Charlotte Au Chocolat: Memories of a Restaurant Girlhood

by Charlotte Silver

Charlotte Silver grew up in her mother's restaurant. Located in Harvard Square, Upstairs at the Pudding was a confection of pink linen tablecloths and twinkling chandeliers, a decadent backdrop to a childhood. Over dinners of foie gras and Dover sole, always served with a Shirley Temple and often candied violets for dessert, Charlotte kept company with a rotating cast of eccentric staff members. And after dinner, in her frilly party dress, she might catch a nap under the bar until closing. Her one constant was her glamorous, indomitable mother--nicknamed "Patton in Pumps" by one line cook--a wasp-waisted woman forever clad in stilettos and cocktail dresses who shouldered the burden of raising a family and running a kitchen after her husband left.

Despite its glamour, Charlotte's unconventional upbringing takes a toll, and as she grows up she wishes her increasingly busy mother were more of a presence in her life. But when the restaurant--forever teetering on the brink of financial collapse--looks as if it may finally be closing, Charlotte comes to realize the sacrifice her mother has made to keep her family and the restaurant afloat, and to understand the world her mother has built.

Infectious, charming, whimsical, and at times wistful, "Charlotte au Chocolat" is an appreciation of the magic of a beautiful presentation and the virtues of good manners, as well as a loving tribute to the author's mother, a woman who always shows her best face to the world.

Genres: Memoir, Food, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Book Club, Foodie, Biography

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Although this could be considered a lighter memoir, the mothers strength is amazing. Charlotte grew up in her mother's restaurant, located in Harvard square. She met many notables of the entertainment world, and took her naps underneath pink linen tablecloths. At the age of six, she had a huge appreciation of her mother's wonderful sounding desserts, but it would be years before she understood her mother's indominatble spirit. At the age of six, she was eating crab vicar, and smoked pheasant with Roquefort flan, can you imagine? I've never heard of these dishes let alone eaten them.

A girlhood spent in the restaurant world, some fantastic sounding desserts and food. No recipes though, so a little different than most food memoirs. Charming, though also melancholy at times, for a past, a restaurant that defined her family, and a time that is past.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many memoirists engage in name dropping. To her credit, Charlotte Silver does not (except for a couple of references to Julia Child, who lived nearby, and would've been expected to be a patron of the restaurant); instead she food-drops, giving descriptions of in-house dinners: crab, osso bucco, etc. Getting over my envy, I'm forced to admit that her mother rarely ever "cooked" at home, where plain baked potatoes were pretty much the norm. One of the more striking passages of the book concerned her meals at friends' homes: "It tended, in Cambridge, to be drab and healthy: great tubs of ginger couscous, tabouli with slivers of purple onions and sun-dried tomatoes, bottles of Orangina and Perrier." Further giving balance to her outside life, there followed a segment of how it felt to lunch on a single stale bagel, "washed down" by a trip to the water fountain. She had brought up the subject of perhaps picking up some juice boxes at the supermarket, an idea her mom basically declared as Too Stupid to Veto.
I found her life difficult to identify with, in spite of the strong writing carrying a discernible narrative. Charlotte came across as both streetwise, and naive (perhaps "sheltered" is closer), and it wasn't until late in the story that I was struck the extent to which she more-or-less "raised" herself. A secondary thread concerns her relationship with her father, who'd abruptly left both the restaurant and their home when she was young; an eccentric, somewhat unstable genius whom I wanted to understand better, while not wanting to hear more about. Her older brother is referenced, but not ever at all a part of the book.
Definitely recommended, though I offer a warning to male readers (or females who find the subject uninteresting) that she goes into quite a bit of detail as to what she, and others at times, wore. If that does interest you, consider it a plus.

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/9/2012: This book was particularly interesting--and difficult--for me to read, because the author's parents were friends and colleagues of my mother. And the world that she describes, so lovingly yet so ambivalently, is now just a cluster of potent memories, for both of us. Charlotte Silver, the author of this memoir, is a full generation younger than me, so her clear memories of her parents' restaurant world begin pretty much where mine leave off. Still, there are overlaps: she relates her father's stories of his friendship with my mother and stepfather, and she evokes the difficulties, the joy, the pressure and the theatricality of a wonderful restaurant that I knew, too, if only for a short time.

Yet for all that feeling of joy and belonging, the author seems quite conflicted about her own upbringing. She tells wonderful, charming stories, of characters, episodes, and a sense of belonging to a miniature but important world. But there is an undertow: of neglect, of transience, of loose connections, that is hard to shake. I can't tell whether my familiarity with her story makes me more sensitive to those shadowy undertones--but I think not. Silver seems to have adored her childhood, on the one hand, and on the other hand to be angry at it. Not unusual, I'm sure, but it definitely made me uneasy in reading it.

Silver writes gracefully, gently, and I hope that once she expands past her own experience she will really cut loose. I look forward to reading more of her work.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun, but also wistful memoir of growing up in the restaurant business, in this case "Upstairs at the Pudding," which was located above the Hasty Pudding Club in Harvard Square. Charlotte Silver literally grew up in the restaurant business:

"My life was not a child's life of jungle gyms and Velcro sneakers, but of soft lighting, stiff petticoats, rolling pins smothered in flour, and candied violets in wax paper. It was a life of manners, of air kisses, or 'How do you dos,' and a life for which I needed six party dresses a year, three every spring and three every winter. We were rich. Everybody knew it.

Yet we were not; we were not rich at all. For as long as I could remember, the restaurant had tottered on the brink of collapse. I always knew we would lose it one day. And we did lose it; we did."

Charlotte Silver was actually named for the dessert charlotte au chocolat, which was the signature dessert of her parents' restaurant. The dessert was served year round:

"I saw them scooped onto lace doilies and smothered in Chantilly cream, starred with candied violets and sprigs of wet mint. I saw them lit by birthday candles. I saw them arranged, by the dozens, on silver trays for private parties...And charlottes smelled delightful: they smelled richer, I thought, than any dessert in the world. The smell made me think of black velvet holiday dresses and grow-up perfumes in crystal flasks."

Silver's parents opened their restaurant in 1982. The Hasty Pudding Club agreed to rent the space for the restaurant because they needed money and "converting the top floor of the building into a fine restaurant was a genteel solution to their financial woes." It had the air of a private club, but was open to all. It was a favorite of Harvard professors and presidents. The Boston Globe quoted a regular customer who described it as "the Ritz of Cambridge." There was a rarefied air about the place. Silver event went trick-or-treating as Cordelia Flyte (youngest sister of Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited in "a rust-colored taffeta party dress and with stiff black velvet bows wound round my pigtails. This was not at all that different from the way I dressed the rest of the year."

There were also the stars - Elizabeth Taylor, Harrison Ford, Ella Fitzgerald, Meg Ryan (who chewed gum at the table), Cher, Sylvester Stallone, and Clint Eastwood (who "wore a three-piece brown suit, which my mother later told reporters was 'the most confident fashion statement I've ever seen'". The restaurant would have failed its safety inspection because there was no emergency exit in the dining room. However, they were passed because the head of the fire department passed them because the Hasty Pudding Club had given him the chance to meet Elizabeth Taylor.

It wasn't all roses, though. Charlotte grew up mostly around adults and had difficulty relating to children her own age. She simply did not have anything in common with them. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Her older brother soon lost interest in the restaurant, partly due to his age and partly because there were few people left in the kitchen whom he knew. "The Pudding" was a much larger part of Charlotte's life and remained so for many years. When the restaurant finally closed, Charlotte broke down and cried. She was immediately corrected by her mother, who said, "There's no crying in the dining room."

This is a quick, engrossing read and I really enjoyed it. Charlotte Silver brings to life the private world of the restaurant, a sadly vanished world.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice memoir of growing up with a restaurant owning mother.

[Laura Skladzinski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemed like an engaging topic with lots of potential, and the writing was excellent, but the storyline fell incredibly flat. I was bored throughout and couldn't wait for it to end or for something significant to happen.

[Vikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delight Charlotte au Chocolate was! I got the idea to read it from the wonderful bibliography in the book What My Mother Gave Me. Charlotte Silver said of her mother she got an eccentric sense of style. That intrigued me. Charlotte's parents then mother alone owned the Hasty Pudding on Harvard Square for three decades. Charlotte tells of her memories of growing up in that restaurant. It was really a great biography of her mother. Very fun book to read.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things I Love:
- Vignettes
- Eloise aesthetic
- Descriptions of food and glamour
- Nostalgia
- When someone is confident enough in the appeal of their life experiences to think that other people need to read about them

This book is definitely not for everyone, but it was definitely for me.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is both a coming of age novel and an elegy to the restaurant the author's mother ran for years. It has a rather detached quality, but I think that's appropriate to a novel that consist primarily of those ethereal, elusive stories we record in our heads in the form of memories. The changes of staff and decor in the restaurant underscore the changes that take place in the author's life as she grows up. This book made me think about all of the businesses and places that I've loved and lost and made me regret their passing once more. It also makes me regret that I've never been able to go to a restaurant that I feel was so fiercely devoted to quality, style, and beauty as the one described in this book.
However, I liked, but didn't love, this book. Maybe it was the detached quality. I didn't really feel connected to any of the characters. The author's character is a little hard to identify with...sometimes I don't even like her. You admire her mother for her courage and commitment to style, but her determined concealment of any grief or worry prevent you (as well as her daughter, seemingly) from really getting close to her. Sometimes there was also odd repetition, where I think she forgot that she had already explained something. I think the backstory of her love for Brandy Alexanders was explained three times. It was odd, in an otherwise well-constructed narrative. It almost made me wonder if a few short stories were published first, and later incorporated into the manuscript.

[Treasa · Rating 2 out of 5]

For most of this book, I was waiting for something to happen or for one of the characters to become alive for me or for the restaurant that Charlotte spends so much time in to suddenly become a place I can visualize... or something. But it never did. And at some point I gave up hoping something would happen and just kept reading so I could finish the book.

Considering that Charlotte seems to have spent most of her childhood in the restaurant, she should have been able to create a vivid image of the place in my mind. But all I got from her descriptions is that it had lots of pink tablecloths and looked dingy when the lights were on. That wasn't enough for me to have any sort of emotional attachment to this place. Same with the characters - they were all two-dimensional. Her mother was the most rounded out, and even she was still very much a mystery to me at the end of the book. Maybe this is because her mother was a mystery to Charlotte. Maybe Charlotte's memories are all a bit fuzzy. Or maybe she has mixed feelings about her memories and doesn't know quite how to relate them to others. Hard to say. But the only thing she seemed to remember clearly and happily were the party dresses she wore. The most loving, vivid descriptions in the book were of her dresses.

Overall, not a bad book. Just not a particularly compelling memoir. I feel as though this could have been a wonderful book, and it just missed the mark somewhere.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of how the author saw the restaurant world change during her childhood is solid, once I realized that was what the premise was. (Before that, I was just puzzled.) But I don't think it was enough to make a book, and I suspect they even made this book smaller than most books in order to make it look longer, along with stretching and repetition. A lot of reminiscences about hanging around a restaurant I've never heard of didn't make for riveting reading; the author seemed to assume a certain amount of knowledge, like that we would understand something about what her life was like because of the kind of restaurant it was. Even if it was one I *had* heard of, say, the Silver Palate, without personal experience I wouldn't really get it--or maybe I would if I had been an adult in the 80s and 90s, and reading about these places. Which brings up a funny point--the author is a couple of years younger than me, but this book felt like it was written for--and maybe BY--my parents' generation. The author has an odd, old-fashioned, nostalgic style. That does corroborate her claim about being different from her peers, but it made me roll my eyes.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a big let down for me. This memoir is a about a girl who grew up with parents who worked in a high end restaurant. Her mother loves making desserts and has to deal with the heartbreak of dessert. My HUGE glaring issue with this book was that almost nothing happened, and her life was just not that interesting. It wasn't badly written, but I was looking for the hook, which never came.

[Adriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

She's Got Books on Her Mind

"I grew up rich. The setting—or stage set—of my childhood was the velvety pink-and-green dining room of my mother's restaurant, Upstairs at the Pudding, located above the Hasty Pudding Club in a red-brick Victorian building at 10 Holyoke Street in Harvard Square. My life was not a child's life of jungle gyms and Velcro sneakers, but of soft lighting, stiff petticoats, rolling pins smothered in flour, and candied violets in wax paper. It was a life of manners, of air kisses, of "How do you dos," and a life for which I needed six party dresses a year, three every spring and three every winter. We were rich. Everybody knew it.

Yet we were not; we were not rich at all. For as long as I could remember, the restaurant had tottered on the brink of collapse. I always knew we would lose it one day. And we did lose it; we did."

Charlotte grew up in a world filled with all manners of fancy things. In a little girl's eyes growing up in a restaurant like Upstairs at the Pudding was simply a wonderful dream that you didn't want to wake up from. Who wouldn't want to grow up at Upstairs at the Pudding when you are able to eat dessert whenever you want, stay up late with the grownups, be coddled by the staff, and best of all you get to wear the prettiest (preferably pink) dresses. But not everything's right in Charlotte's world. As she grows up things start to change. Her parents' divorce, the staff who were once her friends start to leave, and even her namesake, Charlotte au Chocolat, is disappearing from the menu. Everything is changing and only after the fact does she realize what the restaurant, her mother, and her childhood really meant to her life.

I really enjoyed reading about Charlotte's childhood. It wasn't just her childhood... but for the most of the book it was. At first it was all glitz and glam but like you know from the quote above on the very first page Charlotte told you how it was. I actually forgot about how the restaurant would inevitably close down because I had immersed myself so much in the here and now of the story. And what a story it was. Charlotte described her childhood in a way where it was like she was someone else. All wise but not out of touch with what was going on with her life. It's like she was reflecting on her life while she was telling her story. Her "voice" was one of the most recognizable things that I remember about this book.

In Charlotte's world people could be put into two groups. You are either a front room person which means you are like the glitz and the glamour of the restaurant or you are a kitchen person which means you are the backbone and rough, raw passion of the restaurant. We are all labeled as something or put into categories by someone else one way or another. I see people in different ways just like other people do and like Charlotte does which she got from her mother. It was interesting to read about her view on different people. I could never quite get who front people were. I understand kitchen people. They are easy to understand. They are the strugglers, the hard workers. I liked her description of her view on different types of people because well... I liked how she described everything! I love the way she wrote and this is a perfect example of how she writes. In that wise, and awareness type of tone. I feel like she's in her head a lot and is an observer of the world which I've always felt I am like.

"When I was a small child, I associated my parents with individual flavors. It was the same way you might filter someone through a filter of color - thinking of some people in blues, other people in reds - but instead of color, the sensation I latched on to was flavor. My mother's flavors were always those of the desserts she made - suave caramels and milk chocolates and the delicate, utterly feminine accents of crystallized violets or buttery almonds. But my father's flavors - my father's flavors were something else altogether. They were subtle and elusive and melted on the tongue only to vanish before you could place them. Dark, adult flavors, and slightly bitter: veal carpaccio, silvery artichokes. And, most of all, mushrooms: chanterelles, chicken of the woods, and - my father's favorite mushroom of all - trumpets of death."

Charlotte even categorized her parents which is funny because I think about my parents and who they are. I see obvious differences but I also see obvious similarities. It's like when you see a couple together for a long time. They just fit together. Charlotte's parents did not. Her mother was this very stylish woman who was very... strict in a way. She was just tough about emotions. She's the type of person who probably expresses her love not by words, hugs, or kisses, but by food and advice. I never really liked her but I couldn't say I full out hated her or anything like that. I think it was the resolution in the end. This scene she and Charlotte had together. Charlotte felt resolved after it but I really didn't like what her mother had to say. Her tough attitude wasn't needed then.

Her father is a rough type of person. I don't really think he's the loud type of person which I first envisioned in my head for him. He's more reserved and secretive which you and Charlotte come to know. After the divorce you figure out who he really is. He photographed brooms and other weird still life. I was as confused by him as Charlotte was. He's completely different than what you expect. Around the time you are discovering what he really is like you get to know the downsides of owning a restaurant. There's this sad undertone to the book but it's not like you feel overly sad or anything. It's just there. I'm guessing I didn't feel it as much because again how Charlotte wrote her story. It was a closed off view of her life which means you didn't feel overly emotional about those parts in her life. I did feel connected to the story though and couldn't help relaxing into and discovering what's going to happen next.

The whole story reminded me of the 1950's. You've got what seems like a great life that you wish you had because this book seriously makes you hungry whenever you just look at the cover and you want to stuff a whole cake into your mouth... Anyways there is this credit building up and you act like it's not there but for Charlotte she didn't even know. She didn't know there was a price to her life. It's not like her mother was intentionally wasting money she just wanted the best for her restaurant and life and just like any restaurant it can close down. It's like how when you realize the concept of money and then you fully realize what it takes to feed a family and live in a home. It's her growing up and realizing these things like we all do. It captured those moments in our life where we grow up and your view of everything is different from what you felt the world was like as a child. This book reminded me of all those things but mainly it reminded me of why I love memoirs. I want to read more memoirs again because of this book more importantly more food memoirs.

Overall:

Fantastic writing, great story and characters. Loved that I could get a sample of the restaurant world through this book especially when I think of all that food. The transition of childhood to adult and figuring out how the real world is was wonderful because we can all relate to those changes. Only thing is that scene with her mother in the end. I didn't feel like her story should have been resolved with that scene like I felt it was made out to be.

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlotte Silver grew up in her mother's restaurant, the Pudding, located in Harvard Square. It was an unconventional upbringing and begs the question, is this a good way to grow up. While Charlotte certainly has an expanded palate because of it, I'm not sure whether or not I got an answer to the question. I loved the descriptions of menu items and restaurant decor. It was extremely interesting to get a glimpse into the restaurant dining room and kitchen with all the characters that passed through. And Charlotte's mother was a force to be reckoned with. However, I would have liked a little more. How did this upbringing shape the person Charlotte is today?

[christa · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the 1980s, Charlotte Silver was the party-dressed princess of her parent’s restaurant Upstairs at Pudding, a sometimes hot spot in Harvard Square. She was served bottomless glasses of Shirley Temples, doctored to her Maraschino cherry and citrus garnish specifications. She sometimes napped beneath the bar. She ate dinners of pheasant and roquefort flan at table A-1. She developed friendships with the steady stream of employees who breezed through the restaurant.

“Charlotte au Chocolat: Memories of a Restaurant Girlhood” is her story of being raised in this environment. At first both her parents work together at the eatery: Dad as head chef; Mom on pastries. When the former cuts out in favor of a more Bohemian lifestyle than cooking at this epicenter of preppy-hood that regularly features doo-wop singers, Silver’s mother takes over ruling the roast. She’s a hard-working tough cookie with a strict rule about not crying in the dining room. Once a Kim Novak look alike, over-sized sunglasses always in place, a short busty woman proud of her tiny waist and belief that tiger stripe prints are a neutral. She was referred to by at least one employee as “Patton in Pumps.”

At one point Charlotte asks her mother why she continues in this business that isn’t yielding any income and her mother tells her that if she wanted money, she would have opened a pizza joint or a Chinese take-out restaurant. Why didn’t you? Charlotte asked her. “Because I’m interested in the product. I’m interested in things being beautiful,” she responds.

Young Charlotte, meanwhile, comes to every meal wrapped in one of her fancy party dresses. She practices manners on the wait staff, always addressing them by name and thanking the back of the house after every meal. She comes of age in this space, growing too big to sleep beneath the bar, sometimes sharing a shift with an eccentric Italian-ophile working at the coat check, eventually playing touchie-feely with those temporary summer employees on college break -- a crew she refers to as her cabana boys.

In its best moments, this book provides a quick-hit portrait of a kitchen character like an alcoholic chef who refers to her as “Shorty” or the woman from the coat check and the way the spent nights, months, considering possible names for Marlon Brando’s offspring.

Unfortunately, most of the time the story has that artificial polish of a dining room with a great dimmer switch. Her memories shimmer and Silver gives only passing mention of the suddenly absent father and mother who is up to her elbows in her signature red pepper soup. There is a curious amount of focus on what she is wearing -- from the party dresses, to the time when she was at school and puberty busted two buttons from her dress leaving her chest bared, to a sudden interest in vintage clothing and how she was one of the rare people who could fit into a classic 1950s dress.

Silver is in college when she learns that her mother has lost the lease on the restaurant and that it will close in the summer. In real life she struggles to find the right way to say goodbye to the space she once used as a permanent address during a period of frequent moves to different apartments. In the book, she struggles to write about what it has all meant without getting the page sticky with word frosting.

This story is a quick read, pleasant enough, but probably won’t stick to the ribs. It seems like a good fit for people who frequented the restaurant or worked at the restaurant, but in terms of a memoir with mass appeal, it’s a little too light on real life. There are some thoughts on the changes in the food industry -- how things went from smoking line cooks to celebrity chefs to fashionable food -- and changes in the Harvard square neighborhood, including the end of a great sandwich shop and the beginning of an Abercrombie & Fitch.

[Jill Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review copy of Charlotte Au Chocolat was provided courtesy of LuxuryReading.com, which also hosted the original (shorter) post of this book review on February 26, 2012.

I love memoirs. I really enjoy reading a first-person narration of other someone else’s life. To me, it’s like having an extended conversation. Technically I get that it’s a monologue – since I don’t actually get to talk, or at least, when I do (which more than occasionally happens, teehee, especially with a book I either like or dislike a great deal), no one talks back – but it feels like a conversation. Like the best kind of conversation, actually – like when you meet someone you click with and sit for hours learning all about them.

A lot of memoirs are pretty dark – or at least contain a hefty dose of dark elements. Sadness, disappointment, addiction, and cruelty are all too common to the genre, it seems, because they are (most unfortunately) all too common in life. When that happens, the conversation can be oppressive or disturbing. I don’t love those memoirs, any more than I love those conversations.

But a lot of them are just fun and interesting and offer insight into vastly different lifestyles. Those are my favorite memoirs – and my favorite conversations. CaC is a perfect example.

The book tells the story of Charlotte Silver, born and raised by restaurateur parents (together and, ultimately, separately) at Upstairs at the Pudding, the restaurant above the Hasty Pudding Club in Harvard Square. Well, technically both parents turned out to be restaurateurs, although her mother found herself fulfilling that role rather unexpectedly. To say more is to give a bit of a spoiler, so let’s leave it at that, shall we?

As I was saying, the book chronicles young Charlotte’s life in the elite culinary world of a high-end Boston restaurant. From her earliest days, she dressed for dinner, dined on wild European boar, and was served the dessert she was named for – Charlotte au Chocolat (a confection of chocolate, ladyfingers, and liqueur that sounds to die for). Her days and nights were split between the Front of the House (i.e., the customers, the opulent dining room, and the dressed-to-the-nines service personnel) and the Back of the House (i.e., the chefs, kitchen, and cleaning staff). From a young age, she learned that never the twain shall meet – except in the person of her oh-so-glamorous mother, the chef and manager of the establishment.

A most elegant childhood, indeed.

Also, sadly, often a fairly lonely one. The restaurant busy is not an easy one. Tales of financial woes, legal battles over the building lease, and many long nights spent sitting at a table for one abound. Still, Charlotte and her mother managed to hold on to the restaurant – and their relationship – with a rather indomitable spirit and sense of self that I believe made for a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The book jacket self-describes young Charlotte as living the life of Eloise at The Plaza. There are parallels, to be sure, but there are also healthy smatterings of the less glamorous side of living the high-life – or at least of providing the high-life for others. These elements render the story accessible and sympathetic, and keep it from slipping into a “my childhood was fancier than yours” ego battle.

The story is as decadent as one of Charlotte’s mother’s desserts – and just as enjoyable. If you have any interest in the restaurant business – or unusual childhood stories – give this one a go!

[Verena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have visited Harvard Square occasionally for almost 20 years, but I had never heard of the restaurant called Upstairs at the Pudding. The author’s parents created this unique dining experience on the third floor of a Victorian brick building, owned by the Harvard Hasty Pudding Club. With her father’s expertise in the kitchen and her mother’s equal expertise making desserts and hosting in the dining room, the restaurant became known for its haute cuisine in an elegant setting. It was where the author spent most of her young life, and she was nurtured as much by the quirky staff as by her parents who were busy trying to keep the business solvent. Early on, the author developed a taste for sophisticated food by ordering her own dinners off the menu. After dinner she crawled under the bar and slept until she was taken home at closing time. The author has affectionate memories of her unusual life and the colorful characters on the staff who came and went through the years. Above all, the book is a tribute to the author’s remarkable mother who succeeded in keeping the restaurant going even after her husband left and they divorced. This was a quick and delightful reading experience with descriptions of delectable desserts that made my mouth water.

[Janis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was torn between 2 and 3 stars. I'm familiar with the area and the reputation of the Hasty Pudding Club and Harvard kids, so that drew me in. However, pretty much nothing happened and Charlotte's story line and nostalgia just get stale. It is very hard to keep a restaurant going and boo on the real estate company for doing in the restaurant, but neither the restaurant nor Charlotte nor her parents ever became "real" enough for me to care about.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing in this book, and of course the setting of the old stomping grounds is fun. But to me the memoir felt oddly detached. Very little emotion is expressed, even while describing a sad-sounding and lonely childhood.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am totally biased because my friend wrote it, but this is a swift and sumptuous read. It is not as sunny as the cover suggests, but there is a melancholic sweetness that resonates throughout the memoir.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as sweet as you might think, growing up "in" a restaurant. These memories have a sadness yet they are delicious and feel true. I related to the idea of restaurant crew as family as I have experienced that myself. The descriptions of the food will have you drooling for a five star meal.

[Rain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant enough, but probably would have been more interesting if I had actually been to the restaurant that is the focus of the book, because it sounds like it was pretty awesome.

[Sherry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I said that I read it - but I did not because it was unreadable.

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like it - but I couldn't - -very surface, no depth. Liked the references to Cambridge etc....but it just wasn't a very good book.

[Tish Vanoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this memoir. It was an interesting commentary on growing up in the 80's and 90's in the restaurant business.

[Colleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty clothes, pretty places, pretty food.

[Julie Durnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delicious coming of age story in a famous Boston restaurant, with a soupcon of snarkiness, and without recipes! The descriptions of food, restaurant, attire and characters are superb!

[Renée · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautiful descriptions of food and atmosphere at a chic restaurant, but lacking substance.

[Lain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve had this book on my shelf for years, and I finally decided to pick it up instead of giving it away. I am glad I did, but I definitely didn’t love the experience. I feel like the book was written in kind of an odd style. It didn’t really have that much of a plot; it just went through different aspects of the author’s life growing up in a restaurant. It wasn’t even linear, because it just hopped around between random things the author would remember. I was expecting more of a story, or groups of stories, with fully fleshed-out scenes. But more often the book just described different parts of her life, and it almost felt like she was just trying to prove she could remember details. It was just a bit hard for me to get into. But overall I think her story was endearing, and it was sweet to see how Charlotte admired and depicted her mother.
Also, all the food she talked about sounded amazing.

I remember at one point when I was pretty young that I started to read the first couple pages and gave up. I’m kind of glad I did, because there were some more adult things in this book that would have gone way over my head, or made me uncomfortable at such a young age. Which surprised me because the book looks like it’s middle grade, and I got it as a kid. Anyway, I’m glad I read it now and not then. Plus, I don’t think I would have had the patience to appreciate, let alone finish, a book that was written the way it was. 2.5 stars.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the author’s memoir of her childhood in the restaurant Upstairs at the Pudding. It was an unconventional upbringing, with the restaurant taking most of the energies of her parents, and of her mother in particular, after their divorce. She describes her delight in the decadent ingredients and adult menus; oftentimes, her meal at the restaurant would be the only decent food of the day for her. She mourned the day her namesake dessert came off the menu and the decline of the restaurant over time. Her relationship with her mother was complex, but her adoration of her shines through in some of her memories. Charlotte describes her changes from child to adolescent, growing from hiding under tables to becoming a young lady. When the end comes, you see her sadness at losing both a home and an extended family.