Informative, nostalgic, and very funny!

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	• Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family Patricia Volk Knopf, 2001 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 36 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Informative, nostalgic, and very funny!

Here, Patricia Volk reminisces about her 19th- and 20th-Century ancestors, mostly New York City Jewish restauranteurs. The entire work is flavoured with a touch of humor, outright hilarity in places.

Ms. Volk's family is bulging with people which are found in every large family -- that's partly what makes the book so interesting. There also seems to be an above-average degree of eccentricity among her clan which makes for good reading as well.

One of the more interesting facets of the book is the story of an ancestor who first acquired the recipe for, and then introduced, PASTRAMI to America. This is a good tale, and especially so since it's true.

There was a certain point in the book where I sighed, took a break, and then finally moved on. But, mostly, it's a pretty fluid read. A lot of folks would say that this is "women's reading" but I enjoyed it quite a lot, mostly due to my personal interest in culinary topics.

Recommended to people with large families or to anyone interested in culinary history.

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" Suffed" with pleasure!

Enjoyable, evocative, and wonderfully written. Both funny and touching, it made me laugh, and it made me cry! I bought five copies to give as gifts! C.L.

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Excellent "memoir"

I bought this after reading Volk's newly-published novel, which I also enjoyed. Good writing through-out this book. I just ordered the audio version.

wonderful memoir

A well written memoir of an interesting quirky family that resonates and reminds us that we all have these odd members in our families, and that is what makes life interesting.

Overlooked gem in the gastronomy genre

In the past several years, food writing has mushroomed, and I believe the bubble is about to burst. I came across this book in a local charity shop, the kind patronized by well-heeled and well-read donors. This book is well-written, humorous, full of family anecdotes, and also contains memorable quotes about the Volk family's advice on living a good and full life. The family photographs are gorgeous, to put it in Volk's terminology. I give it 5 stars when considering it within the gastro genre. Forget Ruth Reichl's multi-volume in-progress autobiography. This is food lit meets Judaica, and it is a worthwhile read.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

In a restaurant family, you?re never just hungry?you?re starving to death. And you?re never full?you?re stuffed.
Patricia Volk?s family is as American (background: Austrian-Jewish) as ?Rhapsody in Blue.? They came to these shores determined to make their mark; each of them is a piquant morsel of history. Great-grandfather Sussman Volk brought pastrami to the New World. Grandfather Jacob was known as ?the Most Destructive Force on Wall Street? and was memorialized by E. B. White as ?the greatest wrecker of all time? for his innovative method of demolition. Uncle Albert was the first man to stir scallions into cream cheese. The last of Grandfather Herman Morgen?s fourteen restaurants was a famous garment center hangout. One grandmother won the 1916 trophy for ?Best Legs in Atlantic City.? The other was a three-hundred-pound calendar girl. Ms. Volk?s handsome, demanding restaurateur father invented the Six-color Retractable Pen and Pencil Set and the Double-sided Cigarette Lighter (so you never have to worry which end is up). For three generations, just about every Volk and Morgen (with the exception of Uncle Al, who had an eleven-year affair with Aunt Lil and then refused to marry her because she wasn?t a virgin) has, no matter what the circumstances, exhibited a terrifyingly positive attitude. With a cosmic disdain for the status quo, all of them?the tyrants, do-gooders, lovers, martyrs, and fakes?lived at full tilt.

Stuffed is a wildly funny yet unsparing look at how families work.

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