[Mcnally's] memoir...will outlast a single evening out. A perfectly orchestrated meal creates the illusion of effortlessness; McNally’s book serves as an enduring reminder of the work and talent that go into creating such memories, and of the artists whose vision sets the scene.
Wry, insightful and vulnerable, a courageous book alive with mordant humor and British irony ... [Displays] appealing honesty ... Mr. McNally writes candidly about his flaws ... In the aftermath of his terrible stroke, he has established himself as a remarkable writer.
Keith McNally’s memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, is driven by his dislikes, as so many good books are ... 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.
Reading the memoir is a bit like scrolling through his feed: he’s not really a raconteur, but he’s an energetic collector of rants, vignettes, and curiosities. This isn’t necessarily a strike against the book. If anything, he’s found a new way to give the crowd what it wants.
Compulsively readable, these anecdotes deliver the atmosphere that diners have come to expect of McNally’s hospitality: decadence and glamour made accessible through a light touch and a louche, punchy style ... What’s most surprising and revealing about the book is its earnest attempt to account for all that McNally has lost ... McNally recounts his early life in remarkable detail ... McNally can tend to draw the women in his life in one dimension ... McNally’s failures to make meaningful links between past and present, emotion and action, action and consequence, reveal a tendency to evacuate rather than metabolize his experiences. This can make for good entertainment, but not great art.
McNally uses his stroke in 2016...to supply the book with what dramatic tension it has ... The book contains plenty of celebrity gossip and (mostly) amusing anecdotes about his interactions with some of the city’s notable landlords and restaurateurs. McNally’s willingness to throw himself under the bus provides the book with many laughs ... I do, however, think that McNally’s success at writing Instagram captions may have contributed to an inflated sense of worth of some of his thoughts. There are a few utterly inane—though thankfully brief—asides scattered throughout the book that I feel should have been left as drafts ... Such moments, thankfully, occur infrequently throughout the book, but just often enough to raise eyebrows ... He is admirably frank, and mostly self-aware, when reflecting on his shortcomings, whether as son or sibling, husband or parent ... Poignant ... You might not get what you want here, but you will get something.
Rueful, self-aware, chatty, entertaining, dazzling, and harrowing: a book that contains multitudes ... McNally is a charming and honest raconteur who’s lived an impossibly broad-ranging life.
McNally writes vividly of his formative years ... 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.
