Quick wins for a faster PC:
Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Keith McNally’s memoir is titled I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir, not “I Wasn’t Harsh Enough.” In a 2025 CBS interview about the book, the London-born restaurateur revisits the personal failures and public judgments behind his career—and argues that an honest memoir should leave its author embarrassed. His story also traces how he helped shape downtown New York dining through restaurants including the Odeon and Balthazar.
What Keith McNally’s memoir is called—and what it covers
I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir was published by Simon & Schuster. CBS listed hardcover, ebook and audio editions when it published its interview; those listings do not establish current stock or prices. The book moves through McNally’s working-class East End childhood, his time in theatre and early restaurant work in New York, the making of his restaurants, and the personal crises and online life that followed.
For McNally, the memoir’s candor is part of its point. He told CBS, “The drawback for me with most memoirs [is], if you’re not embarrassed by what you write, you’ve probably not spoken the truth.” He also put it more bluntly: “If you don’t cringe over every word, it’s not the truth.”
From London to the Odeon
McNally moved from London to New York in 1975 as an aspiring filmmaker and supported himself with restaurant work. He opened the Odeon in Tribeca in 1980. CBS describes its success as helping establish his operating instincts, including keeping a hamburger on the menu.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
#1 Best Overall
The New Yorker’s review places the Odeon and Balthazar in a design-conscious downtown restaurant tradition shaped by French brasseries. The critic characterizes McNally’s style as a combination of aesthetic nostalgia, bistro food and relaxed service—a critical interpretation of the restaurants, rather than a neutral measure of why they succeeded. Balthazar opened in 1997 and later expanded to a London outpost and a wholesale bakery operation, according to the review.
McNally has described the challenge of building a restaurant less as a formula than as a matter of atmosphere. In a passage quoted by The New Yorker, he writes: “Nothing does,” he writes, “except that strange indefinable: the right feel.” The phrase captures an elusive quality that design, food and service may support but cannot guarantee.
Embarrassment, illness and the difficulty of telling the story
The later chapters reach beyond restaurants. CBS reports that McNally had a stroke in 2016, that his second marriage ended, and that he attempted suicide two years after the stroke. The New Yorker also describes the post-stroke period and his turn to writing and Instagram. McNally said he began using social media partly because verbal communication had become difficult.
These are painful episodes, not a tidy redemption arc. In the CBS interview, McNally recalled feeling ashamed and then reaching a different understanding: “I was ashamed. But eventually I realized, nothing to be ashamed about.” His account presents the work of writing as a way to face experiences he had found difficult to discuss, including the suicide attempt. That is his personal reflection, not a general account of stroke recovery or mental health.
Rank #3
- Finding Me: A Memoir
The James Corden episode and public judgment
One of the memoir’s revealing subjects is McNally’s own use of public judgment. In 2022, he publicly criticized James Corden; CBS reports that McNally later reconsidered the post. He told CBS: “For someone who’s hyperconscious of humiliation since suffering a stroke, it now seems monstrous that I didn’t consider the humiliation I was subjecting Corden to.”
The remark shifts the focus from the original dispute to the consequences of turning a grievance into a public spectacle. The Daily Beast recounts the episode and the memoir context, but the coverage reflects reported accounts and McNally’s recollection; it should not be read as an independent adjudication of every disputed detail. The more personal point is clear: McNally looks back at an act of public criticism and asks what it did to the person on the receiving end.
Rank #4
Kindness as a measure of success
McNally’s restaurants are often discussed in terms of their look and atmosphere, but his remarks to CBS place another value alongside those qualities: how people are treated. He says he prefers putting staff before diners and concludes, “In the end, kindness is really essential.” The memoir’s self-questioning gives that statement weight: kindness is not merely a service ideal but a standard against which he is willing to judge his own choices.
Quick Recap
Best Value
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
