Rating: 
Summary: Just finished reading this~
Review: It's wonderful to read this family's history, with the parallel food history and beautiful details. I wish I could write like this-it's painting as much as it is prose.
Rating:
Summary: great storyteller
Review: Loved this book, bought many and gave them as gifts!
Brought back many family memories!
Rating:
Summary: Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family
Review: Novelist/essayist Volk (White Light, not reviewed) pens a stylishly written memoir that's really a series of portraits of the memorable characters who make up her extended family. It's a simple approach, if you can pull it off: one beguiling vignette after another, and a good number of welcome reprises. Volk's classy prose, as smooth on its wheels as a Bentley, makes it work like a wonder. Hers is a Jewish, New York City restaurant family whose members conducted a high-octane love affair with one another-well, all except for Aunt Lil, who "went through life thinking she got the small half." There are the distant relatives who glitter like stars in the family firmament: the paternal great-grandfather who brought pastrami to New York City in 1888, the aunt who sported the "Best Legs in Atlantic City" in 1916. There's the woman who worked for them: "It was a bizarre New York Jewish sensibility that we could somehow protect Millie from prejudice by never acknowledging there was such a thing as color." But mostly there is the benign despot of a father, a godhead, a man who inspires such love in Volk that it aches; the glamorous mother who cooked only one dinner Volk can remember (it tasted like licorice roast); and the sister with whom she fought sibling trench warfare, who has incontrovertible proof that her bones are big (she had them measured by electrodes) and who packs the kind of worldly wisdom that sets reality squarely in sight: "I know every diet. Here's the trick, okay? Here's all you have to know: Eat less." Volk's conclusion? "They were mine, I was lucky to have them." And would she ever make them proud in these pages. Emotionally luxurious and heart-gladdening. (22 photos) First serial to O: The Oprah Magazine
Rating:
Summary: Makes for lively reading by any interested in food
Review: Patricia Volk's family has long been involved with food: her great-grandfather brought pastrami to the New World, her uncle was the first man to blend scallions with cream cheese, and her grandfather Morgan's restaurants were major hangouts. Stuffed is at once a family autobiography and a focus on the author's family's long-time involvement with culinary history in America, and makes for lively reading by any interested in food.
Rating:
Summary: Reality Novel of a classic American Immigrant Family
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: What a Waste of My Money!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Very cute story
Review: Quite an interesting story of a Jewish family through about 3 generations. There conquests, accomplishments, and contributions to the "new country". A story of sibling rivalry and the sweet, obnoxious family bickering. I almost hate to say this, but this story brings back memories of a few of our family reunions.
I enjoyed this book because it's so very relatable and fun to read. If you come from a big, close family that swaps ideas and shares laughter as well as tears, you will definitely enjoy this novel.
And, if you're in the restaurant business, why wouldn't you always be "Thanksgiving Day" stuffed?!
Rating:
Summary: Wit, wisdom, familial weirdness, and a great, great read.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family
Review: This book was a waste of money. The title is misleading as very little of the book is about a family in the restaurant business. It was also boring, who cares about people who think only about material things. Paul Van Duinen
Rating:
Summary: What a Waste of My Money!
Review: This is the first time I have ever regretted spending money on a book. Someone in my book club chose this book so I tried to read it for the upcoming review. I can't imagine why anyone would enjoy this book except the author because it would be of interest to no one else except her! This is also the first time I ever reviewed a book online; but I am hoping that I might let people know that not everyone thought this book was wonderful!
| 
