Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family: A Memoir

Patricia Volk's memoir, `Stuffed' is much less a culinary memory than it is a recollection of what, to some readers, may seem like a simultaneously wise and dysfunctional Jewish-American family which happened to be instrumental in the shaping of the Jewish delicatessen in America.When I picked this book out to read, with it's title and photograph of the giant Morgan's restaurant dining room on the back cover, I was expecting something like Ruth Reichl's two memoirs. This book is different in many regards, although it has its own charm making it equally worthy as a light read.The first difference is that there is very little in the book about food itself. The blurb by Eli Zabar, who may have known the family business better than he knew the inside of the book, reinforces the impression that the book is about food. The book is simply about people whose business happened to be food. The fact that the author is a writer of fiction rather than a culinary journalist should have been the clue that gives away the game. The chapter titles, named after major foodstuffs (including bacon, of all things for a Jewish family) maintains the ambiguity long into the middle of the book. I kept looking for the recipes (not really).The second difference is that the book is much less about the author (and her parents) than it is about the entire Volk / Morgan / Sussman / Lieban vereinshaft (extended family in Yiddish).Three themes permeate the book. The first is the success at various endeavors, primarily the building demolition business and the restaurant business of various male family members. The second theme is the great beauty of the women in the family. One look at the photo of the author is enough to get the sense of the quality of the Volk / Lieban genes. The third theme is lack of logic in some of the family members' life choices.If you love reading about people who simply had a very full life with the intensity one may find in fiction but with the added cachet that this was all real, this is a book for you.By the way, there are two recipes on pages 80 and 81 for chocolate cake and icing.

I am 46 years old, third generation garment manufacturer, and grew up with Morgens being my all-time favorite restaurant. Cecil was a fantastic host, who entertained me with jokes, whenever I went in with my Father, and Uncle. Audrey was a beautiful woman, who did a great job helping to run the place. My family ate there at least 3 times a week for lunch, and often entertained customers, after work for drinks and dinner. When I visited from school, I always ate lunch there, with my favorite waiter Gus. This book brought back very fond memories, and I was especially touched by the chapter of Cecil's death. When Spring comes, I will go look for his bench. Great job!

The earlier reviewers have one thing about right--this book is a lot more than a semi-food-based memoir about growing up Jewish in Manhattan in the middle of the last century. It's really about nearly everybody's family: the terrific characters, the loonies, the distinguished, the pathetic--you name it, they're in the book. Volk's style is an amazing balancing act, dancing between opposites. Sometimes when you're expecting a laugh you get a tear, or vice versa, or both at once: her farewell to her dying beloved father is so absurd and so moving that you'll never forget it. (Or his ashes, which of course get caught in an ocean gust and blow all over his children.) For my part I was often laughing at the parade of eccentricities when I remembered again how every family I know is like that: outsized in a way, outlandish in a way. Among Volk's other virtues, I don't know another writer who has so subtly and ruthlessly and hysterically exposed the small casual meannesses we tend to visit on the people we love. And still the book is full of love, running over with it.

Volk dazzles! It is hard after reading such a perfect book to adequately sum up its thorough brilliance my own words. In Stuffed, you will glean lasting images of characters you grow to care about with deep tenderness. And this fondness grows exponentially with each page as Volk introduces you to all the wonderfully complex characters who sit around her dining room table. Through the aperture of food and family, Volk's endearing vibrant words resonate even when you're not reading and make you smile. Life is that much richer after knowing the beauty, love, loyalty, and wild idiosyncrasies that bind her family. I loved with them, I laughed with them, I cried with them, I wanted to know them. It's the kind of book I want my friends to read so they can know them too. Other than praise for the author, all I am left saying is, "Patricia Volk, can I have seconds?