Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family: A Memoir

by Patricia Volk

Patricia Volk’s delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, cheerful, infuriating and wonderful family, where you’re never just hungry–you're starving to death, and you’re never just full–you’re stuffed. Volk’s family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced pastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garment center restaurant. All along, food was pretty much at the center of their lives. But as seductively as Volk evokes the food, Stuffed is at heart a paean to her quirky, vibrant relatives: her grandmother with the “best legs in Atlantic City”; her grandfather, who invented the wrecking ball; her larger-than-life father, who sculpted snow thrones when other dads were struggling with snowmen. Writing with great freshness and humor, Patricia Volk will leave you hungering to sit down to dinner with her robust family–both for the spectacle and for the food.

Genres: Memoir, Food, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Cooking, Audiobook

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Patricia Volk is the author of the memoir Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family and four works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Bennington College, and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Playboy. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

i know a lot of people -- including my wife -- love this book but i found it boring in the extreme and gave up halfway through. it's all bragging about her family (who are somewhat colorful...at least to her), all snapshots, and absolutely no story. i find it amazing it got so many good reviews. i wanted to throw it across the room...it was so annoying. this book is probably a hoot if you're a member of the author's family but for me, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) This is a family memoir first and a foodie memoir second. The chapters may be named after signature dishes, but each one is devoted to a different member of the extended Morgen’s restaurant dynasty of New York City Jews and designated by a featured family photograph. Within chapters the material is arranged in short vignettes, giving Volk a chance to dredge up everything she has heard or remembers about the Lithuanian great-grandfather who introduced pastrami to America, or the grandfather who became a famous demolitionist, or the great-aunt who made the front page of the paper for being held hostage by a would-be burglar for seven hours in her apartment at the age of 84. My favorite chapter wasn’t about a relative at all but about the family’s longtime housekeeper, a black woman named Mattie (two of her recipes, for steak and chocolate-iced cake, are the only ones in the book). I might have preferred more in the way of a chronological narrative, but you develop a fondness for all these odd characters and their preferences, food-related or otherwise.

[Bibliolicious · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a surprise for me. Though it is about a restaurant life and loosely organized by food topics, it is much more about family--the good, the bad and the ugly.

Though I sometimes lost track of the relationship of one particular person to her, I loved the deep sense of respect and affection she has for each eccentric member of her enormous family. The writing was beautiful. The story was sad in some places and "laugh out loud" hilariuos in others. I have a wonderful brother, have never in my life wanted a sister, but I really loved the descriptions she shared of her relationship with her sister, envied her to get have such a strong bond.

One of the few books I have come across that I didn't want to end. This book won't transform your life, or teach you anything new. But for me, it helped me to see my family in a more humorous, gracious way.

[Heidi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not even 1/2 way through this book and I already hate it. I thought there would be stories about growing up in the resteraunt business, but it is just incessant bragging about how funny/great her family is. Book is aimless and has no point, but a bunch of random family memories. I am not going to finish it.

[Bee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, for obvious reasons.

I ended up feeling that this was a disjointed work that only tangentially mentioned her family's restaurant business, when I thought it would be the focus of the work.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you aren't part of her family, this book should have no interest to you. I kept going on this book knowing that it had to get better. It didn't. A complete waste of time.

[Dree · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not about being in the restaurant business. Maybe 10 pages actually discuss the restaurant. Mostly it is a series of vignettes in chapter form (naming the chapters are food does not make for a food book!). Generally, each chapter is about a person. How great they are, how gorgeous, how clever, how nice or mean, how rich or poor, and how great the author herself is for being nice to said person.

A lot of bragging. The author brags about herself, her parents, her aunts/uncles, her money, her parents' housekeeper (there is more about her cooking than the restaurants), her wealthy childhood, her loving smart gorgeous relatives, and did I mention herself?

Found this on the library shelf in the food section--which matches the Loc info. It's wrong.

A fast read if you can giggle at the bragging. The author's family is not nearly as exceptional as she thinks. They seem very normal.

[Selma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patricia Volk is like Woody Allen minus the trenchant humor. Her family of annoyingly kvetchy and insulting people is constantly displayed as "lovable," but you know that if you spent five minutes in the same room with any one of them someone would be murdered. Why she constantly parades before the reader this collection of obnoxious characters, most of whom insult her in the time-worn manner of hypercritical ethnic parents, is baffling. And, like one of those round-bottomed clown-faced punching bags that bounces back with a smile after every pummel, there's Patricia on the rebound, grinning after each blow. I suppose that writing a memoir so entrenched in denial is cathartic for the author, but it's not the stuff of great literature, just pathos.

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the few remaining books-on-CD left at the library after the summer vacation rush. Obviously, since this is a memoir, it focuses on the fabulous history of the Volk family all the way down to lost cousins, married-in aunts and uncles, hired help, etc. I started out apathetic, but ended up enjoying her portrayal of New York City during her childhood and actually getting attached to the quirky characters on her family tree. I was sorry when the CD ended.

[pianogal · Rating 2 out of 5]

You would think that a book that claims to be about a restaurant family would have more in it about the actual restaurant. This book was simply a bragfest about the Volk family and how they were the best wreckers in NY, and how they brought pastrami to the New World...blah blah blah.If you want to read about restaurants, keep looking, b/c this one isn't it. If you want to read about the GREAT AND MIGHTY VOLKS, have at it.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't stop reading this book. It's one of the best memoirs I've ever read--hilarious, full of memorable characters, and told in short vignettes woven into the longer narrative of the family's life so things never get boring. I highly recommend it.

[Book Concierge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this memoir would be about running a restaurant, full of funny and perhaps poignant anecdotes. But it's really about love and family relationships. The chapters on her father are especially touching and memorable. I'm very glad I read this work.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank heavens for reviews. If I didn't read reviews about this book I may have been disappointed only because of what I thought I was going to get based on the title. The title of this book seems a bit deceiving. You think you are going to be reading about the life of a restaurant. That is not what this book is about although the restaurant business can be seen as the glue or thread that keeps this family together and you do get glimpses of what it was like to own a restaurant. It is about a family's life in NYC. Survival, success, failure (not necessarily in that order). You get little glimpses of history, memories of things you completely forgot about. The people the author wrote about came to life for me. Depending on the age of the reader this book can take you back to your childhood when you did dress to go into the city, wore gloves, shopped at B. Altman's. Ms. Volk wrote honestly and didn't sugar coat. In some cases, I wonder if members of her family are not talking to her because of some things she revealed.

When you read this book, just go with it. At times there doesn't seem to be any order to what is shared. Each chapter seems to be about one person but many people and memories old and new are thrown into the chapter. I suggest reading each chapter as a short story and as you go through the book a bigger picture will unfold. After finishing this book the title wasn't so wrong but emphasis needs to be on the word family.

[Maxwell Brogan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The love from your family is life's greatest blessing.” Patricia Volk and her stories of her family really prove this quote from her grandmother's recipes to her grandfather's numerous injuries. My family may not be as big as hers, but my family is a big part of my life like hers.
One story of her family is when her brother lost his taste and loved his mother's eggs ”Her chopped egg is her brother's favorite food in the world… He says it up, pileing crackers high. Years later, when he’d when he lost his sense of taste, he’d eat it anyway” (Volk 164).

[Maria Copeland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Patricia Volk writes affectionately, but she doesn't acquaint the reader sufficiently with her subjects; I admired, but found it hard to feel what she does about food, her restaurant family, and growing up in New York. I don't like to be held at arms-length by a memoir. I spent some pleasant hours reading it in Tatte this month, though.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was a sweet story of a girl, her sister and their parents. For being a memoir about a restaurant family, there wasn't a lot of focus on the restaurant, but more on the relationships within the family. The ending was very sad and difficult to listen to as the author described her father's illness and subsequent passing.

[Sarah Wu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the audio book. It was ok, not because of the subject matter, which was very interesting in the beginning. During my teen years I worked in our family coffee shop so I completely related to so much of what she said. The problem was that the book was completely disjointed and there was no real linear progression. She has so many aunts and uncles that she kept describing both at young and old ages and I didn't know who was who and how old they were and, most importantly, how they fit into the story. The last 25% of the book was devoted to her father's cancer and death. Very, very depressing. I probably wouldn't recommend despite the funny start.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not terrible, but I honestly doubt I'd have stayed with it if I had it in print rather than audio. With the subtitle, I guess I thought there'd be more about time spent in the actual restaurants and the running thereof. For most of the book she devotes one chapter to each eccentric Jewish New York relative, mostly great-aunts and great-uncles but also parents, grandparents, sister, and beloved long-term housekeeper. Parts of it are pretty interesting and/or funny, but I think someone who is Jewish or from New York or both would enjoy this much more than I.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I'm not sold on the idea that Volk's family was more fascinating than mine or yours. Once you cobble together the achievements of 4 sets of great grandparents, throw in a few Uncles-in-laws, write up some funny stuff your crazy aunt said, it seems that I could grab a random coworker and uncover a family history as rich and interesting as Volks. But she is a New Yorker, and I guess that is supposed to make it more interesting than if your family came from Minnesota or New Mexico.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great stories about multiple generations of a Jewish immigrant family that ran restaurants in New York City from the turn of the twentieth century until the late 80s. Funny, touching, insightful--what you want in a memoir, plus lots of scenes of people eating amazing food, junk food, fancy food, mysterious food, etc.

[Lain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patricia Volk's memoir of her family and its 100-year history in the restaurant business is as much a history of New York as it is a recounting of her relatives. Touching, funny, sad, quirky -- this book has it all. Volk is a talented writer with the ability to create a vivid character on the page. I finished this book wishing I'd been part of their clan.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute family memoir. I love NYC Jewish culture, this book really puts it out there. Also, like the food descriptions. Should eat before reading it for a long time or you'll end craving some strange things, like cucumber salad or fricassee.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can't read this book without wanting a pastrami sandwich. Really good and funny.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to audio cd and loved it..probably because of the woman that read it to me !! Loved her voice.

[Nicholle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I'd hoped. We'll see what the book discussion folks think.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patricia Volk’s father ran one of the Morgen’s restaurants in New York City. Her memoir is a fascinating glimpse into a part of New York that I will never know, both for cultural and temporal reasons. I read it somewhat by accident—I thought it was a memoir/cookbook, but that’s because I happened to open it randomly to the one of the only two sets of facing pages that had a couple of recipes! I’m glad I made the mistake, though. It was a fun look at a unique time and place. This is New York City the core of New York City…

This last store was the hub of the garment center in the hub of the city in the hub of the nation that’s the hub of the planet. Mom and dad fed the people that clothed the country when MADE IN AMERICA was the label of choice.

At that time, a family-run restaurant was a home almost as much as the actual apartment the family lived in.

…when I asked for a hamburger, my grandfather would raise his forearm, then smash through the kitchen IN door and grind a steak himself.

And that went both ways. Everything her parents provided was provided by the restaurant’s profits.

I counted my clothes in food. If a new dress cost $32, that was two orders of Lobster Newburg and one Coconut Ball with Chocolate Sauce Dad had to sell.

In addition to the recipes presented as recipes, there are a few other recipes given as paragraphical descriptions. Here’s a list of all of the recipes I saw:

p. 68 Mattie’s Steak
p. 69 Morgen’s Seasoning Salt
p. 80 Mattie’s Chocolate Cake
p. 81 Mattie’s Chocolate Icing
p. 196 Cucumber salad
p. 207 eggs Mattie’s way

Except for Morgen’s Seasoning Salt, none of the recipes are from the restaurant. Mattie was the housekeeper; the cucumber salad was Patricia’s, made whenever a particular uncle came over.

I dangled my legs from the stool hoping that soda never would end.

The book is about both family and life during that era in a city at the hub of the world, from trivial things up, and they interacted. Growing up in the garment district, you expected that your clothes were built to last, and that you needed to be able to repair minor problems.

Sewing on a button, like avoiding eye contact on the subway, is a basic life skill.

Most of the book is presented as a series of vignettes about specific family members. Her grandmother, she writes, was “superstitious beyond black cats and open umbrellas”, and then she lists several of the superstitions her grandmother held, such as “If you’re holding hands in the street and a lamppost is about to separate you, say ‘Bread and butter.’”

Some of them don’t sound like superstitions to me. “Never put a needle on a bed” sounds like very good advice, especially when the very first superstition is “If you come back into the apartment because you forgot something, sit on the bed and count to ten.” That latter is also good advice, unless you sit on a pin and completely lose track of what you’re there for!

Chicken today, once you get past the skin, tastes like packing pellets. Nana’s sauce worked its way to the bone.

Her character descriptions are often both hilarious and specific. About her Aunt Ettie, she wrote:

Most of the time she looked as if she were about to have tea with a European expatriate who’d lost his title in a revolution. Sometimes she was.

It’s not so much amazing that a family of entrepreneurs would include many semi-famous people. What is amazing is that in her family you didn’t need to create to become famous. You were living in the hub city, after all. Amazing things just happened. It makes Busiek’s Astro City much more believable. Her Aunt Ruthie, Ruth Wolko, is semi-famous for being held hostage somewhat at random in 1990; it was a hot night and she’d left her bathroom window open. “José Cruz climbed in and held Aunt Ruthie at gunpoint for seven hours.”

Aunt Ruthie, of course, fed him. You can do an internet search on her name to find the story.

You weren’t considered fed unless you were in pain.

[Trina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stuffed by Patricia Volk was one of those books I couldn't finish reading.

As a reader, if I am struggling with a novel, I try twice to give it a chance to wiggle its way into my heart. Stuffed is one of those novels that had the change and doesn't make the cut. The appeal to ead about a restaurant family includes the restaurant and less about the interpersonal relationships in a family.

I am a narrative reader, and in this book, the train of thought is a cataclysmic mess, with stream of consciousness taking place for the duration of my experience. Time and place have no context, no clear movement from one to the other. It is like a conservation with an elderly person who you've asked to share their life story. Now they are fifty and in the next breath nineteen. It is mind numbing to read.

Finally, the triggers in the book is what made me set it aside for good. The way Volk's mother speaks and acts toward her is disgusting and I chose to not endure it:

"What she wantes for me is an even cleaner, thinner, happier life than she has. Mom made me, and now she will make me better. I'm unfinishes, something she can't stop sculpting, something it's her job to complete." (pg 61)

While I can't recommend this book, I would like to share something with you. Mother's Day is right around the corner and while Volk had a mother that saw her as not good enough, not thin enough, not anything enough, I hope differently for you. Relationships are important to have and are important pieces of long, healthy lives.

Want to see other reviews by me? Check out www.readviews.ca

[Luke Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I made mistake of thinking that with a subtitle of "Adventures of a Restaurant Family" what I would be getting would be a lot of behind the scenes daily life about a restaurant, a passion for food, oddball kitchen workers, stuff like that. What I actually got? Very little of that but lots and lots of stories about a Jewish family, who according to the author, is very famous but I've never heard of any of them. It was very confusing for me at times because one minute they are talking about how Jewish they are, then how they don't adhere to the Jewish faith/tenants, and then they eat a lot of bacon. I'm not judging, I'm not Jewish either but it seems like an awful lot of bad Jewish stereotypes which maybe is trying to be funny? I didn't find it so.

Though they are a "restaurant family" it seems only the father is and not the whole family. Apparently all mom knows how to cook is eggs and bacon. The father is definitely the best character in the book with some very tear wrenching scenes toward the end of the book but beyond that I really didn't care at all about other characters in this memoir.

[Timothy Juhl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my second Jewish memoir in as a many months, and I was thankful that this family history did not fall prey to the same problems as the previous one.

This is the story of 100 years of family, the Volks, in NYC and their mark on the city, not only in its architecture, but in its rich history of restaurants. The description of this memoir is deceiving, described as memories of a family of restauranteurs; I was expecting more aspects of the restaurant business. And there is plenty of that, but this was more about the author's grandparents, their siblings, and her own parents, which is not to say it was a disappointing memoir.

There are the usual snippets of Jewish life in NYC, the doting aunts, the persnickety Jewish grandmother, the wise Jewish grandfather, and many times these stories deserved a smile or even a little chuckle, and that's the reason for the three-star rating.

And there were enough descriptions of meals and delicacies and long-gone restaurants and menus to make me wistful and craving a good pastrami sandwich (not something we have access to in the heartlands of Iowa).

[Bradford Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few delightful books I have ever read (I have read a lot of very good books!). The writing style is beautiful; as smoothe as virgin olive oil.

It is the story of a highly idiosyncratic family which, although of some "means", seems also to be ethical. Item: Man who owned a building demolition company and who never sent an employee anywhere he would not himself go. Almost every page is something, for myself, very amusing and also incisive. Great sociology of everyday life.

These people are models for present day persons. Of course there are things which are not altogether felicitous, but the author even descibes these in an artiulate and empathic way. If to err is human, one could do worse than to err like the Volks.

I note the book is published by a pedigreed publisher: Alfred Knoph. So this is not just "family pride". Knopf must have recognized the value of such a book to have published it. I join Alfred Knopf in endorsing Patricia Volk's fine book.