In Deep with Keith McNally
New York has a FANTASTIC article out today all about Keith McNally’s (of Odeon, Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, Pravda, etc. fame) rise to success in the New York City restaurant scene. A must, must read. Among the highlights:
- His latest venture, a Roman trattoria named Pulino, is set to open later this spring. He’s a little bitter about the current pizza trend, as he first came up with the idea to open a casual pizza place nearly 5 years ago. Securing the Bowery & Houston location took him 3 years, and it’s his most expensive project to date. He’s released the menus, which you can see here, and here. I’m excited for the breakfast.
- He hates when the Balthazar delivery trucks look dirty, so they must be kept clean at all times.
- Pastis is debuting a revised menu (he doesn’t mess with his menus much)
- He’s got immense insecurity, and it took him many, many years to accept the restaurant industry as something honorable and his true “career.” He’s also dabbled in film direction but has not watched one of his works in 15 years.
- He owes much of his success to what New York calls the “perpetual promotion machine.” That is, the group of celebrities and socialites that have followed him back when he first managed One Fifth, and then left to open the Odeon, and so on. Julian Schnabel, for example, invested in Pravda when it was opening. Schnabel has never invested in anything non-Schnabel.
- He doesn’t have the happy, courteous, everyman reputation that Danny Meyer does. In fact, after Morandi opened to poor reviews, McNally tabulated all of the New York Times’ reviews and submitted an open letter to the Times, arguing that they were sexist (the Morandi chef at the time was female). Frank Bruni said of the letter, “I lost a lot of respect for Keith McNally when he did that. For a restaurateur to brand the critic a sexist or a misogynist seems like a very small-minded, out-of-bounds way to strike back.” Unfortunately, McNally’s not the only restaurateur to ever make that claim towards Bruni, and the Times. He later regretted the incident.
With new investors comes new restaurants, and a push to bring the McNally essence nation-wide. He is hesitant, understandably, of losing the cache` that his restaurants have. And, of course, the “perpetural promotion machine” might be harder to come by. He says he’d rather make goat cheese out on his farm in Martha’s Vineyard. Not only because he thinks he’d enjoy it, but, he likes the idea of farming just as much as the farming itself. Much like his restaurants, by which their popularity is cultivated by a combination of the opinions of a small, powerful group, and just pure discovery, he says, “I know that I enjoy telling people I farm, and I think that’s a bad sign to begin with. Of course, it’s best if people find out that I farm.”
Pic courtesy NYMag.
