As for Max, he refuses to be sentimental and likens the falling out to a divorce. “When it comes to Burt and I, it wasn't really a marriage, because Patti and I founded the business,” he observes. “It wasn't a partnership that we started together.”
As for his real marriage, it seems as though Max romanced more than palates. In 1999, after nineteen years of marriage, Patti Max filed for divorce, citing adultery (according to divorce documents, apparently involving a Ukrainian mistress, her pregnancy, and an abortion). Paperwork relating to the case shows Patti allegedly had caught her husband cheating on her in 1987. Before reconciling, she asked him to sign an agreement promising that if he committed adultery again, he'd pay her five million dollars in assets. Supposedly she caught him again in 1998 but gave him another chance; then came the Ukrainian woman. Patti Max also claims Dennis had been consorting with a prostitute in Colorado.
Jeremy Eaton
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Max won't answer questions about his impending divorce, except to say that he “had one of the most beautiful and perfect marriages. It was a storybook romance; the whole story for twenty years couldn't have been a better story.” Indeed he displays the same kind of blind optimism, as if his actions have no consequences, that he does when talking about former, possibly embittered partners. He won't refer to Patti as his ex-wife, though in the next breath he'll mention a date he had. But the 54-year-old will concede this: It's clear to him, as well to friends and associates, that he's in the midst of “my own midlife crisis issues, both in business and in my personal life.”
Epilogue: As Max's star was dimming, Mark Militello's was brightening. After Mark's Place closed, Militello focused on Mark's Las Olas, which became his cornerstone. And upon it he is building an empire. New investors have helped him open Mark's at the Park in Boca Raton, a restaurant that competes almost directly with Max's Grille. And while critics like M.L. Warren of the Sun-Sentinel have called that venture “underwhelming” and “another step in the direction of mass appeal,” the location seems to be thriving.
The real kicker came this year, when Militello unveiled Mark's South Beach in the Nash Hotel. Though he'd disavowed Miami-Dade diners in his flight north, Militello was welcomed by locals with all the fervor befitting a celebrity chef. Not since Mark's Place has Militello been so in his element.
Militello's return to Miami also has reconciled him with former employees. He stitched up a long-standing rift with Barbara Raichlen, his publicist as well as a family friend; the pair had stopped speaking when Raichlen took a job at Mary Anne Richter's Petrossian. He also can keep an eye on the chefs he trained who now run their own eateries, namely Michelle Bernstein, who will be a chef at the new Mandarin Oriental restaurant (and who will retain a business interest in The Strand), and Kris Wessel of Liaison. Finally given Militello's history, Mark's South Beach just might be his pivotal restaurant. Before, when Militello opened the third place, operations went to the compost heap. But this heap is proving fertile. Militello will soon debut yet another restaurant -- his fourth -- in West Palm Beach.
In fact Miami may heal all wounds. Richter and Rosenberg have reconciled with Max to open Max's Place, and Max currently has plans to open more restaurants with his son from a former marriage, Tucker.
As for Rapoport, who opened Burt's on the Beach in Hollywood and intends to debut another bistro called Henry's in Boca Raton by the end of the year, he seems to have recovered from betrayals, perceived or otherwise. But just to complete the vicious circle, word has it that he's scouting a third location in North Miami: the former Mark's Place, né Max's Place. Would a Burt's Place be closure for him, or just a modicum of sweet revenge?
Jen Karetnick will be on maternity leave for the next month and will return to these pages in December.
