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The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story
"The last thing I expected to do was marry a man eighteen years older than I was who owned a restaurant. The fact that the restaurant was the Russian Tea Room on West 57th Street in New York, I expected even less...." So begins The Russian Tea A Love Story by former owner Faith Stewart-Gordon. Charming and revealing, this highly anticipated memoir shows why the legendary restaurant lives up to its reputation -- and then some. Rudolf Nuteyev told Time magazine that the Russian Tea Room was what he liked most about America. Carol Channing regularly dined there for lunch -- on mysterious items she'd bring herself in a lunch box. Leonard Bernstein scribbled the first bars of "Fancy Free" there on a napkin. And Dustin Hoffman made his hilarious and unforgettable first public appearance as a woman from the famous movie Tootsie at the Russian Tea Room. Now, just in time for the Russian Tea Room's long-awaited reopening, comes this delightful, anecdote-rich story of the famed New York eatery -- and more. It's not just about a famous place, it is a true memoir, at times very funny, always touching, sometimes sad, and often revealing, about a brave and quirky young South Carolina woman, Faith Stewart-Gordon. From the early 1950s and acting on Broadway to her marriage to the Russian Tea Room owner Sidney Kaye and her subsequent struggles to operate the restaurant after his death, she balanced a career and young motherhood, a journey with which many will empathize. Faith Stewart-Gordon never lost sight of what went on behind the scenes, both in the restaurant and in her own life. The Russian Tea Room is not only a story of survival but of the quest for self-knowledge set against the most glamorous of backgrounds.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 10, 2013
Okay, so the RTR was a special place to the people who frequented it. We get it. Most people have had their own such special places at one point or another, for whatever reason. But reading this book was a bit like hearing someone laugh interminably at some joke that you have no hope of understanding, because "you had to be there." Made worse by the celebrity ass-kissing.
Towards the very end of the book, there is an almost throwaway sentence about how the government crackdown on 80% write-offs of business lunches in the late 1980s was a big blow to the RTR's bottom line. This - again, at the END of the book - tells me more than anything else here about the RTR, what it had become in the end, and the astonishingly privileged viewpoint of its author (at least during the mid-1990s when this was written).
I was expecting some amount of "Oh, here's yet another not-particularly-funny-or-insightful anecdote about my famous friends" from this book, but not for almost the *entire* book to that, ad nauseum. One gets very little here about the RTR's actual history or food. The brief sections that delve into the larger context in which the RTR was successful for so long, and later ultimately lost its footing, are the best, but they are few and one must get through so much fluff to find them.
Towards the very end of the book, there is an almost throwaway sentence about how the government crackdown on 80% write-offs of business lunches in the late 1980s was a big blow to the RTR's bottom line. This - again, at the END of the book - tells me more than anything else here about the RTR, what it had become in the end, and the astonishingly privileged viewpoint of its author (at least during the mid-1990s when this was written).
I was expecting some amount of "Oh, here's yet another not-particularly-funny-or-insightful anecdote about my famous friends" from this book, but not for almost the *entire* book to that, ad nauseum. One gets very little here about the RTR's actual history or food. The brief sections that delve into the larger context in which the RTR was successful for so long, and later ultimately lost its footing, are the best, but they are few and one must get through so much fluff to find them.
July 30, 2022
Picked this up on a whim as I was curious about the origins of the restaurant (which this book never really addressed) but was pleasantly surprised - this book was a fun delight! Sometimes hard to follow but it truly feels like someone telling you memories & stories about old Hollywood & NYC theater. Would highly recommend for any Northwestern alums as there's a lot of unexpected & interesting tidbits!
October 12, 2018
not a very compelling book.
March 2, 2012
I'm giving up on this, since I just don't care. I haven't been able to force myself to finish it, even though it feels like it should be awesome. I think the issue for me is that it's very much a microcosm of New York at a particular time and in a particular set of people. Since I don't know that much (OK, anything) about the '40's-'80's NY theater crowd, the anecdotes don't have any resonance.
April 23, 2009
I couldn't even finish. It was interesting, but not able to keep my attention.
June 26, 2009
Story of the famed New York eatery. I just love the name. It evokes romance and glamour. Sounds like a lot of it went on. They certainly had the famous clientele.
Want to read
October 22, 2010Call Number:
647.95092 S
647.95092 S
November 8, 2011
A lovely look at one of my favorite restaurants!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews