A good rule of thumb is that if you want to know where the best wine bars are, go where the wine industry goes. Max’s Wine Dive is not that place, even for its pseudo-irreverent crowing about “Fried chicken and Champagne? Why the hell not?!”

Although catalog-ish and plastered with corporate posters, the décor isn’t what deters us. The food is sometimes quite good, but often grossly overpriced. That fried chicken, when fried too long, tastes burnt from over-caramelized buttermilk marinade; on one visit, it even came with watery greens dumped on the top of it—imagine how that turned out. “Pan Borracho” is basically soggy bread with congealed cheese. But big and juicy burgers are great, “Nacho Mama’s Oysters” (sigh) are a delicious twist on an old classic, and it’s hard to argue with the “Max ‘n Cheese” unless it’s been primed with too much pungent truffle oil.

The wine program has a few moments of redemption (a grower Champagne here, a culty Rhône producer there), but is mostly populated with boring, unbalanced wines that are served either too warm by the glass or way too cold from the Cruvinet. There’s no coherent train of thought in the selection here other than Wine Spectator scores—and perhaps the occasional coup by someone who cares—which is a glaring neon sign that a wine bar has no idea what it’s doing but desperately needs you to think it does.