The memoir from Keith McNally, the British-born restaurateur behind celebrated New York establishments including The Odeon and Balthazar, begins bleakly with its author attempting suicide at his summer house in Martha’s Vineyard in 2018. We then rewind to 20 months earlier when, on a Saturday morning, he took his youngest children to the National Gallery in London. While looking at a painting of Jesus being betrayed by Judas, “I sensed my body beginning to show signs of betraying me: a strange metallic tingling started to pinch my fingertips.” McNally was experiencing the beginnings of a stroke that would leave him with impaired speech and paralysis on one side of his body.
I Regret Almost Everything sees McNally, now 74, reflecting on his health along with his long career, moving from bellboy at the Hilton hotel in London to teen actor – aged 16, he played the lead in a production of The Winslow Boy – to busboy at the New York restaurant One Fifth, where he was later promoted to maître d.
