Restaurateur Keith McNally has never been afraid to speak his mind, but it wasn’t until he began to put his thoughts to words—first online and now in his forthcoming memoir—that he found his full volume.

Most of the people I’m interested in interviewing are dead— Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Nora Ephron, etc.—but there is one person I have desperately wanted to speak with: Keith McNally. There is something mystical about him. Though the 73-year-old British restaurateur is typically somewhere in SoHo or Martha’s Vineyard, at the same time he feels out of reach, like the great wizard behind the curtain in a castle having a glass of wine.
He moved to New York in the ’70s to pursue a career in cinema but landed in the restaurant scene soon after, where he has since built his name while still dabbling in theater and film from time to time. Now known for his iconic downtown portfolio, which includes Balthazar, Minetta Tavern, and Pastis, McNally attracts everyone from A-list celebrities to best-selling writers and playwrights to popular haunts. Part of the charm of these spaces is that they feel and look like the type you’d see as locations in classic films about New York. What interests me the most about their owner, however, is not his watering holes but his brutal honesty. Nobody these days has the cojones to be as candid as he is; whether you’re a fan or a critic, you can’t deny that he is unapologetically himself.

Eight years ago, McNally suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. His speech was “shot to pieces,” he tells me. “In losing my voice, I learned to speak my mind.” I set out in a correspondence to get to know the man. What upsets him? “People who never change their mind and the phrase, ‘I’ll circle back to you.’” What turns him on? “My girlfriend. Good food. A great play. Not necessarily in that order.” As for what he considers overrated, it’s “celebrity chefs and four-star restaurants.” Does he care what others think of him? “The only people I care to be liked by are those I admire. The rest can go to hell,” he responds, noting that what he really values is “the ability to admit one’s wrong.”
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Never afraid to speak the things most of us keep buried inside, McNally is releasing his debut memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, with Simon & Schuster this May. Its pages will cover everything from his gritty childhood in London to his move to New York, becoming a restaurateur, and his recent digital notoriety. His Instagram has become a beautiful garden of his earthly delights, filled with books, films, and plays that he loves and loathes, as well as recommendations so good they should be turned into a syllabus and distributed to all at his restaurants. Online, he’s an open book. He noted in a caption that he wrote the first line of his forthcoming memoir “in a loony bin in Massachusetts in August 2018.” He then continued to write for four hours every morning until he finished last April.
If the printed product is anything like McNally’s online persona, I have no doubt there will be thousands lined up around the block the night before as if it were the next installment of the “Harry Potter” book series or an open table at one of his restaurants on a Friday night.
