I Regret Almost Everything

The final chapters of the memoir offer overarching reflections on McNally’s notable career as a restaurateur amidst his ongoing network of personal, relational, and mental health challenges. Throughout I Regret Almost Everything, McNally maintains a consistently open, honest, and confessional tone. In Chapters 33 through 40, he leans into this vulnerability to offer the reader self-help inspired advice for her own life. In regard to McNally’s longing for success and affirmation, he argues that the Search for Meaning and Purpose is universal. Longing for more in life has been a way for him “to keep chaos […] at bay” (243), to learn new things about himself, and to explore the world around him; any individual might apply McNally’s life lessons about happiness and meaning to her own life.

In regard to McNally’s ongoing marital and parental difficulties, McNally argues that the Complexity of Family Relationships is inherent to modern interpersonal dynamics. Although neither of McNally’s marriages lasted, he doesn’t actively disparage Lynn or Alina on the page; avoiding this deprecating stance implies that McNally believes even relationships that don’t last can teach the individual about themself. Finally, in regard to McNally’s vocational journey, he argues that the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry helped him find his calling in life. Each restaurant he opened offered new conflicts, roadblocks, and relationships; no matter how long the restaurants lasted, each one connected him with others and was a form of artistic and personal expression.

In the years since his stroke and attempt to die by suicide, McNally has gained insight into his own attempts at finding meaning and purpose in his familial relationships and restaurateur work. Most notably, McNally assumes a retrospective stance in order to explore how these major life events have changed him as a person. In the past, McNally once believed that establishing a meaningful life required him to disassociate from his working-class roots and distinguish himself in an entrepreneurial context. By the memoir’s end, McNally’s viewpoint has evolved. He holds that in many ways he “feel[s] exactly the same way as [he] did before his stroke” (302). He still experiences insecurity, still feels “beholden to people who work for [him],” still craves “the kind of success [he] pretend[s] to despise,” and still feels suspicious of those “who place self-expression above self-awareness” (302). In spite of these static beliefs and feelings, McNally admits that “against the odds, I have changed a little” (302). By acknowledging both his lack of change and capacity for change, McNally is reinforcing his humanity. He gives himself some credit for his self-evolution—asserting that he’s “more aware that it’s the unnecessary things that make life civilized” and that he’s now able to “cry more easily” (302). Such admissions present McNally as a typical, down-to-earth person, who both resists and strives for change.

McNally is embracing humility in these ways to subvert expectations of his public persona. While he may appear to be a cultural icon due to all the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry he’s overcome, McNally intentionally avoids lauding himself. The same is true of his familial and marital dynamics. Although he may appear to be a happy father of five children, McNally goes as far as admitting that “becoming a father” was not in fact “the best moment of his life” as so many men had told him (294). Such an admission appears callous on its surface, but is characteristically raw and vulnerable. The same is true of how McNally reflects on his relationship with social media. He doesn’t simply disparage online communities; neither does he aggressively promote them. Instead, he embraces negative capability, admitting that like success, marriage, and happiness, all of life is defined by contradictions.

McNally assumes a more assertive stance in the final passages of the memoir, a tonal shift that enacts McNally’s attempt to claim his true self via the writing process. For McNally, this means acknowledging and accepting how much New York has in fact given him and contributed to his identity: “After spending years searching for my roots in London, I had finally found them in New York. Some say your roots are where you feel most like your true self. After Covid was over and Balthazar reopened, I suddenly felt most like my true self in New York” (303). Throughout McNally’s account, he has consistently vacillated between musings on his competing attachments to New York and London. By this closing juncture of the memoir, he owns his long-time love affair with New York. In doing so, he is claiming his experience and identity with more self-assuredness.