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WORK TITLE: I Regret Almost Everything
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CITY: New York
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Born July 30, 1951, in London, England, United Kingdom; married and divorced Lynn Wagenknecht; married Alina Johnson; children: five, three with Wagenknecht and two with Johnson.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Restaurateur. Founder of Balthazar Restaurant, Balthazar Bakery, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, Pravda, Schiller’s Liquor Bar, Morandi, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Nell’s, Cafe Luxembourg, the Odeon, and Pulino’s.
AWARDS:Outstanding Restaurateur Award, James Beard Awards, 2010.
WRITINGS
Wrote and directed the feature films End of the Night (Triangle J.L. Films, 1990) and Far from Berlin (AFMD, 1992).
SIDELIGHTS
[OPEN NEW]
Keith McNally is a New York City institution—founder or cofounder of some of the city’s most famous restaurants, such as Balthazar, Pastis, and Minetta Tavern. He was born, however, in London, England, and only moved to the United States in 1975 to pursue a film career. He wrote and directed two feature films in the early 1990s, but he was already making his name as a restaurateur before that. In 1980, he opened the Odeon with his brother Brian and Lynn Wagenknecht, his partner at the time.
In 1997, with Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson, he opened the landmark Balthazar. A cookbook collecting the restaurant’s recipes, The Balthazar Cookbook, was published in 2003. A decade later, McNally published Schiller’s Liquor Bar Cocktail Collection, a book featuring recipes from his Schiller’s restaurant and bar. In between the publication of those books, McNally received the Outstanding Restaurateur Award from the prestigious James Beard Awards.
In 2025, after surviving a stroke and a suicide attempt, McNally published his memoir I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir. The book covers everything from being a child actor to traveling the world as a teenager to the difficulties of his two marriages. He also is open about the challenges of recovering from a stroke.
“An intriguing portrait of a complex personality,” wrote a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. They wrote that McNally “holds little back in this intense autobiography.” In the Spectator, Marina O’Loughlin admitted that she had been one of many people that McNally attacked on his notorious Instagram feed, so her initial plan was to get her own revenge in a book review. Instead, she called the memoir “a compelling and captivating look into the life of a chippy East End boy made good in the Big Apple with a taste for Manhattan at the height of its glittery allure.”
A writer in Kirkus Reviews declared that the book “contains multitudes” and described it as “rueful, self-aware, chatty, entertaining, dazzling, and harrowing.” They called McNally a “charming and honest raconteur who’s lived an impossibly broad-ranging life.” In the New York Times Book Review, Dwight Garner wrote,”[McNally] makes the restaurant world seem as dangerous as a Shakespearean court.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2025, review of I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir.
New York Times Book Review, June 1, 2025, Dwight Garner, “Bright Bites, Big City,” review of I Regret Almost Everything, p. 9.
Publishers Weekly, March 17, 2025, review of I Regret Almost Everything, p. 47.
Spectator, May 17, 2025, Marina O’Loughlin, “East End Boy Made Good,” review of I Regret Almost Everything, p. 32.
ONLINE
Bittman Project, https://bittmanproject.com/ (July 30, 2025), Kate Bittman, author interview.
CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/ (July 20, 2025), Mo Rocca, “Restaurateur Keith McNally on Why He Regrets ‘Almost Everything,'” author profile.
November, https://www.novembermag.com/ (December 14, 2025), Emmanuel Olunkwa, author interview.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Keith McNally
Born 1951 (age 73–74)
Bethnal Green, London, England
Occupation Restaurateur
Children 5
Relatives Brian McNally (brother)
Keith McNally (born 1951) is a British-born New York City restaurateur, the owner of several establishments including the Parisian-style brasserie Balthazar, and formerly Nell's nightclub.
Early life
McNally was born in 1951 in London, England. He grew up in the working-class East End neighborhood of Bethnal Green, where his father worked as a dockworker and his mother was a self-educated homemaker.[1] McNally left school at age 16 and initially pursued acting. In the late 1960s, he landed a role in playwright Alan Bennett’s West End production Forty Years On, and Bennett became both a mentor and later McNally’s romantic partner.[1]
In 1975, McNally moved to New York City, where he took entry-level restaurant jobs. He quickly rose to floor manager.
Career
Restaurants
McNally has been active in New York City since the 1980s. In that time, he has opened multiple restaurants including Augustine, Balthazar, Cafe Luxembourg, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Minetta Tavern, Morandi, Nell's, The Odeon, Pastis, Pravda, Pulino's,[2] and Schiller's.[3] Frank Bruni awarded three stars to Minetta Tavern in 2009.[4] The New York Times has called him "The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown."[5]
In October 2022, McNally banned James Corden from entering his restaurants after Corden had behaved rudely toward a server after receiving an improperly prepared order.[6] Corden later privately apologized to McNally and McNally's staff, after which McNally removed the ban.[7] Subsequently, Corden also publicly apologized to both McNally and the staff on his late night show.[8]
Acting
McNally was a member of the original London cast of Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On in 1968, playing the part of Macilwaine.
Personal life
McNally married Lynn Wagenknecht in the early 1980s, after meeting her while working in the restaurant industry in New York City.[9] The couple had three children together, including actress Isabelle McNally.[10] They divorced in 1994.
Wagenknecht later retained ownership of several early ventures co-founded with McNally, including The Odeon and Café Luxembourg. McNally later remarried and had two additional children. His brother, Brian McNally, is also a restaurateur in New York.[5]
Instagram
McNally has been described as "cantankerous" on Instagram.[11]
In May 2021, McNally faced controversy on Instagram after posting that Ghislaine Maxwell "must be given a fair trial".[12]
Five Questions for Keith McNally
"I designed [my restaurants] to deceive just as meticulously as I’d designed my character."
Published July 30, 2025
Kate Bittman
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Photo courtesy Keith McNally
Last month, I recommended Keith McNally‘s memoir, I Regret Almost Everything; and I was in good company. For a while—the book came out in May—it felt like everyone I knew was reading McNally’s book, and loving McNally’s book. In it, he goes into great detail about his stroke, and subsequent suicide attempt, and the recovery process; his love life; and the logistics behind becoming one of New York’s most successful restaurateurs (he’s known for Balthazar, Minetta Tavern, and Pastis, among others)—but what was most striking for me, while reading it and in hindsight, was how self aware he is:
The James Beard Awards are the American restaurant industry’s equivalent to the Oscars, and equally repulsive. I had first attended one of the ceremonies in 1998 and loathed everything about it. Watching chefs and restaurateurs I admired act so sycophantically toward self-important food critics made me think twice about being in the same business. And the winners’ acceptance speeches were so self-indulgent and humorless that I vowed never to attend one again.
When I was nominated in 2010 for the country’s outstanding restaurateur, I stuck to my promise and refused to go to the ceremony. I sent my daughter Sophie instead. Surprisingly, I won. Sophie collected the medal on my behalf and handed it to me the next day. A week later, disgusted with myself, I threw it in the garbage.
This kind of self-loathing had gnawed at me for years, and the more successful I became, the worse it got. It seemed that my entire life in New York was based on deception. I’d flourished as a maître d’ not through hard work but as a result of an eagerness to tailor my character—Zelig-like—to fit the customer. I won the guest over with superficial charm or phony self-deprecating humor. When building my own restaurants, I designed them to deceive just as meticulously as I’d designed my character.*
Anthony Haden-Guest, Brian McNally, Lynn Wagenknecht, and Keith McNally outside The Odeon the week it opened, 1980. Photo courtesy Keith McNally
So I was thrilled when McNally agreed to be the inaugural interviewee for our new column, “Five Questions for” (we’re workshopping that name. Open to suggestions).
KB: I don’t read a lot of memoirs, because they tend to be flowery, or disingenuous, or self-important. You managed to sidestep all of these qualities with yours. (Your Instagram became famous because of your honesty, so I think it’s safe to say that’s who you are.) Still: during the writing process, did you ever go back and fix something because it felt insincere or braggadocious to you?
KM: Because I detest how disingenuous I can be, writing my book was mostly about rewriting it. Even when I was certain I’d reached the core of the matter I’d discover the next day I wasn’t anywhere close. Writing was and is an ongoing battle between how I wanted to be seen and how I really am. Anyone who writes an honest memoir should read the finished book and cringe at most of what’s on the page.
KB: You’ve had your share of controversies—likely due to the aforementioned honesty. Which one are you most proud of, or most likely to talk about if prompted (or not)?
KM: “Proud” isn’t a word I trust. But there are certain controversial subjects I’ve touched on that I’m not entirely unhappy about. My support for Woody Allen is one of them. I believe Allen is completely innocent of molesting his daughter, Dylan.
Most of the people I know in the film business feel the same way, but 98% of them are too fucking spineless to say so publicly.
KB: What is the worst question you’ve been asked in an interview? (It can be this one.)
KM: “Keith McNally, the fact that you’ve gone public with your support for Zohran Mamdani for mayor leads many to believe you’re antisemitic. Are you antisemitic?”
Instagram/@balthazarny
KB: What’s the dish you love the most, at any of your restaurants, open or closed?
KM: Cherche Midi had a simple appetizer we called Parmesan Custard. I still think about this dish every single day—12 years after Cheche Midi closed!
The custard was made with whole eggs, heavy cream, whole milk and grated parmesan. The dish came with toast spread with anchovy butter.
KB: And what are your go-to restaurants in New York (not your own)?
KM: Raoul’s, Via Carota, Il Buco, Blue Ribbon Sushi.
KB: A bonus question, because we ask this of all our podcast guests, and now I want to ask you: What did you have for dinner last night?
Peaches with burrata, small steak tartare with quail’s egg, pasta con le sarde. (And two glasses of rosé.)
Keith McNally
in conversation with Emmanuel Olunkwa
KM — Keith McNally
EO — Emmanuel Olunkwa
Keith McNally is a British-born restaurateur who has helped shape the fabric of New York City’s dining culture. After moving to Soho in 1975, he opened The Odeon in 1980 with his brother Brian and then-partner Lynn Wagenknecht. The restaurant quickly became a downtown landmark—its glowing red neon sign a symbol of Tribeca’s cultural ascent. Inside, a new kind of energy took hold: a blend of grit and glamour that drew artists, editors, and tastemakers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anna Wintour, Chuck Close, and Andy Warhol.
Over the next five decades, McNally built an empire—Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern—that turned restaurants into living, breathing theaters. His spaces are known not just for their food, but for their atmosphere: choreographed yet casual, intimate yet expansive. They became shorthand for a particular kind of New York experience—where ambiance is as integral as the menu. Later this year, McNally will publish his memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, a sharp, personal account of his life in restaurants. The book traces his unlikely journey from London’s working-class East End to the heart of Manhattan’s hospitality world, offering glimpses into the contradictions, humor, and heartbreak that have defined both his career and his city. This conversation took place in January 2025.
EO
You moved to New York in 1975 and started The Odeon in 1980. We’re nearing the 50th anniversary of your arrival and the 45th anniversary of The Odeon. What were your ambitions when you first were navigating the city, and what are they now?
KM
I came to New York with the vague idea of making films. Two weeks ago I opened Minetta Tavern and the Lucy Mercer Bar in Washington D.C., and next May Simon & Schuster is publishing my memoir, which took me an agonizing six years to write. After that, I just want to sleep.
EO
The Towers, the original name of the restaurant, and Tribeca was a notorious hangout spot for Richard Serra, Philip Glass, and Chuck Close. It was also frequented by John Chamberlain and Leo Castellli. Were you privy to this scene prior to responding to the advertisement to take over the lease?
KM
Although I knew very little about New York’s contemporary art world before opening The Odeon, I knew who John Chamberlain and Leo Castellli were because they were regular customers at a restaurant I managed in the late seventies called One Fifth.
EO
Paula Cooper’s 155 Wooster Street gallery opened in Soho in 1973. Were you aware of the art world at all?
KM
I arrived in New York in 1975, two years after Paula Cooper’s gallery opened. After moving to SoHo in 1977, I became aware of the downtown art scene, but I’d rarely visit the galleries. I was more interested in films and theatre.
EO
When you were first entering the scene, what industry was most compatible with the business you were seeking and hoping to cultivate?
KM
Whenever I open a restaurant, I’m never hoping to ‘cultivate’ one particular scene. (That would be abhorrent to me.) Of course, you hope that like-minded people will come to the restaurant. Once you consciously ‘seek out’ one particular crowd, you invariably end up with the opposite.
EO
Was there any appeal to being in cahoots with the creative class in New York? Were you coming from a similar scene in London?
KM
I never saw myself as being in ‘cahoots’ with any one class of person. I left London because I hated the class system there. As a teenager in London, I flirted with acting for three years but hated myself for doing something so seemingly superficial, that at 19, I gave up the profession and hitch-hiked to Kathmandu. On returning 10 months later, I got a job operating the lights of the original Rocky Horror Show.
EO
Why move to New York? How did you apply the skills you learned acting to running a restaurant?
KM
I moved to New York in 1975 with the intention of making films, but after a few weeks ran out of money and got a job as a busboy at a place uptown which exists: Serendipity on 60th Street.
EO
Do you think about choreography or architecture? In terms of the bones of a building, location, or structure, what are the necessary ingredients that must exist in order for a project to will itself into existence? How do you know when something is going to work?
KM
I like the phrase ‘will itself into existence’ because this is what happens when I decide to build a restaurant. Initially, I look at a space alone and if I think it has potential, I’ll ask my co-designer–Ian McPheeley–to look at it with me. The most important element is the space itself. Next comes the location. A great restaurant can make a bad location desirable, but a bad restaurant cannot make a great location desirable.
I never know if a restaurant is going to work until it’s open for business. The floor staff one hires–particularly the servers and bartenders–make a far greater contribution than one might think.
EO
How essential is collaboration? Do you struggle more doing that dance in business or in the design process of your restaurants?
KM
Collaboration is crucial. The few restaurants of mine that have succeeded only did so because I surrounded myself with people more competent than myself.
EO
Can you speak to the general relationship between artists and restaurants? What about the dynamic works and fails?
KM
Because I believe this is a pretentious subject, I’d prefer not to go there.
EO
You’ve shared the story of your friendship with Anna Wintour starting in 1977. Who else has shown you grace and enabled you to reinvent yourself?
KM
I haven’t so much reinvented myself–a phrase I’m highly suspicious of–as discovered my true voice. Which is ironic because since my stroke eight years ago, I can barely string a sentence together. But finding my voice came about through the vicissitudes of life, not anyone specific.
EO
I’m currently reading Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, and she mentions responding to an advertisement for the Barefoot Contessa store in 1978. Did buying into an existing restaurant seem like the most plausible way to enter the industry? What were you justifying at the time?
KM
My first wife, Lynn Wagenknect, my brother Brian, and myself cobbled our first restaurant–The Odeon–together 45 years ago not because we wanted to ‘enter the industry’ but because we wanted to make money.
EO
Dean & Deluca’s storied New York location opened in 1977. Was it on your radar at all? If so, what was its impression and appeal?
KM
I was living three blocks from the original Dean & Deluca when it opened on Prince Street in 1977 and, at the time, it was an absolute game-changer. An Aladdin’s Cave of the most beautiful produce and kitchen equipment I’d ever seen. Dean & Deluca was a magnificent store and one that made an enormous impression on me. There’s a terrific scene in Woody Allen’s film, Manhattan, that takes place in Dean & Deluca. Do you remember it?
EO
Yes, it was one of those liminal spaces of New York, both simultaneously of the past and future. It was thoughtful yet unapologetic. What are the politics of owning a restaurant? Who are you trying to reach or communicate with when you open a space?
KM
The only person I ever build restaurants for is myself and about five or six people I deeply admire.
EO
Do you have a specific audience in mind before opening?
KM
I don’t have a specific audience. I just want people who are not entirely different from me to like the place. I’ve a fair idea if the place is going to work a couple of weeks before opening, but some of my biggest flops were restaurants I felt most confident about beforehand, so bang goes that theory!
EO
What assured you of opening restaurants in certain neighborhoods before culture has identified its pulse?
KM
Having the pulse of the neighborhood certainly helps. When I opened Balthazar in London in 2013, I had no idea at all of the pulse of the neighborhood. Consequently, I hated every second of the building and operating the place. That’s what happens when you do something just for money.
EO
How has being a restaurateur changed your understanding of real estate?
KM
Much to my financial detriment, I’ve never been interested in real estate. If I had been, I probably would have bought a building or two in Tribeca after opening The Odeon.
EO
How has the industry changed since you first entered it? What about the standards?
KM
I dislike hearing people bang on about how things used to be better in the past, so I loathe going there myself. Having said that, of course, it was easier to open a restaurant in the 1980s and ’90s. Rents were cheaper, staff was easier to find, and employees sleeping with each other wasn’t the taboo it is today.
EO
What sets New York dining apart from the rest of the world? What’s its magic?
KM
Let’s face it, New York is fucking sexy.
Restaurateur Keith McNally on why he regrets "almost everything"
By Mo Rocca
Updated on: July 20, 2025 / 1:46 PM EDT / CBS News
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Restaurateur Keith McNally hates New Year's Eve – he doesn't like being told to have a good time. "I don't like to be forced to enjoy myself," he said.
The "least hospitable man in hospitality," as he calls himself, is not a big smiler, either. "Inside," he explained.
It doesn't seem to have hurt. Over 40 years, he's opened some of New York City's most popular restaurants, among them The Odeon, Balthazar, and Pastis – institutions almost as well-known as some of the bold-face names that frequent them. But McNally himself has never been much of a publicity hound, even less so after suffering a stroke in 2016. "Naturally I'm a bit embarrassed to be on TV talking like this—who wouldn't be?" he said. "But it's good for me to do it, because it gets me free of my embarrassment. Actually, I'm embarrassed talking about embarrassment!"
keith-mcnally-interview-a.jpg
Restaurateur Keith McNally discusses his new memoir, "I Regret Almost Everything."
CBS News
But the British-born McNally has largely overcome his embarrassment in a new memoir, "I Regret Almost Everything." "The drawback for me with most memoirs [is], if you're not embarrassed by what you write, you've probably not spoken the truth," he said. "If you don't cringe over every word, it's not the truth."
The hardest part to write, he said, was about his suicide attempt, "because my kids. I didn't want to leave them at all."
That suicide attempt was two years after his stroke. He was found by his younger son, George. "He was supposed to not find me," McNally said. "Like most teenagers he would sleep until noon. But that day he woke up early, at 8:00 o'clock."
"You expected him to be sleeping later, he woke up early, he saw you?" I asked.
"Yeah, the bastard just woke up early and saved my life!" he laughed.
i-regret-almost-everything-simon-and-schuster.jpg
Simon & Schuster
McNally might joke about it now, but the father of five was suffering with an immobile right arm (he was right-handed), back pain, and aphasia (which causes his slurred speech), and his second marriage was falling apart. But as he writes, some sobering words from a doctor made him reflect: "He said that children who lose a parent to suicide were far more likely to kill themselves than the children of parents who don't. That stopped me in my tracks."
Because he had such trouble communicating verbally after his stroke, McNally began using social media. "I was so embarrassed by my speech and the way I looked, I didn't go to my restaurants for one year," he said. "I was ashamed. But eventually I realized, nothing to be ashamed about. So, not only did I admit it wasn't a bad thing, but I went in on Instagram."
McNally went viral in 2022 with a post criticizing former late-night host James Corden for allegedly being rude to the waitstaff at Balthazar. But now, McNally confesses in his book he isn't so sure calling out Corden was fair. He wrote: "For someone who's hyperconscious of humiliation since suffering a stroke, it now seems monstrous that I didn't consider the humiliation I was subjecting Corden to. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot of a slot machine and thousands of gold coins were spilling out in front of me. That night I ended up with over 90,000 followers. I was intoxicated with self-righteousness."
"Uh-huh, it's true," McNally said. "But afterwards, I felt really bad."
Corden later apologized. But the 73-year-old McNally has continued creating a stir online. Take this recent post he wrote about his friend, ABC News' Diane Sawyer, describing a weeklong affair the two had in the 1970s. The story made news … except that it was completely made up.
I said, "Some people say, 'Listen, Keith, you know, it's really not cool for you to be sharing this.' And so, did you enjoy that back-and-forth with them?"
"Yes. Yeah, I'm afraid, I did, yeah," he laughed.
"And I wonder, do you think that the stroke – I don't know, is that, does that …"
"Say what you think," said McNally.
"Well, is it that you feel a little trapped inside of yourself?"
"No," he replied. "I've always been a little like this inside. But since my stroke, and now on the outside."
McNally grew up in the East End of London, one of four children born to Jack, a dockworker, and Joyce, a house and office cleaner. The family had little money. "I got angry inside at my parents," he said, "because we had no books in the house, no pictures on the walls. But they couldn't help it. They were working class who grew up with nothing."
McNally says he didn't eat in a restaurant until he was 17. "Most of the time, when we were on a holiday, we would go to the restaurant, they would look the prices outside, and then she'd go, 'Not for us.'"
And yet, when McNally moved to New York City in 1975 as an aspiring filmmaker, he made ends meet by working in restaurants. "I didn't eat asparagus until I came here," he said. "And the next day, I went to the doctor because the smell of my …"
"That was so pungent from eating the asparagus?" I asked.
"Yeah, I thought I was sick! So, I went to the doctor. He said, 'What'd you eat last night?'" McNally laughed.
"You know what? You gotta put that in the paperback," I said.
In 1980, McNally opened his own restaurant, The Odeon, in the neighborhood of Tribeca, in what had been a no-man's land. An immediate sensation, it established certain McNally "musts," such as the importance of having a hamburger on the menu. "I don't like hamburgers much myself," he said. "But it's a sign of snobbery not to have a hamburgers."
McNally prides himself on putting his staff above even his diners. Some of his employees have been with him for over 30 years. And ever since returning to work post-stroke, McNally has come to appreciate how they feel about him. "I had to talk to my staff and was really nervous," he said. "They were really kind. In the end, kindness is really essential."
I asked, "The stroke lifted the veil on what they thought of you?"
"Yeah, yeah," McNally laughed. "They made me feel good."
I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir
Keith McNally. Gallery, $29.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-6680-1764-7
Restaurateur McNally (The Balzthazar Cookbook) holds little back in this intense autobiography. He opens with his 2018 suicide attempt after suffering a debilitating stroke, then flashes back to his 1950s childhood in London's East End, a time and place "permeated" by the aftershocks of WWII. McNally writes vividly of his formative years, and of leaving school at 16 to pursue an acting career. From there, his life took several unexpected turns: McNally moved to Manhattan and was promoted from oyster shucker to maitre d' at a trattoria in Greenwich Village because of his English accent, pursued romantic relationships with men and women, and directed two films, one of which he now disowns ("I'd rather be water-boarded than watch it again"). He went on to open several major New York restaurants in the 1980s and '90s, including Balthazar and the Odeon, and paints this ongoing phase of his career as a picaresque punctuated by Mafia shakedowns and battles with food critics. Throughout, McNally makes good on his reputation for unvarnished, sometimes-controversial commentary--at one point, he comes to Woody Allen's defense--but the intimacy this approach generates makes it more of a feature than a bug. It amounts to an intriguing portrait of a complex personality. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 11, 17 Mar. 2025, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A831829978/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e91c636e. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
McNally, Keith I REGRET ALMOST EVERYTHING Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (NonFiction None) $27.89 5, 6 ISBN: 9781668017647
Memoir by the famed restaurateur of a life expansively lived.
McNally opens on a distinctly dour note, with a suicide attempt that didn't take. "There was a time where everything worked," he writes. He'd been happily married, owned eight restaurants in Manhattan and had more in the works, and had bags full of money. Then he had a devastating stroke, "confined to a wheelchair and deprived of language." Robbed of the use of his right hand, he would learn to become a southpaw, as he puts it, and "there's something ruggedly appealing about the word 'southpaw.'" There's much here about the physiology and psychology of strokes and about the involving world of restaurants and the, pardon, dish surrounding them; it was McNally who outed TV celebrity James Corden for an episode of ill manners, for instance, which he now regrets: "For someone who's hyperconscious of humiliation since suffering a stroke, it now seems monstrous that I didn't consider the humiliation I was subjecting Corden to." McNally also writes of the ins and outs of the restaurant business as business, leveraging huge numbers of dollars at Vegas odds with the possibility of losing everything while working with people you might not want to; as he writes of one such person, "You can't form a partnership with a pit bull and then be shocked when he bites you." But more than all that, McNally is a charming and honest raconteur who's lived an impossibly broad-ranging life, acting, directing, traveling the world, spending time with some of the greats in the film and theatrical business (even if, as he writes in anguish, he once failed to seat Ingrid Bergman because he didn't recognize her). On top of everything else, McNally celebrates New York City, where he once was a king but now is quite content simply to call it home.
Rueful, self-aware, chatty, entertaining, dazzling, and harrowing: a book that contains multitudes.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"McNally, Keith: I REGRET ALMOST EVERYTHING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A839213181/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8831cf27. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Marina O'Loughlin
I Regret Almost Everything
by Keith McNally
Simon & Schuster, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 320
Any of the sizeable audience that the restaurateur Keith McNally--of Balthazar, Minetta Tavern and Pastis fame--has accumulated on Instagram will recognise his appetite for beef. His followers find his attacks on people from James Corden to Michael Palin equally delicious. He tried it with me, too, and launched a series of salvos, despite my admiration of his early game-changing NYC restaurants. Not only was I a corrupt food critic, I was comparable to Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin. So the idea of reviewing his memoir was clearly tempting--revenge served cold kinda thing. But McNally's very first sentence outlines his plans to kill himself in the aftermath of a particularly dehumanising stroke. Oh.
This is an odd book--a catalogue of smash-hit restaurants, glamorous elites and what was a supremely successful life until the very real debilitating stroke horror, described in unflinching detail. But McNally appears to have garnered little pleasure in the course of his glittering career, seeming almost embarrassed to be working in the hospitality biz. This, despite a legion of fans, flings with starlets and the attentions of celebrities including Anna Wintour and Madonna.
His regrets are many. They concern his parents; his former bosses; not saying goodbye to friends before they died; losing touch with his children, then co-opting them into his business when they were older; his overblown Marie Antoinette-esque home renovations; his short affairs and long marriages; his pursuit of unattainable women; 'squandering' his integrity; and moving to Wigan, aged 22, to atone for 'the most dissolute month of my life', spent with bisexual friends in the south of France (details, sadly, not provided).
His dislikes are equally numerous. They include the James Beard Awards (for culinary talent in the US--'as repulsive as the Oscars'); 'self-important food critics'; his brother, on and off; having constantly to open greater restaurants ('Why must we always resort to hyperbole to retain people's interest?'); 'permatanned, coiffured' Richard Caring of the Ivy (he 'knew precious little about restaurants but a whole lot about shafting people'); and the unnamed Observer critic: 'It wasn't the criticism that bothered me. It was the reviewer's desperation to be funny.'
And himself. McNally constantly self-lacerates in a way that is presumably supposed to come across as charming but does in fact seem like self-loathing. His stroke was 'possibly retribution for a life shot through with questionable behaviour'. Even his insults--about the 'minuscule' Times food writer Giles Coren--can seem self-referential. He treats his metier with disdain. As he contemplates the mark he might leave on the world, his 'victory over humanity' is reduced to 'lowering the price of Monday's lunch specials'.
There's a lot of love from influential friends, including Alan Bennett, whom he met during a stint as a young actor. And there is love from adult children and wives. But he can't manage to love himself. Details of wrecked relationships are glossed over. It's all about Keith, and there is frequent querulousness. When he writes about being driven to suicide (he was found by his younger son, to whom a lifetime of apologies must be owed), it comes across less as 'farewell cruel world' and more 'now they'll be sorry'.
There are tales of hippy trails and maniacal restaurant renovations. One story sees poor Alan Bennett ferrying vintage mirrors 'at hearse pace' to McNally's first opening--of the still wonderful restaurant Odeon (now owned by his ex-wife, Lynn Wagen-knecht). And there's the odd anecdote that sounds more wish-fulfilment than fact: when the cheapest house wine got mixed up with a $2,000 bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild--the former going to know-nothing bankers, the latter to a young couple. Or the time when the sexy, Saul Bellow-reading night nurse at McLean's psychiatric facility in Massachussetts, to which McNally was sent post-suicide attempt, gave him his first kiss since the grim incident.
A sizeable chunk of the book is devoted to McNally finding Instagram, which 'became my voice'--something he had been missing since his stroke. He grows addicted to the 'gold coins' of likes and attention, ramping up his contrariness to troll-like status (he defends Ghislaine Maxwell and Woody Allen). 'I joined Instagram to piss people off,' he writes. When he gets Corden in his crosshairs he finally lands the virality he covets. But 'by writing about something I didn't have the full facts of, I'd probably stained the career of someone I didn't know'.
This is not the great literary memoir McNally might like it to be, despite peppering the pages with references to Euripides, Kierkegaard and Jean Renoir. There is humility, too--but since early in the book he describes the social benefits of false self-deprecation, readers might assume they were also being played. In any case, McNally will style out any criticism. In a characteristic move he has declared on Instagram that his memoir is 'the worst book ever written'. It's far from that. It's a compelling and captivating look into the life of a chippy East End boy made good in the Big Apple with a taste for Manhattan at the height of its glittery allure.
There's a haunting sense that McNally longs for something impossible--perhaps the seal of approval of the late polymath Jonathan Miller, his longtime friend and quasi-mentor, whom he admired passionately. In McNally's words: 'I still crave the success I pretend to despise.' At the end of the book, he does come to some recognition of his undoubted achievements. And this is an unequivocally great title for a memoir.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
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O'Loughlin, Marina. "East End boy made good." Spectator, vol. 358, no. 10264, 17 May 2025, p. 32. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A840390014/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a8663511. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.
Keith McNally tracks his staggering successes -- and failures -- in his new memoir, ''I Regret Almost Everything.''
I REGRET ALMOST EVERYTHING, by Keith McNally
The restaurateur Keith McNally's memoir, ''I Regret Almost Everything,'' is driven by his dislikes, as so many good books are. He loathes two of the first three words in the sentence above, for example. As he puts it in his perceptive and sharply entertaining book, ''Not only am I saddled with a first name I can't stand, I chose a profession with a name I dislike even more: restaurateur. Does a plumber call himself a plombier? Trust the French to come up with the most pretentious word in the dictionary. And just to make it extra difficult for us to pronounce, the bastards went and took the n out of the word.''
He hates bad lighting and arrogant maître d's. Menus written entirely in French. Tables at which you are too far from your partner. Mastadonic wine lists. Most restaurants with no burger on the menu. Waiters who don't announce the prices of the specials. Most dinner parties. (''There are few feelings of relief that compare to the first gulp of night air after leaving a dinner party prematurely.'') Peeing at a urinal with another man standing next to him. Elite food-world snobbery against big, bustling restaurants. Fickle landlords. Cat Stevens. Restaurants that close before midnight. The sanctimonious James Beard Awards -- he threw his medal in the trash.
There's plenty more, of course. Lingering too long in museums. Walls without art and rooms without books. Weddings. Rock concerts. Standing ovations. Clichés. Siblings, most of the time. (''It's not only your mum and dad'' who mess you up, he writes.) Sex with women who arrive with big suitcases. Direct sunlight -- except when he's sitting in the shade. Magnificent views. Halloween. New Year's Eve. ''Don Quixote.'' Patti Smith (because she reduced a waitress to tears) and Drew Nieporent (because he is Drew Nieporent). Men who lie and say the days their children were born were the best of their lives. Instagram, even though he's great on it. The successes of his rivals. The stroke that tore his life in two in 2016. Suffering -- because it doesn't make you stronger, ''it makes you mean and petty.'' Himself.
Beneath the surface chop, and the bohemian restaurant detritus, a story gets told. ''I Regret Almost Everything'' is about a working-class kid -- his father was a stevedore -- who grew up poor in the East End of London. McNally skipped college and drifted into acting. The theater director Jonathan Miller and the playwright Alan Bennett (with whom he had a sexual relationship) took him under their wings. They imparted to him an interest in culture and restaurants and design. For 50 years, he writes, he's been chasing for his restaurants a certain deep mustard color he first saw on Bennett's apartment walls.
When he tired of acting (he hates acting), he hit the hippie trail, hitchhiking and taking buses through India and Nepal. His shoulder-length hair and placid good looks -- McNally still resembles both a Roman bust and an '80s-era French leading man -- did nothing to dampen his warm receptions. He arrived in New York in 1975, vaguely intending to make films, but he ended up, as most aspiring artists in this city do, working in restaurants.
He cut his teeth at One Fifth, now defunct, where he moved from oyster shucker to waiter to maître d' to general manager. The restaurant was sophisticated, and it was a scene; McNally befriended Lorne Michaels, who'd bring the ''Saturday Night Live'' cast there. He met his first wife and future business partner, Lynn Wagenknecht, at One Fifth. He also befriended the young Anna Wintour, who changed his life by inviting him to Paris and touring him through that city's best bistros and brasseries.
My favorite was a place called Chez Georges. I loved the smell of escargots drenched in butter and garlic, the look of the red banquettes, the scored mirrors, the handwritten menu, the waiters with their starched white, ankle-length aprons. Everything about the place stimulated me. Even the jug of pickled cornichons on the table.
He returned to New York determined to open his own version of a Parisian brasserie. He did so and more, redefining this city's restaurant ethos as he moved along. Most were in gritty downtown neighborhoods. The Odeon, in Tribeca, opened in 1980. The then unknown Jay McInerney offered to pay McNally for the use of the restaurant's signage, with the Twin Towers looming off to one side, on the cover of his novel ''Bright Lights, Big City'' (1984). McNally didn't think the book would sell, so he let him use it for free.
Then came Café Luxembourg, on the Upper West Side, in 1983. The restaurant was named after the Polish-German intellectual and revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, but he misspelled her name. Then Nell's, in 1986, ''a nightclub for people who don't like nightclubs.'' Later came Balthazar, his Soho workhorse, which opened in 1997 and was almost named Brasserie Lafayette. Then the original Pastis in 1999.
McNally's restaurant Schiller's Liquor Bar, a warm (tiled floors, desilvered mirrors) but no-frills joint expressly for neighbors and walk-ins that opened in 2002 and closed in 2017, inspired one of Richard Price's best and most distinctive novels, ''Lush Life'' (2008). The novel features the exterior of Schiller's on its cover; the McNally character is named Harry Steele -- he has ''those dour baggy eyes like Serge Gainsbourg or Lou Reed.''
McNally lingers just as long on his failures -- for example, Augustine, which was killed, he says, by a 2017 review in this newspaper, and Pulino's, an upscale pizza place on the Bowery that fizzled expensively. He makes the restaurant world seem as dangerous as a Shakespearean court.
In large part, this is a stroke memoir. McNally's speech and movement are still hampered. He wonders if this was ''retribution for a life shot through with questionable behavior.'' He also recounts a suicide attempt on Martha's Vineyard in 2018. It's a friendship memoir -- he recounts his love for Oliver Sacks, Robert Hughes and Christopher Hitchens, among others. It's a family memoir. McNally has five children from two marriages, and he admits he has been an imperfect father.
Against the wisdom of the ages, he says it was work, not family, that got him through his existential health crisis. (''When you're sick, everyone bangs on about the importance of family.'') Perhaps not surprisingly, he adds -- and he is nearly always this epigrammatical: ''You're never out of the woods with your own kids. Not even when you're dead and buried.''
McNally opens his memoir with a quote from George Orwell: ''Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.''
His book lives up to this credo, in a manner that gives it more soulfulness and more bottom, as the Brits like to call gravitas, than (let's say) Graydon Carter's recent memoir. Not a day goes by, he writes, when he does not fear an authority figure tapping him on the shoulder and saying, ''McNally, you're a fraud. We're putting you on the next plane back to London.''
I REGRET ALMOST EVERYTHING | Keith McNally | Gallery Books | 303 pp. | $29.99
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PHOTO: The restaurateur Keith McNally at his brasserie Augustine in 2016. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BENJAMIN NORMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) This article appeared in print on page BR9.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The New York Times Company
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Garner, Dwight. "Bright Bites, Big City." The New York Times Book Review, 1 June 2025, p. 9. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A842238597/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5b33f64b. Accessed 26 Nov. 2025.