The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story [Hardcover]

Faith Stewart-Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 1999

"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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (November 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684859815
• ISBN-13: 978-0684859811
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,492,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A non-vicious glimpse of the rich and famous, October 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Even after reading it, one wonders how a young woman could make the transition from small-town life in the South in the 1940s to the fast paced life of New York City - and still keep her wits about her. Ms. Stewart-Gordon takes a candid look at herself, her successes and her failures alike, and comes up a winner. She has seen some good times and been threatened with some bad ones, and has dug her little Southern heels in like a real trouper to come out on top. I say good for her!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, April 10, 2000

By 

Early Girl (Loomis, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Piqued by the description, I bought this book for my mom for Christmas. She read it and then lent it to me. I just read it, and am now convinced that I should buy my mom another Christmas present. How disappointing. There is a great deal of interesting content here, however the writing technique (or lack of it) becomes an obstacle to enjoying it. It's like taking a ride in a psychotic New York time machine: The book jumps from thought to thought and from era to era. The services of a ghostwriter would have improved this story immensely.

In addition, it appears that the author is making the assumption that her readers are born-and-bred New Yorkers. She has opportunities to expand on aspects of New York life that would be interesting to outsiders, but she chooses not to pursue them.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars PASS THE CAVIAR, PLEASE, May 4, 2005

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story (Hardcover)

When heralding the reopening of New York City's fabled restaurant The Russian Tea Room, a glitzy magazine headlined "Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams." Its new owner, the article trumpeted, unwrapped "a fabulous Faberge' egg of a restaurant"- 37,000 square feet, six stories of opulence including Tiffany glass-made ceilings and an ice sculpted replica of the Kremlin that is replaced thrice daily.

Despite the $22 million dollar renovation it's hard to believe that this West 57th Street watering hole for the glitterati could be any more exciting today than it was during the years described by Faith Stewart-Gordon in The Russian Tea Room: A Love Story.

A Southern belle and sometime actress Ms. Stewart-Gordon was married to Sidney Kaye, an exuberant, mercurial man of Russian descent who ran the Tea Room from the mid-40's until his death in 1967, when Ms. Stewart-Gordon took over the operation.

She observed the bistro's halcyon years - days when regular patrons were theatre luminaries such as Arthur Miller, Carol Channing (who brought her own food), Paul Newman (who delighted in arriving sans reservation), , Joanne Woodward, Liza Minnelli, Sidney Portier, and countless others. That was the time when Zero Mostel convulsed diners as he pretended to be a waiter, and a staff that was used to their A-list clientele surreptitiously watched Jackie Onassis and Mike Nichols lunching in the number one booth.

Born in South Carolina, the daughter of a woman whose only contact with a kitchen occurred when she heated canned mushroom soup for their Sunday night suppers, Ms. Stewart-Gordon seemed an unlikely bride for an urbane restaurant owner 18 years her senior. She had gone to New York City in the early 1950's in search of an acting career not a husband.

But, then a friend introduced her to Sidney Kaye, a man she describes as not "conventionally handsome" but "vitally attractive." Despite her gaff of wearing a "lime green nylon wash-and-wear dress" on their first date and following a two-year "Sturm und Drang" courtship, the two were wed.

Thus began Ms. Stewart-Gordon's initiation into the New York restaurant world. This was a turf where the pecking order was set in stone, and territorial lines were not to be crossed.
She learned this lesson well when she once made the unconscionable error of seating patrons when that was clearly the bailiwick of a haughty but able seating captain.

For a time following her marriage Ms. Stewart-Gordon focused on domesticity, even taking cooking lessons from a Cordon Bleu graduate. Regrettably, after tasting her Veal Orloff, Sidney returned to the restaurant for dinner. Only a minor setback, but she then centered on The Russian Tea Room until the birth of their daughter, Ellen.

Ms. Stewart-Gordon's reminiscences of life at the RTR (as it was known to insiders) is also a chronicle of business and Big Apple history. She discusses the 1959 launching of the Diners Club and its impact on the restaurant industry, the groundbreaking for Lincoln Center, the advent of new forms of dining, and other innovations that affected both patrons and owners.

These observations are studded with remembrances of the famous who happily swung through the RTR's revolving doors. While at times the author's attention to minutia can be tedious, such as a detailed retelling of her battle with City Hall, The Russian Tea Room is light, entertaining reading - often as spicy as a good stroganoff.

- Gail Cooke