coming to Philippines since the 1600s. Yes. And they've been coming in different ways. First it was the Cantonese. Then it was people from Fujian. Okay. Hokkien. And then it was just like since then it's just been kind of like rolling right? Yeah. This is kind of like Chinese. I don't even want to say it's Chinese Filipino food. This might be Chinese inspired Filipino food. This is salted fish fried rice. This is chop suey stir fry which is vegetables. You have some pork. You have some shrimp. This is sizzling tofu on a hot sizzling plate. Okay. And then you have the pancit Canton which is I mean I would assume the Cantonese pancit you know has egg noodle which is more Chinese. Pancit Canton. I didn't know what to expect before eating it. I was thinking like maybe it's like a chow mein or like a lo mein. I think it's using the ifu noodles David. They're a little bit fluffier and lighter. It's a very Cantonese noodle. It is very Cantonese. That is easily better than a lot of chow mein that you get. And I like that the Filipino style gave you the lemon because as you crush the lemons that's another layer of flavor. It's that citrus burst that you're talking about. One thing is like when you're eating things so heavy you need some type of like acid or citrus to like cut through fat. Alright guys here's the salted fish fried rice and I wanted to get this because a lot of Chinese people and particularly Cantonese people eat the salted fish fried rice. This is a popular dish to have in Chinatown. It tastes different. This is not the same one I grew up eating. It has some of this salted egg in there David. Did you notice? Yeah. Salted egg is a popular thing to be eating in Chinese and even a lot of Southeast Asian cuisines too. So I'm not gonna lie. Wow. This is probably my least favorite thing I've eaten all day. Fair. Fair. Honestly like there's not that much salted fish in there and this is like way too salty for me. I went with the tofu next. Yo this sizzling tofu has a twist. It's like got some like creamy coconut in there. Whoa. This is different. You know tofu is Chinese but I almost want to say like a sriracha mayo type sizzling plant. There's definitely vinegar in it. There's heat at the back of my palate. Same thing when we ate the chicken sisig. That probably is more similar to the tofu version of the chicken sisig that we had. Yes. Yeah. Similar sauce on a sizzling plate. Almost like a tangy ranch. Yeah. I like this like Filipino China Express food better than a lot of like regular just China Express spots. New idea. Instead of Panda Express we open a Filipino Express. Oh. Or Manila Express. Last but not least we got the chop suey. Alright guys is it funny how David we're eating some kind of Chinese dishes but there's no chopsticks present because a lot of Filipinos don't use chopsticks. Don't use chopsticks. Confirmed. This utensil right here. That's the chopstick. This is your everything. You're not using your hands. You're using your spoon. Alright. How's this chop suey? You see this flavor. It looks very light. That tastes like really like Chinese American. Yeah. Wow. What was your guys' favorite? I gotta say for me it was between these two right here. These two are fire. I'm gonna roll with this one. The pensit canton. I think it took some of the really good elements of pensit and then just with ifu noodles I mean it's pretty good. And normally like I'm not a big fan of tofu so I'm gonna have to go with the tofu only because it had that wow factor. Like I put it in my mouth and I was just astounded. I was like what am I eating right now? Yo you know what you said? I heard you say it when you ate the tofu. You said skeddy bro. Skeddy. Alright everybody we are on to dessert. For what we have in front of us we have the coconut pandan. It's got pandan in it, coconut ice cream, a little bit of coconut milk, maiz con hielo which is corn ice cream with there is literal cheese in here. Your classic halo halo, ube ice cream, flan, shaved ice, jelly. Over here we got the saba con hielo. Saba is a short Filipino banana. Definitely gotta mix this up. Desserts. My halo halo mix. Oh my gosh. Gotta mix this. I'm so pleasantly confused. This tastes so good but it's so weird. I gotta say you guys gotta try this. This is one of the best pandan ice creams I've ever had. Yeah? Yo man I'm getting on the side of this. Guys you gotta try this. I'm trying it with the cheese. Dude we're going crazy over this cheese corn. Woah. It's like cornflakes in a cheesy milkshake. It's like cheese, cornflakes in a milkshake. And the cheese that they use it's super sharp. Yeah. It's very sharp. It's very pronounced. I can't stop eating it. It's too good. It's kind of addicting. Let me process it real quick. The cheese definitely adds something because it's like after you get through the iciness of the corn you get this like chewiness from the cheese. And like it brings like a full umami kind of like salty taste to it. When it first came out she was saying you gotta add sugar to it. I don't think you need sugar. You know this banana though, the saba. Wow. Try the saba. Wow. It tastes in between like a plantain and a banana. It has a little bit more firmness than a banana. Bananas are really soft. Last but not least is going in on the holo guys. You gotta mix it up more. You gotta mix it up more. Oh you want it all blended together. You don't want the chunks. Oh you got some Christmas colored things in there. I gotta say obviously in comparison to Jollibee's this just swept the board. It swept the board. Outcome. I don't like dessert. Outcome to Max's for the dessert. We still got one more left. Is this caramel bar going to live up to the dessert expectations? Also that packaging. So you know it's from Max's restaurant. Look at that right there. Proprietary. If you resell that you know at school they're gonna know it's from Max's. David tell me that doesn't kind of taste like a mooncake. I'm gonna be honest though. This is my least favorite. Yeah I mean this is the one they give you for free in the combo. Yo I gotta say this. You guys what was your favorite savory dish? And then a sleeper. I gotta go with number one Max's chicken. I mean I said that it was overall barely beating Jollibee's chicken. We can say it in acquiesce. Max's chicken is better. Man there's two things that are tied for the sleeper. And I'm sure you guys also acknowledge that they're really good. Pencit Palabok. Palabok. Like almost like book. Book. Palabok. It was that and the crispy pata. The crispy pata and the chicken I would actually say quality wise are on the same level. They're incredible. I don't even like. This guy. I'm sorry what did you say? This guy he just skedded me. He skedded me. Skedded me. Why don't you say skedded for your. Since you liked it so much. Yeah dude. So I picked. Crispy pata. Crispy pata's my number one. And then my sleeper pick. It's gotta be the chicken sisig. Oh. Yeah that was unique. I didn't know what to expect. There's the tanginess that came out. Then the heat kind of build to. It is a resident sleeper. Okay. I have to say. And I always catch myself in retrospect. What did I just continue eating more and more of. Even though we had to move on. I kept eating the lumpia. Really? Yeah. Like immediately to me it doesn't maybe set off my brain sensors like as amazing. It was good. But I'm saying that I just noticed that I just kept eating it. And then since everybody listed. I gotta give a props to the pancit canton. Pancit canton is good. Yeah. Because it just like. It was just so like. It totally like. Freaked my brain in terms of like. I've had chow mein. From the authentic version. To the Americanized version of chow mein. I had like. I had it 400 times in my life. And that was the first time I had it with that citrus kick. Here in Max's. I want to say 90% of the people in here were from the Philippines. Like I didn't even see like tables of Philams. Yo. You know I just realized. Why Max's isn't Glendale. Is because Glendale has a lot of private school Filipinos. Glendale is considered a. Upper middle class Filipino. A nice Filipino. Yeah. Hey you guys. That wraps it up. For our video here at Max's of Manila. Oh man. Yo. Ryan you suggested this. Shout out to the YouTube comments. I saw them actually. It wasn't even the Jollibee video. It was like way way back. They were like you gotta try Max's. We read the comments. So definitely. Thank you for leaving those comments guys. We took your suggestion. We tried out Max's. We were overall impressed. And it was overall delicious you know. So. Thank you Ryan. Another Filipino episode in a can. Skeddy. And in a brand new term. Skeddy has been invented. It's been coined in this video. You can give credit to Ryan Benson on UrbanDictionary.com. Skeddy. Let's skeddy. Alright guys. Thank you so much for watching that video. If there are any other Filipino chain stores. Or Asian restaurant chains that we can find in America. Especially the LA area. Let us know in the comments below. We'd love to try them out. Thank you so much for watching that video. In the comments below. You tell us. Chicken to chicken. Chicken versus chicken. Which one do you guys like better? Jollibee's or Max's? This is the Fung Bros. Shout out to everybody watching from the Philippines. Thank you. And until next time. We out. Peace.