Stuffed

'We were a restaurant family, four generations in a six-block radius. When you opened our fridge, food fell on your feet.' Three generations of Patricia Volk's family have been in the restaurant business. Her hallway was the colour of ball-park mustard, the living room was cocoa and the floor was like Genoa salami. At Morgen's, the famous restaurant in the garment district which her grandfather started and which her father ran, she was the princess. Waiters winked at her and twirled her napkin up high before draping it on her lap and when she wanted a hamburger, her grandfather would grind the steak himself.In STUFFED, Patricia Volk marvellously evokes everyday life in a New York Jewish family and what it was like to grow up around an old fashioned family run restaurant. As much about families as it is about food, here are stories of eccentric uncles, gorgeous aunts and millionaire grandfathers all of who lived a couple of blocks from each other. Of ancestors who were the first to bring pastrami to the New World, and stir scallions into cream cheese. Of Uncle Al, who slept with Aunt Lil for eleven years and then didn't want to marry her because she wasn't a virgin and Aunt Ruthie, who gave the burglar, breaking into her apartment, a meal and a lecture. Wildly entertaining, this is a wonderful portrait of a fabulous family and a charming recreation of a lost era.