Max-In-The- Market Gets New Owners

One of Seattle's landmark restaurants has quietly changed hands within the past couple of weeks. Two longtime employees of Maximilien-in-the Market, former general manager Axel Mace and former head chef Eric Francy, are new owners of the restaurant.

Until recently Mace was working as maitre d' at ObaChine; Francy was head of commissaries for US West. The new owners closed the restaurant briefly, but they've reopened with a slightly revised menu.

Meanwhile, the restaurant's former owners, Francois and Julia Kissel, haven't decided what they'll do next. Julia reports Francois has been in France discussing prospects.

The Kissels opened Maximilien's 22 years ago. But their influence on local cuisine began with Francois' opening of the Brasserie Pittsbourg in 1969 in Pioneer Square.

A Frenchman born in Indonesia who fought in North Africa during World War II, Francois deserves credit for first introducing Seattle to a brand of fusion cuisine (Asian, North African and French). The intense, curly-headed intellectual has become well known for his generous response to causes.

While Francois was cooking for the less fortunate, Julia was managing the business.

Asked several years ago if he resented the spate of trendy new restaurants, Francois said, "It's my community and anything that makes life richer benefits me. I like to believe I have brought something to it and that you can't measure what you get back in money."

The big draw: Rob Angel and Terry Langston, those Mercer Island Pictionary guys, are taking their parlor game to a new level. It's now a syndicated TV game show airing at 11 a.m. weekdays on KCPQ-TV, Channel 13.

Angel and Langston have signed on as executive producers. The show is taped before a live audience in Hollywood.

So far, everything has gone smoothly, with one exception. On a show already taped but not airing until Oct. 3, Erik Estrada (Ponch on "CHiPS") reacted by throwing his arms in the air. He accidentally clobbered teammate Bill Maher, host of "Politically Incorrect."

Maher staggered backward, fell to the floor and had to be revived before the show could continue. It wasn't a picture you'd want to score.

Not the first: Despite claims to the contrary, Charley Royer is NOT the first former Seattle mayor to sue the city (Royer and seven others currently are plaintiffs in an ACLU suit over drug testing for prospective city employees).

Turns out Royer is merely the latest mayor to sue the city. Historian Tim Baker points out that Henry Yesler, an early-day mayor, sued the city over some land-use actions following the Great Fire of 1889.

Under construction: KUOW-FM morning news anchor Bill Radke describes some of Seattle's landmark buildings this way: "If the former Seafirst Bank Building on Fourth Avenue is the big black box that the Space Needle came in, then the Rainier Tower is the pencil used to write "fragile" on the box, and the Experience Music Project (the ultramodern Frank Gehry design now under construction) must be what happened when they dropped it."

Jean Godden's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Local News section of The Times. Her phone message number is 206-464-8300. Her e-mail address is: jgod-new@seatimes.com