I Regret Almost Everything

“Although my restaurants were taking in $80 million a year before my stroke, my reason for building them was never the pursuit of money. It was partly to gain the admiration of those I respected, and partly the satisfaction I received from seeing an idea realized. But whatever satisfaction the restaurants gave me was fleeting—which is probably why I can’t stop building them.”

McNally’s reflections on his vocational journey convey the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry. Having forged his way in a new field via sheer grit and verve, McNally retrospectively identifies his reasons for pursuing such a challenging career. He indeed made a profit and a name for himself; however, in the present he understands that “admiration,” “respect,” and “satisfaction” were always more important to him than “the pursuit of money.” This revelation conveys McNally’s reflective stance, and captures how his restaurant work has evolved his outlook on life. Further, his revelation about why he “can’t stop building” restaurants establishes McNally’s lifelong Search for Meaning and Purpose.

“It was the first time we’d made love since my stroke. It was followed by an uncomfortable silence. Lying there by the dying fire, we were probably each wondering what the other was thinking. It was now Christmas Day, and our world was no longer the same.”

McNally renders a descriptive scene to convey the mood and texture of his and Alina’s marriage in the wake of his stroke. The image of “the dying fire” is symbolic of McNally’s tenuous health. This moment also foreshadows the devolution of McNally and Alina’s marriage and McNally’s mental health in the subsequent months. The image of McNally and Alina’s sexual encounter contrasts with their subsequent “awkward silence,” further underscoring how McNally’s stroke would alter their dynamic.

“While knowing in my bones that real education doesn’t spring from having attended university, I also know there’s an ineradicable part of me that believes the opposite and, sadly, always will. Whatever their education and wealth, no one fully escapes the class they were born into. I know I haven’t.”

McNally’s reflections on “education and wealth” convey how the circumstances of his upbringing have impacted him throughout his life. He intellectually understands that academia is unrelated to real understanding or success, but acknowledges that he emotionally believes otherwise. His ability to embrace these contrasting points of view underscores McNally’s pursuit of authenticity. Further, the passage conveys how one’s past influences her worldview for the rest of her life.

“My relationship with Alan enriched my life in ways I find hard to explain. I can’t imagine how my life would have turned out without it. I suppose many people feel this way about one specific person. I think those who don’t have something inherently missing in their lives.”

McNally incorporates detailed descriptions of and reflections on his relationship with Alan Bennett—inviting the reader into another intimate aspect of his personal life. Rather than disparaging Alan or himself for this relationship, McNally honors the connection they had on the page. He also gives Alan credit for his positive impact on his life. Doing so conveys McNally’s capacity for empathy, and his desire to acknowledge the people who contributed to his personal edification.

“Saying goodbye to Alina was different. Her role in my recovery was being taken away from her. Worse, it was being given to those she felt most competitive with—my ex-wife and older children. She felt betrayed.”

In acknowledging Alina, Alice, and George’s pain, McNally captures the Complexity of Family Relationships. McNally decided to rehabilitate in New York instead of London—a choice that effectively removed him from his family’s life. In the present, he acknowledges the difficulty of this arrangement—giving credit to his wife and children’s experiences as well as his own.

“Knowing I can do something, without necessarily doing it, is vital for me. There’s a scene in the film Pennies From Heaven in which an unhappily married man who’s fallen in love with a schoolteacher asks if she’d ever consider having sex with him on an elevator floor. He doesn’t want to have sex on the elevator floor, he just wants to know it’s a possibility. I feel that way about most things.”

McNally’s reflections on his work in the restaurant industry offer insight into his distinct character. In order to convey his thirst for understanding, McNally compares his experience to “a scene in the film Pennies From Heaven.” This cinematic association reiterates McNally’s connection to film, and reifies his internal experience for the reader—making his complex emotions tangible on the page. This passage also clarifies how McNally was able to succeed despite the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry he faced over the course of his career.

“The mid-to-late seventies were my happiest years in New York. In the spring of 1977, I moved downtown from East Ninety-First Street to SoHo […] The area pulsed with the spirit of approaching change. Unknowingly, I caught the wave of that change, and for the next few years would experience the most stimulating and open-minded period of my life.”

McNally’s retrospective reflections on his early days in New York City affect a nostalgic tone. McNally uses descriptive language to convey his attachment to this setting—formal choices that enliven his memories on the page. Language including “happiest,” “spring,” “pulsed,” “spirit,” “wave,” and “stimulating” affect a hopeful tone and a mood of excitement and possibility. Further, McNally’s ability to acknowledge the importance of this “period of his life” underscores how he’s changed in the decades since he originally arrived in New York. He can now retrospectively identify happy, positive eras in his experience and revel in his memories of them.

“No matter how hard we worked putting the Odeon together, opening a large restaurant in an obscure neighborhood was a risky undertaking. By day, Tribeca was busy with mid-level office workers, but at night there was absolutely no one on the streets. It was a desolate neighborhood eerily dominated by the Twin Towers. How on earth were we going to fill our 130-seat restaurant?”

McNally delves into the circumstances surrounding the opening of the Odeon to immerse his reader in the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry. He details the distinct nature of the Tribeca neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s to set the narrative scene. The diction he uses enacts the difficulties of establishing a new business in this area at the time; vocabulary like “obscure,” “risky,” “desolate,” and “eerily” affects an ominous mood that enacts McNally’s entrepreneurial conflicts. Further, McNally’s interrogative tone at the end of the passage enacts his fear of failure at the time—another personal challenge that would recur throughout his career as a restaurateur.

“To his credit, Brian has never been jealous of my restaurant successes. Though he and I infuriate each other constantly, he’s the first person I turn to in an emergency. Life without him is difficult to imagine. In many ways, Brian is the sort of man I wish I’d been.”

McNally’s reflections on his relationship with his brother Brian affect a heartfelt, loving mood. The passage also develops McNally’s explorations of the Complexity of Family Relationships. Although he and Brian “infuriate each other constantly,” they also rely on and admire each other. These seemingly dichotomous aspects of their fraternity in fact allow their relationship to function; further, they are commonplace aspects of all family dynamics.

“Café Luxembourg opened in the summer of 1983 and received good reviews all around, including two stars from the New York Times. Lynn and I couldn’t do any wrong in the eyes of restaurant reviewers. But that would soon change—and then some.”

McNally’s description of Café Luxembourg underscores the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry. Although the restaurant’s success and positive reviews reinforced McNally’s confidence, he also acknowledges that this success wouldn’t last. He is thus conveying the simultaneous stability and instability he faced throughout his time in the industry.

“A couple of years after the split, we would become friends again, partly for the sake of our children but mostly out of admiration. There’s nobody in the world I admire more than Lynn. And the fact that she has the good sense not to feel the same way about me makes me admire her even more.”

McNally’s reflections on his and Lynn’s dynamic reiterate the Complexity of Family Relationships. He and Lynn did split up, but they “would become friends again” in the years following their divorce. McNally’s ability to convey his sustained love and respect for Lynn since their divorce illustrates his graceful nature and concurrent belief in the importance of strong interpersonal connections. The passage is free of bitterness, which also conveys how McNally’s relationships have changed his outlook over the course of his life.

“A far more pleasing sight is a customer happily eating alone—preferably reading a novel between courses (or eating between pages). To help make single diners feel comfortable eating alone, I always send a glass of champagne on the house. Always.”

McNally’s description of his favorite customers provides insight into his restaurateur vision. Disinterested in making money or obsessing over glamour, McNally prefers witnessing patrons who can enjoy his restaurants even when alone. The image of the customer happily eating by themselves while reading, eating, and sipping champagne affects a hospitable, comforting mood that echoes McNally’s restaurant philosophy.

“At the time, I agreed that the insignificant is often important. But days after my stroke, I wasn’t so sure. Lying half-paralyzed in a hospital bed, unable to form a coherent sentence, I wallowed in feelings of insignificance. Where was my importance now?”

McNally identifies his stroke as a turning point in his outlook on himself and his life. Although he’d always struggled with self-doubt, the stroke only exacerbated his “feelings of insignificance.” The image of him lying “half-paralyzed in a hospital bed,” unable to speak, underscores his physical and emotional immobilization. Indeed, the stroke reignited his Search for Meaning and Purpose, causing him to question where true value and fulfillment really lie.

“Besides, I was beginning to really miss Alina. Why did it take sleeping with another person to discover who I really wanted to sleep with? Do other people do the same thing? Was X sleeping with me in order to know who she really wanted to sleep with?”

McNally employs a questioning tone when reflecting on his overlapping relationships with Alina and X. His interrogative style enacts his desire to make sense of himself in the context of these intimate affairs. Further, the passage reiterates McNally’s lifelong belief that all interpersonal, romantic, and/or sexual dynamics contribute to a person’s sense of self.

“Largely due to the spirit of its young staff, opening Schiller’s was one of the happiest times I’ve ever had opening and operating a restaurant. […] In 2017 I closed its doors for the final time. Although Schiller’s never turned a profit, it was fun while it lasted.”

McNally’s ability to honor Schiller’s Liquor Bar despite the restaurant’s failure conveys the purity of his entrepreneurial philosophy. McNally ended up opening Schiller’s instead of starting a new Balthazar in Las Vegas, because the former project felt more true to him. He still holds this belief years later, as Schiller’s afforded him happiness and enjoyment.

“Productive partnerships between strong individuals often end contentiously, and my relationship with original Balthazar chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson was no exception. As is usually the case, things broke down over money.”

McNally admits the difficult aspects of running businesses in his reflections on Balthazar. Doing so underscores the Challenges of the Restaurant Industry and reiterates McNally’s devotion to authenticity. He acknowledges that he, Riad, and Lee fought over money—a confession that affects an honest tone and underscores the economic conflicts that have defined McNally’s career.

“I’ve noticed that when a loving relationship turns sour, everything you do to improve it only makes it worse. It was the same with Pulino’s. No matter what I did to enhance the food, fewer and fewer customers came through the door.”

McNally compares his work with his restaurant Pulino’s to the Complexity of Family Relationships. This metaphor creates a direct parallel between McNally’s professional and personal lives—thus suggesting that what McNally was learning in the restaurant world often applied to his marriages, and vice versa.

“Since I believe that the more repugnantly someone behaves, the greater one’s responsibility is to understand the person, I later wrote Ava an apology for the way our friendship ended. She wrote to say that she, too, was sorry. All the same, I wanted to throttle her lawyer.

McNally incorporates his assistant Ava’s allegations of sexual harassment against him into his memoir to embrace authenticity and honesty. In sharing this story McNally risks altering the public’s impressions of him. At the same time, in sharing this end result of the case on the page, McNally is seeking his reader’s understanding and empathy.

“In 2021, I stopped having Botox injections. The pain of the injections was just about bearable, but the agony of listening to my competitors being praised to the skies was not. I never went back.”

McNally employs humor to discuss a challenging moment in his personal and professional life. Recently debilitated by his stroke, McNally had to undergo regular Botox injections as part of his rehabilitation. These injections were physically painful, but didn’t “hurt” McNally as much as his doctor’s glorification of his competitors did. McNally is using this joke to playfully convey the interconnection between his work and his health.

“Unstable marriages become miserable marriages when one’s living in the country. Our dream house had taken two and a half years to renovate, and in September 2017, Alina and I finally moved into Great Brockhampton Farm deep in the English Cotswolds.”

McNally’s house in the English Cotswolds symbolically conveys the Complexity of Family Relationships. Although this place was McNally and Alina’s “dream house,” its purchase also marked the devolution of the couple’s marriage. McNally uses the house to represent, through imagery, the trajectory of his and Alina’s relationship over time.

“Though each of my five children was affected by my stroke, George was the one most visibly so. Auden once wrote that trauma was good for children and suggested they should be loaded with as much of it as they can bear. George was thirteen when he witnessed my stroke. Auden was right about many things, but wrong about trauma being good for children.”

McNally incorporates a literary allusion into his account to process his impact on his son George. By referencing Auden, McNally is seeking wisdom from an alternate source. At the same time, he’s pushing back against Auden’s ideas and forming conclusions based on his own experience. In these ways, the passage conveys McNally’s ongoing work to navigate the Complexity of Family Relationships.

“Since 1993, I’ve spent all but two summers at my house on Martha’s Vineyard. In order to catch the flowering of the two magnificent catalpa trees in front of my house, I make a point of arriving on the first day of July. That summer of 2018, they flowered unnaturally early and I missed them.”

The catalpa trees in front of McNally’s Martha’s Vineyard house are symbols of renewal and new life. Therefore, when McNally missed their flowering in 2018, the trees became an omen of his augmenting depression and attempted death by suicide. Further, McNally’s references to Martha’s Vineyard underscore this setting’s symbolic resonance throughout much of McNally’s life.

“I went from fearing my sessions starting to dreading them ending. I stopped wincing when I heard the words ‘mindful’ and ‘contextual.’ I stopped being an observer. I stopped for my children’s sake. I stopped for my children’s sake. I stopped because I didn’t want them to see me being stretchered off to a hospital yet again.”

McNally’s reflections on his rehabilitation time at McLean and the Pavilion convey his capacity for change. Although originally skeptical of his psychological treatment, McNally didn’t refuse care. His use of anaphora affects an insistent, determined tone—thus formally enacting McNally’s determination to heal for his, his children’s, and his own sake.