Book Summary and Reviews of I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally

I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally

I Regret Almost Everything

by Keith McNally

  • Published:
  • May 2025, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Rueful, self-aware, chatty, entertaining, dazzling, and harrowing: a book that contains multitudes." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Perceptive and sharply entertaining." —New York Times

"Wry, insightful and vulnerable, a courageous book alive with mordant humor and British irony. ... The book reveals his intellectual ambitions, innermost thoughts and nagging self-doubt. In the aftermath of his terrible stroke, he has established himself as a remarkable writer." —Wall Street Journal

This information about I Regret Almost Everything was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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More Information

Keith McNally, called "The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown" by The New York Times, founded Balthazar Restaurant, Balthazar Bakery, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, Pravda, Schiller's Liquor Bar, Morandi, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Nell's, Cafe Luxembourg, and the Odeon, plus the staggeringly unsuccessful pizzeria, Pulino's. McNally is the author of The Balthazar Cookbook and Schiller's Liquor Bar Cocktail Collection, and the writer and director of two features, End of the Night and Far from Berlin. He lives in downtown New York.

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