Maxi’s Cafe

Delicious, reasonably priced breakfast in a lovely setting and relaxed atmosphere. The owners are very friendly and accommodating. Definitely recommend a visit.

Insert sad face here.
Maxi’s is slow. I’ve come to realise that over the last two times I’ve visited. The first time it was quiet and we had quite a wait despite this. The second time, half of the food came quite a bit earlier than the other half. By the time, the others’ food had arrived, I had finished my soup, as I had to rush back to work.
The food is always really good at Maxi’s, which makes me really sad to take away a star. However, I’m definitely put off from visiting, especially at peak times, because of just how slow the service is.

So I finally got the chance to sit in! I shared a lazy Saturday afternoon coffee and cake with my partner here. The ambiance is lovely, and the large couch is definitely the best spot to sit an people watch. I know the cakes change quite often but if you happen to stumble across the apple, walnut and maple slice, be sure to get a piece– its terrific!

For me, Stockbridge nominally imbues a bit of uppity air. It is enough to associate a first glance like-​ability on its constituent establishments. which I find at times overrated.
In that light, Maxi’s was more than a pleasant surprise. It was unthought and pursued in the hunger of the moment, but lucky ducky me no disappointment here.
The Ayrshire ham was quality, and cooked to a juicy pink bordered within its perfectly crisp fat. It was royally laid upon a flawlessly poached egg. The sauce was different than I would have expected. It was thinner, lighter, and more liquid than the typical hollandaise. But to fair, they don’t label this dish as ‘Eggs Benedict’ in their menu anyway (just poached eggs with your choice of protein), so who is to say its not done right ;)
Service was right on. Wasn’t clobbered with attention yet was effortlessly provided for. Enough space & buzz to go about our eager discussion on calligraphy. Cranachan looked brilliant. Alas, our stomachs realised its limitations.
My only regret is when the older gentleman who hosted us asked, «how was everything?» I distractedly answered with just a «good!» (plus smiley face) when I meant more. This place checks the mark for me when it comes to brunch in Stockbridge. I can easily trek here the added 10 – 15 mins from city centre to have a go at a happy brunchie.

Food was excellent. Cost was good too. Nice little café in the middle of Edinburgh. I was born in this area and it was good to come back and just sit and look around while eating good food.

Maxi’s is the type of place you go to if you and your mates have an hr to spare and you can’t think of anywhere else to go. It’s great for coffee, cake and a chat. Staff are very friendly and their customer service is brilliant.

Maxi’s is a solid place for brunch. The lunch menu is fine, but nothing special, and in a city like Edinburgh there are plenty of places that are something special. The dinner menu is uninspiring.
I normally go for the pancakes with maple syrup and bacon, and it never disappoints. I guess it’s difficult to mess this particular dish up, but thankfully they don’t. They do a decent hot chocolate too, but admittedly it is just machine hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows.
Maxi’s is a little bit pricey, expect to pay 10−15% more than you think you should for what you get. It might be the nicest place for brunch in Stockbridge, but a five minute bus trip into the city centre will take you to superior places. It’s certainly not a must visit, but not a must avoid either.

Went for breakfast today– yummy lattes and mochas. Hubs had scrambled eggs and I did traditional eggs Benedict– we left very satisfied.

I like it when something is better than I expected, much like when everyone rags on a movie and then I see thinking it’s going to be rubbish but then end up enjoying it. After reading some not so great reviews of Maxi’s Café I went in with low expectations and the hope I was going to find something positive to make me see it in a good light, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
There is nothing super bad about Maxi’s café, the food isn’t awful, the service isn’t terrible, but in no way is it good either.
I met a friend their for lunch, whilst I was waiting outside for 5 mins there were two empty tables waiting to be cleared, 5 mins later one was cleared and the staff did not seem anywhere near busy. When we went to the counter to order one girl was opening a box and didn’t look our way, two more were chatting in the kitchen. After about a minute waiting we were served and the girl was friendly enough, but didn’t seem to know what I ordered was and it took someone else to help her out a bit (chargrilled chicken panini, choice of only about 7 sandwiches, wasn’t that difficult).
The food arrived for my friend and I a few minutes later during a nice conversation and the conversation was interrupted by me wincing at the salad dressing. Balsamic vinegar and some kind of oil (didn’t taste like olive oil) that was just too sour without savoury or sweet to make it better (I make a much nicer olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, honey an whole grain mustard with sea salt and pepper dressing at home). Also, there was what I think a tree leaf in my salad, not sure if it was to make an intentional autumn feeling or a window was open in the kitchen, but it just shouldn’t have been there.
The panini, really underwhelming. Perhaps I should have put the leaf in it. Didn’t detect any hint of any char grilling, just a cheddar and salsa gloop that made the bread soggy.
Order a coffee a well, wasn’t too bad, preferable to Costa but not as good as Starbucks, hence a two stars instead of 1, but it was touch and go.
If I ever get invited again (I won’t be going out of choice) I might try the soup or play it safe and get a beer from the fridge.
For the price I would have much preferred buying some good ingredients from the local butchers, the supermarket for veggies and a bakery and making something much more tasty at home.

I like Maxi’s but I just can’t get particularly excited about it. I live in Comely Bank, as do several of my friends, so it’s an obvious choice for a cooked breakfast and is usually where we go when in need of sustanance the morning after a night out. I am a big fan of the french toast with bacon and maple syrup (they do this very well) and the coffee is reliably good too. I’ve lunched here a few times and have always enjoyed the salads and I once had a delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows and chocolate buttons after a rainy walk along the Water of Leith. The cakes look amazing though, shockingly, I’ve never actually had one. I don’t know why that is. It defies explanation! So, as far as the food and drink goes, I really can’t complain. It’s all good.
The service, however, is generally not great. I’ve often arrived to find that the free tables still have dirty dishes on them and the staff never seem to be in much of a hurry to clear them. I also think that they cram too many tables in so the place always feels overcrowded even if it isn’t full. While I am fond of Maxi’s and I always look forward to going there, I can’t help but feel that this has a lot to do with its location. I can’t imagine that I’d go there if I didn’t live so close, or if Fredericks was in Stockbridge…

I’ve been to Maxi’s twice now and each time have been underwhelmed. The first time for cake and coffee, and today for breakfast.
The cake was nothing special — pretty standard and most likely purchased from the same place that makes these kinds of traybakes and cakes for the vast majority of Edinburgh cafes. The coffee was nice, but nothing compared to the likes of Artisan.
Breakfast today was actually pretty sub-​par. The staff are nice, but there are too many of them. There are 11 tables with no table service, and there were 4 girls behind the counter who spent the majority of their time chatting because there was nothing else to do. There could easily have been two less members of staff — they would have been busy for a bit, but it would have been do-​able, easy. I feel I can say this because I used to properly wait 8 table sections, while making drinks, coffee and salads, as well as bussing tables, and we were just fine.
The food, though, is what left us unsatisfied. We each had eggs benedict, I had it with bacon and the man had it with sausage. The eggs, bacon and sausage were well cooked. The eggs were actually impressively well cooked — though maybe I’m impressed because the art of poaching an egg is something that is so amazingly beyond my grasp it’s embarrasing.
However, the hollandaise was obviously out of a jar and really not nice at all. It was thick and a bit bitter tasting, not the dreamy fatty creaminess which it should have been. The toasted muffin as well had an unusual taste to the extent that I actually just resorted to eating around it. I can’t even describe the taste but whatever the description, it wasn’t nice.
We walked away £15 lighter with full bellies, but wishing we’d stayed in for breakfast.

I know that Edinburgh can at times be seen to take the ‘p’ with regard food and wine due to the high demand (after all if a customer doesnt come back who cares!.. theres plenty more of them), but I havent had such poor quality food in such an unpleasantly crowded place, with such unpersonable staff, for such an outrageous price.ever. My gosh you’d think I mentioned ‘aliens’ when I asked the waitperson to make sure my toast was hot — and then I actually had the audacity to ask for some tomato ketchup with my breakfast sausages (would have thought that was pretty normal) — well you should have seen the dumbfounded stare I received. As I finished off my breakfast and tried to work out what I did that was so wrong — ‘plonk’ down came the ketchup as I was finishing my last forkful! Sheesh!

I’ve been coming to Maxi’s for aaaaages, since my school days actually. Maxi’s has been a solid part of the Stockbridge café scene for a good while now, and does its café performing job pretty well, so has seemed to last the distance. Not outrightly trendy, but still what you would call a really nice café to look at, Maxi’s doesn’t have too many frills to it, but is still pleasant and comfortable enough that you feel happy for a bit sitting with a coffee and partaking in some chit chat.
The food is really reliably good here. The café serves a range of paninis, salads, and other wee menu bits, plus amazing cakes, and last time I was in I went for the veggie quiche plus salad of the day, which was delish. The food and coffees are the definite highlight of coming here, which of course they should be, seeing as that’s the whole point, but I don’t feel entirely relaxed here for some reason. Although Maxi’s is fairly laidback, I felt the atmosphere was a bit on the quiet side when I went in… maybe sticking on a few cheeky background beats would have sorted that.
Also, the staff said almost nothing to us the entire time my friends and I were in there, which I found slightly unusual. It didn’t exactly bother me, because I don’t generally go to cafes expecting some sort of life changing conversation with the staff, although if that happens then fair play, and I was bantering away to my friends anyway, it was just something we noted afterwards. Perhaps there was some café themed urgent work going on, which meant the staff had no time for «isn’t the weather great, are you having a nice day» type chat. Regardless, I’ll be coming back again for some lunch time feasting, and no doubt a large slab of calorie laden cake.

Alice summed this place up — Maxi’s is the regular meeting place of ladies who lunch and excessively talk about their «friends». But if you’re looking for a place to talk to your buddies in a similar fashion, it’s rather nice.
Serving up wholesome food and a few continental deliesque offerings, Maxi’s has one foot in being like an old fashioned tea room and the other on moving with the times. I didn’t find it difficult to get a table since it’s quite big but then, I wasn’t visiting near lunch time. It’s probably mobbed then, especially on a Saturday, because even during a mid week afternoon it seemed pretty popular with the locals.
That’s always an indication of a good café though, and service was very efficient. They do a tasty soup of the day for a very reasonable price which I polished off.
I can imagine this place doing well if it was transported to the main street in a seaside town. I don’t know why but it reminded me of the kind of cafes they have scores of in Helensburgh! But by that I mean it’s relaxed, airy, affordable and a good place to come for a natter over a cup of brew.

Soup soup soup, cake cake cake, scones scones scones. What else do you want for a Saturday morning — probably to be able to find a table. That is the only downfall to this quaint, elderly-​venus-​flytrap. It’s filled with women with trolleys and headscarfs larking around doing what old people do best, drinking tea and bitching about their neighbours.
But all these «mature» women are in there for a reason, it’s really rather nice! I’m soup’s biggest fan and it doesn’t disappoint with freshly made, wondeful liquid food with seeded bread rolls, infact, if you can do the bread and soup thing right you’re the best thing in the world ever.

Maxi’s is OK — but given that the fabulous Peckhams is right across the street, you’d think they’d try a bit harder! There are very few furnishings — not much décor or anything in the way of trimmings, but some extra furnishing might be a good idea because when it’s busy (which it nearly always is) it is SO loud thanks to the echoing acoustics! Maxi’s is not especially child or pram-​friendly as the tables are very close together and the place is always full of people, and the girls behind the counter can be downright snippy and rude.
HOWEVER, the cakes at Maxi’s are fab, so whoever does the home-​baking should be seriously congratulated. Top picks: the cranberry and orange cake and the millionnaire shortbread. The scrambled eggs (with smoked salmon or portabello mushrooms particularly) are so so good as well. So the food is great but the space and the service are a bit shoddy. Both could be easily fixed!

Pleasant staff, good French toast and well made scrambled egg as well as a reasonable selection of deli items made my recent brunch visit here a pleasure. It’s often busy but the impression I got was that once you’re in (and not taking the mickey by occupying a table and stringing out one pot of tea) you could stay for an age and chill out watching the great and the good wander past through Stockbridge, read the paper etc. a rare thing in Edinburgh to my knowledge given that Starbucks etc. never impress me as being more than extensions of your lounge with profit at the forefront of their ethos. Stopped in here for a late lunch yesterday and safe to say that nothing’s gone wrong with the place in terms of food or service since I was last in. Their menu could though do with a thorough proof-​reading as having such errors as ‘deserts’ instead of ‘desserts’ isn’t really excusable.

I found Maxi’s a bit disappointing — been there a few times as there’s not much other choice in the way of a small café in Stockbridge (a shame for such a lovely little place!) but the food wasn’t great, sandwiches were a bit stale and we could see behind the counter that half the ingredients were from Costco! Not really what you expect from somewhere which labels itself a Delicatessen!
Found that the staff were quite rushed and uninterested, and were quite snippy the first time we went and we weren’t sure how the system of ordering etc worked. The 2 girls acted like it was a huge inconvenience to be asked a question!
We miss Tim’s!

Maxi’s on Raeburn Place in the heart of Stockbridge has been there for ever and yet it still seems to retain a sense of the temporary. I don’t know whether it’s the fixtures and fittings, or whether it’s just that the walls are decorated with clocks, but it does make for a slightly unsettling experience. I must be the only one bothered by this because at any time of the day this place is buzzing, making getting a table a logistical challenge in the table-​filled space.
The menu has changed in recent months, largely for the better. They still serve an all day breakfast including such Scottish stalwarts (?) as french toast and pancakes, bacon and maple syrup. But for me the greatest improvement is the soup-​of-​the-​day. Always fresh, always homemade and always delicious. The coffee is good, the cakes look good but I’ve never tried one (honest) and the turnover is fast enough to keep the salad and deli offerings looking appetising. The service waivers between the good and the flakey, but is rarely poor.
I put the popularity down to a couple of things: That the food is reliably good and reasonably priced and that Maxi’s isn’t Starbucks, or Costa, or Café Nero. It is a local café, but not just for local people. It could be better, but then it wouldn’t be Maxi’s.

Located on cheery, bustling Raeburn street, Maxi’s offers an modest menu featuring simple, yet well-​prepared eats: there is a range of breakfast options, fresh soup, and hand-​cut deli sandwiches. The eggs Benedict was presented with a flatter, crunchier version of muffin than I’m accustomed to, and with minimal hollandaise, but the flavor was superb. Coffees are decent, and the various cakes and treats are fresh. Service is a bit slow, but the prices are fair.
This sunny Stockbridge eatery has only one major drawback: it’s so popular, securing an empty table is not a task for the weakhearted. The staff, who are mostly friendly, are too busy scurrying about with coffees and other treats to see that seating is handled in an organized manner. The result is a bit chaotic, with hungry visitors hovering near the entrance, waiting to pounce as soon as someone looks like they might be vacating their seats. Consequently, the diner does not feel that they can relax and enjoy their meal, as the next patrons are circling like buzzards and watching like hawks. The resulting pressure to eat quickly and move on is nigh unpleasant.
If you can visit Maxi’s during a less busy time than 11 am on a Saturday, as we did, it is worth a visit.