An airline pilot and an attorney walk into bar. No, it’s not the beginning of a bad joke. It is actually the beginning of one of the most elusive concepts in the restaurant industry: an original idea.

Max’s Wine Dive is scheduled to open in the Quarry Village this fall, and word on the street is that it will be unlike anything the Alamo City has experienced. A restaurant and wine retailer, Max’s is a study in juxtapositions, serving gourmet comfort food and some of the world’s finest wines in a decidedly unpretentious “dive bar” atmosphere, complete with classic rock and country music on the jukebox.

“It’s good wine and excellent food without the attitude,” explained Jerry Lasco, the man behind the concept.

The former Air Force and commercial airline pilot explained he has always had a passion for wine and food. He pursued those passions in his free time by becoming a member of the London-based Court of Master Sommeliers and by attending the Peter Kump Culinary School.

But it wasn’t until he relocated his family to Houston in 2001 and found himself furloughed in the aftermath of September 11 that he entered the wine business, and that the ideas behind Max’s and The Tasting Room began to take shape.

“I had to find a niche in Houston,” Lasco said. “I knew that retail wine shops slow down around 7 p.m., and that the bar business starts getting busy around 7 p.m., so I decided to try something that was a bit of a hybrid.”

That hybrid turned out to be The Tasting Room, which is still one of the hottest spots in Houston. The combination wine bar and retail wine shop concept was so successful that Lasco was able to expand it from 900 square feet to the nearly 8,000-square-foot establishment it is today and open a second location.

Customers eagerly bought into the concept, and one even bought in quite literally. A practicing attorney, Jonathan Horowitz was so impressed that he left the practice of law and joined Lasco and his wife as their first partner.

Although Horowitz had no restaurant experience, he shared Lasco’s love of food and wine, and together they worked on building a second concept that would demystify the world of wine by eliminating the stress and attitude often associated with it. Max’s, named after Lasco’s oldest son and loosely modeled after a true dive bar in Manhattan, is the result of their brainstorming.

“The night we opened our doors in Houston, we were slammed,” Lasco said proudly. “And we have been ever since.”

Max’s is not the place you go for buckets of beer and baskets of peanuts. But what you will find within the industrial-chic atmosphere is more than 150 bottles of some of the world’s finest wines, and the food you enjoyed as a child elevated to new levels.

Items such as the gourmet “Texas Haute Dog,” the brunch special “Red Velvet Pancakes” and the “Hungry Max TV Dinner,” featuring high-end gourmet meat loaf, are just a few examples of Max’s gourmet home cooking.

If you get blacklisted before the restaurant even opens its doors in San Antonio, don’t worry; it’s a good thing. The Black Door is an innovative, free wine retail club that offers “blacklisted” members the opportunity to enjoy such perks as private wine tastings, special deals and a “try before you buy” option.

Members receive weekly e-mails with fantastic retail wine specials often only lasting 48 to 72 hours. The interactive website, www.theblackdoor.com, offers plenty of educational resources, including blogs and wine ratings to assist customers in their purchases.

“The Black Door came from our customers asking us where they could buy a bottle of the wine they were drinking,” Lasco described, adding that thanks to the company’s retail license, the bartender could offer to sell it to them on the spot.

“We would tell them to bring their cars around to the back door, and we would bring it out to them,” he laughed. “It was totally legal, but it had that illicit feeling that you were secretly getting hooked up with a great wine deal.”

Feeling like you are in on the secret is part of the charm of Max’s Wine Dive. It’s a cool place that has the vibe of an undiscovered hangout, but tastes like a five-star restaurant. It attracts customers of all kinds from young to old, wine novices to aficionados. Everyone is welcome, and everyone feels at home.

But perhaps the best way to describe the one-of-a-kind concept that is Max’s lies in the motto: “Fried chicken and champagne…? Why the hell not?!”

For more information, visit www.maxswinedive.com. Get blacklisted at www.theblackdoor.com.