Keith McNally’s Creative Wisdom
The New York City restaurateur tells his life story. Photo by Victoria Dearing.
Keith McNally regrets almost everything. Maybe, at least if you believe the title of his new book – I Regret Almost Everthing. Once called “the restauteur who invented downtown”, McNally is the proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi.
Central to all of his restaurants is a vibe – cool, artsy, one where great design is not only taken seriously, but often the starting point for each restaurant concept.
By candidly sharing what goes on behind-the-scenes of his restaurants, McNally has developed a big, recent following on Instagram. He disperses a lot of wisdom there, but we also pulled 10 insights from his book that speak to his creative side and perspective.
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1. “I went into a Sixth Avenue diner for coffee and noticed a blackboard on the wall with the sign Coffee One Dollar, Refills 50 Cents. I asked the waitress if I could start with a refill. She told me to buzz off.”
2. “Professional designers like to say that good design is ‘all about the details.’ This isn’t true. Good design is all about the right details.”
3. “With every restaurant I have a hand in designing, I can’t start the project until I have one specific detail in mind. It doesn’t have to be significant, but without the detail I’m stuck. Like a writer who can’t begin a book until he has the perfect first sentence, I’m frozen until I find the first building block.”
4. “Before I begin building, I always have a specific idea of a restaurant’s design. But as the boxer MIke Tyson once said, ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ My watertight floor plan usually starts leaking on the first day of construction. Unable to visualize an idea until it becomes tangible, I will often build things two or three times over until I feel it’s right… That is why I always go over budget. And what I’d never invest in myself.”
5. “There are two kinds of restaurateurs: those who identify with the staff and those who identify with the customers.”
6. “Given the choice between spending money on a good school for my children or an oil painting by Max Pechstein, I’d spring for the Pechstein every time.”
7. “In bed that night, I decided that I would build Balthazar in Las Vegas. I wasn’t selling out. I was cashing in. There’s an acre of different between the two.”
8. “Not only am I saddled with a first name I can’t stand, I chose a profession with a name I dislike even more: restauratuer. Does a plumber call himself a plombeir? Trust the French to come up with the most pretentious word in the dictionary. And just to make it extra difficult, the bastards went and took the n out of hte word.”
9. “In general, I dislike large houses and prefer small apartments. Smallness is underrated. The last summerhouse architect Le Corbusier lived in measured 160 square feet. He was blissfully happy there.”
10. “When you’re sick, everyone bangs on about the importance of family, yet it was work, not family, that pulled me out of my despair. During a personal crisis, the importance of work is often undervalued. ‘Take time off work,’ most people say when someone’s depressed. My advice would be to work more, not less. When all else seems lost, work – of any kind – provides the one thing we need to keep going: a sense of purpose.”
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