I Regret Almost Everything
A Memoir
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4.3 • 126 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
The entertaining, irreverent, and surprisingly moving memoir by the visionary restaurateur behind such iconic New York institutions as Balthazar and Pastis.
A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Restaurateur Keith McNally has been reshaping New York’s dining scene since the 1980s. In this revealing and unexpectedly moving memoir, he looks back on the wild ride that got him there. After traveling from working-class East London to an Israeli kibbutz, he landed in Manhattan with dreams of filmmaking, only to end up shucking oysters. But he rose from that bottom rung to opening legendary restaurants like Balthazar, collecting funny, biting, jaw-dropping stories along the way. (Like when he infamously banned James Corden for being rude to the staff, and the time he didn’t recognize Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman.) McNally writes with warmth and wit about the camaraderie of restaurant life and about his recovery from a massive stroke in 2016, and his raffish charm makes this a thoroughly delightful read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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, which saw him leave 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 maître 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 waterboarded 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 adds up to an intriguing portrait of a complex personality.
Customer Reviews
Beautifully written
His words flow beautifully and keeps you reading. An interesting life and a humbling perspective
Honest, funny and wonderful!
This book grabbed me from the first page and didn’t let me go until the last page. I laughed, I cried, I was enthralled, I enjoyed the sweetness and the bitterness and eagerly read on. This is a wonderful book with a self-deprecating main character and author walking thru his life honestly. Bravo!
A very generous book
-like his restaurants.