Stuffed: Growing Up in a Restaurant Family

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Number of Pages: 256

Three generations of Patricia Volk’s family have been in the restaurant business. Her hallway was the colour of ballpark mustard, the living room was cocoa and the floor like Genoa salami. At Morgen’s, the famous restaurant in the garment district which her father ran, she was the princess. Waiters winked at her and twirled her napkin high before draping it in her lap. Volk evokes everyday life in a New York Jewish family and what it was like to grow up around an old-fashioned, family-run restaurant. As much about families as it is about food, here are stories of eccentric uncles, gorgeous aunts and millionaire grandfathers, all of whom lived a couple of blocks from each other. There are tales of ancestors who were the first to bring pastrami to the New World and stir scallions in cream cheese; of Uncle Al, who slept with Aunt Lil for eleven years and then didn’t want to marry her because she wasn’t a virgin; and Aunt Ruthie, who gave the burglar breaking into her apartment a meal and a lecture. It is the portrait of a fabulous family and a charming recreation of a lost era.