This is certainly the best gutbürgerliche (traditional German food) restaurant in central Hannover…read moreand may be one of the best of this increasingly rare type in all of Germany. The Schweinshaxe and Eisbein are especially fine, the former exploding with molten fat from perfectly crisped skin. I rate Max W. at five stars for doing what it does so well, but to enjoy it--indeed to eat there at all--you must adhere exactingly to its Unwritten Laws.
Despite its working man's prices and an interior looking like a down-at-heel Studentenkneipe this is a feinschmeker (gourmet) restaurant and must be treated as such. You need to reserve by telephone at least several days in advance, and humbly offer them an appealing number of diners (ideally either four or six: they have only 25 places at tables and four stools at the bar and must be ruthless about maximizing their yield: do not even think of asking for a table for one; they will simply refuse (reserve--and you do still need to reserve--a seat at the bar).
Persons wandering in without a reservation hoping for a table--and especially tourists without German--are treated with fine forthright traditional north-German rudeness: "Nein! Nein! Weg! Weg!" (Sometimes in chorus.) This is a performance--once one has actually received permission to eat there the staff are warm and charming in a rough, Hannover, sort of way--but, I guarantee you (having suffered this) that you will not recognize the tone of your expulsion as a jolly act when it occurs, nor will you notice the ironical pleasure the regulars are taking in your fate, because you have just become a familiar--three or four times an hour--and well-loved part of the evening's entertainment. This is the same particularly German form of quiet rejoycing at the artful humiliation of others that has made Sven, the cruel bouncer at Berlin's legendary Berghain dance club, a figure of national affection. Those refused entry at Max W. become a special German sauce on the already superb food. And whether you end up as a diner or back on the pavement with your head spinning, either way you have had a perfectly authentic Hannover experience.
