Product Description

"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 Room: 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1091103 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
In its heyday--the mid-1980s--the Russian Tea Room was a celebrity force field, known more for its clientele than its food. Frequented by the likes of Jackie O., Rudolph Nureyev, and Leonard Bernstein, it had mutated over the years from a homey refuge for expatriate Russians, musicians, and not-always-solvent artists to a big-deal lunch-spot in the swollen New York tradition. Faith Stewart-Gordon, the Tea Room's owner from 1967 until its 1996 sale, saw it all and has put much of it down in the inevitably named The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story. Part autobiography, part real-estate memoir, all celebrity roll call, the book provides a decent share of the titillation it promises, a diverting bang for the buck.

Tracing her life from her early days as a would-be actress, Stewart-Gordon recounts her marriage to Sidney Kaye, from whom she inherited the restaurant; motherhood (a troubled daughter); intermittent affairs (glancingly depicted); a second marriage (ending in divorce); Tea Room stewardship (resistance from the staff at first then respect and triumph); and the final decision to sell the store ("to find closure" and "begin a new life")--and more. Stewart-Gordon does best when recounting the real-estate wars and other nitty-gritty matters that beset the Tea Room, which is situated on very valuable land, indeed. She is, however, hampered by her use of a circular narrative, which anticipates many events, leaving these touched-upon but frustratingly unexplored. (We learn, for example, of her first husband's death in passing--chapters before we get to the actual details.) It's a parenthetical approach that dissipates what narrative steam the author manages to generate.

In the end, though, it's Woody, Dustin, and Andy we've come to see, and see them we do. And that's what the Tea Room was about for us outsiders who followed it--a chance to feel closer to the buzz. This book promises, and largely delivers, another way in. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
This disorganized but good-natured recollection takes readers inside New York's famous restaurant, which was founded in 1927 by members of the Russian Imperial Ballet. Stewart-GordonAthe perky name-dropper and former actress who inherited the restaurant from her husband, Sidney Kaye, in 1967Acharmingly recalls stories from the Tea Room (most of them comic, at least in retrospect), like the time the restaurant flooded and the diners just went on eating, or when Dustin Hoffman showed up in drag for his role in Tootsie. Stewart-Gordon can also switch abruptly from comic routines to the highly personal, as when she affectionately describes a typical evening with her second husband in a mock stage script, then immediately afterwards details how that marriage ended with a bitter divorce. (Her marriage to Kaye sounds less than idyllic as well: she offhandedly tells of a night that she tried to strangle him and he gave her a black eye.) Celebrity appearances are the draw here, and there are plenty of cameos from the restaurant's heyday in the 1970s and '80s: Sam Cohn, Woody Allen, Richard Burton, Helen Gurley Brown and Russian defectors Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolph Nureyev are some of the names that crop up. The appeal of this book may be generationalAit will entertain those who thrill to hearing stories of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, but may be lost on those who know them best as Ben Stiller's parents. Photos. (Oct.) FYI: Publication is timed to the reopening of the Russian Tea Room, which closed in 1995.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
On the eve of the Russian Tea Room's reopening, a mildly diverting story of its past. All-too-detailed, Stewart-Gordon's reminiscences of the glory days of this legendary mid-Manhattan eatery aren't as exciting as star-watchers may hope. Boldfacing the names of the luminaries mentioned might have helped call attention to the true heart of the storythe musicians, actors, directors, agents, writers, dancers, and other celebrities who tucked into caviar and vodka in the restaurants lush interior. Less interesting, unfortunately, is how Stewart-Gordon went from southern belle to Broadway showgirl to co-owner of the restaurant with her husband, Sidney Kaye, and then how she ran it on her own after his death. Less interesting still is the family flap over redecorating Kaye's office and other such quarrels. Downright boring is the section devoted to the restaurant's air rights (as in, what can be built over the structure?) and Stewart-Gordon's fight with City Hall and neighboring skyscrapers to protect the integrity of her building. Curiously missing are the exact details that led to the restaurants closing in 1995 and what is bringing it back today. The good stuff comes midway in the volume, when Stewart-Gordon starts dishing on the seating of the regulars in the dining room and tells who was polite about being displaced from his or her table and who was not. This has been the material of gossip columnists for years, especially since Liz Smith was one of those regulars. In the final chapter, Stewart-Gordon goes into vignettes of her various encounters with the rich and famous. Some of them are great starts. How could one not be fascinating telling an anecdote about Zero Mostel pretending to wait tables or Woody Allen filming scenes for Manhattan in the middle of the night? With more writing grace and a better sense of timing, the whole volume could have been as good. (16 pages b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.