SALAD DAYS

Hamish Bowles reflects on Keith McNally's life and career as one of the defining figures of downtown New York's dining culture.

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On November 26, 2016, Keith McNally had a stroke. Or, as he writes in his new, revelatory memoir, I Regret Almost Everything (Gallery), “the clock stopped.” I know the feeling. For I had a stroke on October 22, 2022. It turned my life upside down. My life before the stroke was not unlike McNally’s. Both of us were British, living in New York; we hobnobbed with the great and the good—those who lived in the city and those passing through. And I was a regular at his famous restaurants. I had midnight feasts at Lucky Strike, romantic dates at Minetta Tavern, endless rowdy meals with Nell Campbell at The Odeon. (Of course, Nell was the eponymous poster girl for McNally’s starry ‘80s nightclub.) And once, a thoroughly entertaining dinner with Stephen Fry at Balthazar. These weren't just restaurants, they were gathering places, so one could observe, ever so discreetly, the playfully notorious, fascinating people dining just a breath away.

And then after the stroke, everything changed absolutely. Before, I had formed my life around celebrating others. Now I relied on others even for memory. Early on, I had to do one of those memory games—someone would read a list of words and then I repeated them. Except that I could only repeat three words of 40. Somehow, after three months in a hospital and several more in a rehabilitation center, I was, finally, ready to “face the world.”