A French Weekend - Brunch at Maximilien in Pike Place

Emi and I recently joined my parents for a French brunch at Maximilien in Pike Place Market. With our upcoming summer excursion to Paris and the Mediterranean we've been doing "research" for the trip.

It was a perfect Seattle, winter Sunday morning, a little chilly, but clear and bright. We had a great view of the water from our table and even better brunch to start off our Sunday festivities.

We started the meal off with coffee and their croissants, brioche & pains au chocolat basket. The flaky pastries are made with real butter from France and baked fresh every Sunday morning. Amazing. Flaky, moist, chewy (in a good way), delicate, and when paired with raspberry jam and butter, their croissants were near perfection. However, the pains au chocolat was my favorite. The buttery flaky outer pastry was filled with a warm gooey chocolate. It was perfect with my coffee and was like eating dessert for breakfast.

After the amazing French pastries I moved on to eggs Provencal and Merguez - two grilled Merguez (spicy lamb sausages) with scramble eggs, tomato basil, cheese, sauteed with brunch potatoes and served with fruit. The lamb sausages were from Uli's in the Market. Not your typical pork sausage, a little drier, but much more flavorful and spicy. The eggs ended up being amazing. I was a little underwhelmed after being served from the appearance of the eggs, but after my first bite I was hooked. These were good eggs. I make eggs every morning so wasn't sure if they would be bland, but this flavorful dish is still imprinted in my mind weeks later.

My dad decided to skip brunch altogether and jumped straight into their lunch menu and tried their lamb burger. Oregon Andersen Ranch ground lamb, on brioche bread, tomatoes, lettuce, goat cheese and remoulade served with hand cut fries.

Here's a look inside my mom's L'Omelette au Crabe - Dungeness crab omelet with with mushrooms and cheese.

Emi went with the very traditional Croque-Madame - black forest ham, bechamel, and cheese sandwich, topped with two sunny side up eggs and hand cut fries. For sure Emi and I will be eating a few of these when we go to Paris. What an ingenious invention of a dish, toasted bread, salty ham, melted cheese, and runny sunny side up eggs! Basically they through together all of my favorite breakfast foods into one delicious sandwich.

Definitely a fun brunch. Great food, good company, and an awesome view. Eating brunch there reminded me of my old WaMu days. We used to go there for happy hour in the summer out on the deck overlooking the Sound. Highly recommend that as well.

Another reason you should check out Maximilien's soon is to sign up for the Celebrated Chefs program. After you sign up for the program every time you eat at an affiliated restaurant 5% of your total bill goes to a charity of your choice. There are a ton of awesome restaurants participating and you get a really cool cookbook for free! The cookbook has recipes from all of the participating restaurants (Barking Frog, Cafe Juanita, Palisade, Maximilien). Even if you only go to one restaurant it's worth signing up for so you can get the cookbook.

- Kyle and Emi