Restaurateur Keith McNally regrets "almost everything"

Keith McNally calls himself the least-hospitable man in hospitality. And you're not a big smiler either. Inside.

It doesn't seem to have hurt. Over 40 years, he's opened some of New York City's most popular restaurants. Among them, The Odeon, Balthazar, Pastis, institutions almost as well-known as some of the bold faced names that frequent them. But McNally himself has never been much of a publicity hound, even less so after suffering a stroke in 2016. Naturally, I'm embarrassed to be on TV talking like this. Who wouldn't be? But it's good for me to do it because it gets me free of my embarrassment. Actually, I'm embarrassed talking about embarrassment. [LAUGHS] But the British-born McNally has largely overcome his embarrassment in a new memoir. The drawback for me with most memoirs, if you're not embarrassed by what you write, it's probably not the truth. Right.

But if you don't cringe, every word is not the truth. What was the hardest part of the book for you to write? The hardest thing was my suicide attempt because my kids. I didn't want to leave them at all.

That suicide attempt was two years after his stroke. And your boy, your younger boy, George--

Yeah, George.

--is the one who found you. He was supposed to not find me. And like most teenagers, he would sleep until noon. But that day, he woke up early, at 8 o'clock. You expected him to be sleeping later. He woke up early. He saw you. Yeah, the bastard just woke up early and saved my life.

McNally might joke about it now, but the father of five was suffering with an immobile right arm-- he was right-handed-- back pain, aphasia, which causes his slurred speech. And his second marriage was falling apart. But as McNally writes, some sobering words from a doctor made him reflect. "He said that children who lose a parent to suicide were far more likely to kill themselves than the children of parents who don't. That stopped me in my tracks." Because he had such trouble communicating verbally after his stroke, McNally began using social media. And I was so embarrassed by my speech and the way I looked. I didn't go to my restaurant for one year. I was ashamed, but eventually I realized it's nothing to be ashamed about. So not only did I admit it wasn't a bad thing, but I went on Instagram.

McNally went viral in 2022 with a post criticizing former late night host James Corden for allegedly being rude to the waitstaff at Balthazar. But now, McNally confesses in his book, he isn't so sure calling out Corden was fair. You wrote, "For someone who's hyper conscious of humiliation since suffering a stroke, it now seems monstrous that I didn't consider the humiliation I was subjecting Corden to." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. "I felt like I'd hit the jackpot of a slot machine, and thousands of gold coins were spilling out in front of me. That night I ended up with over 90,000 followers. I was intoxicated with self-righteousness." But afterwards, felt really bad.

Corden later apologized. But the 73-year-old McNally has continued creating a stir online. Take this recent post he wrote about his friend, ABC News's Diane Sawyer, describing a week-long affair the two had in the 1970s. The story made news, except that it was completely made up. Some people believed it, and-- Most people believe it. Yeah, right. And some people say, listen, Keith. It's really not cool for you to be sharing this. And so did you enjoy that back and forth with them? Yes, I'm afraid that I did. And I wonder, do you think that the stroke-- I don't know, is that-- Say what you think.

Well, is it that you feel a little trapped inside of yourself? No, not really. No. I've always been a little like this inside. But since my stroke and now on the outside.

McNally grew up in the East End of London, one of four children born to Jack, a dock worker, and Joyce, a house and office cleaner. The family had little money.

I got angry inside at my parents because we had no books in the house, no pictures on the walls, but they couldn't help it. They were working class. They grew up with nothing.

McNally says he didn't eat in a restaurant until he was 17. Most of the time we were on holiday. We would go to the restaurant. They would look at the prices, then go, not for us.

And yet, when McNally moved to New York City in 1975 as an aspiring filmmaker, he made ends meet by working in restaurants. I didn't eat asparagus until I came here. And the next game, I went to the doctor because I couldn't-- and the smell-- the smell of my-- It was so pungent from eating asparagus. Yeah, I thought I was sick. You thought you were sick?

Yeah, but I went to the doctor, and he said, What did you eat last night? You know what? You got to put that in the paperback. [LAUGHTER] McNally opened his own restaurant, The Odeon, in the neighborhood of Tribeca, in what had been a no-man's land in 1980. An immediate sensation, it established certain McNally musts. Why is it important to have a hamburger on the menu?

Because I don't like hamburger as much myself. But to me, it's a sign of snobery not to have hamburgers. It's a sign of snobbery to not offer a hamburger. McNally prides himself on putting his staff above even his diners. Some of his employees have been with him for over 30 years. [APPLAUSE] And ever since returning to work post-stroke, Keith McNally has come to appreciate how they feel about him. I had to talk to myself and was really nervous. And they were really kind. In them, kindness is very essential. The stroke lifted the veil on what they thought of you. Yeah, they made me feel good. They made you feel good.