A “delicious” account of a midwestern family’s restaurant business, and the bond between a daughter and her food-loving father (Jacquelyn Mitchard).
At age twelve, Julie Pandl was initiated into the rite of the Sunday brunch, a weekly madhouse at Pandl’s, the family-owned Milwaukee-based restaurant where she and her eight older siblings did mandatory service—and where her father “traded his sanity for a paper chef hat and a set of utility tongs.” Amid the controlled chaos, they learned the ropes of the business and, more importantly, life lessons that would shape them in the years to come.
In this wry, “heartfelt” memoir, Pandl looks back on those formative years, a time not just of growing up but, ultimately, of becoming a source of strength and support, as the world her father knew began to change into a tougher, less welcoming place (Booklist).
Part coming-of-age story à la The Tender Bar, and part window into the mysteries of the restaurant business à la Kitchen Confidential, Memoir of the Sunday Brunch is filled with tender wisdom about the bonds between fathers and daughters, and about the simple pleasures that lie in the daily ritual of breaking bread.
