I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally (Gallery Books) has won the $50,000 Gotham Book Prize, which honors the best fiction or nonfiction book that is about New York City or takes place in New York City. The award was created in 2020 by Bradley Tusk, owner of P&T Knitwear, the independent bookstore, and Howard Wolfson, who works for Bloomberg Philanthropies.
McNally is the restaurateur who founded Balthazar Restaurant, Balthazar Bakery, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, Pravda, Schiller's Liquor Bar, Morandi, Cherche Midi, Lucky Strike, Nell's, Café Luxembourg, and the Odeon. McNally is the co-author of The Balthazar Cookbook and Schiller's Liquor Bar Cocktail Collection, and the writer and director of two features, End of the Night and Far from Berlin.
In I Regret Almost Everything, McNally tells the story of his life, from his working-class roots in London to his status as one of New York City's leading restaurateurs. Along the way, McNally details his angst of being a child actor, his early restaurant days as a busboy, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his 1980s rise to fame with the Odeon and Nell's, his time spent writing and directing two films, his devastating stroke in 2016 and his recent Instagram notoriety. Eloquent, opinionated, and often humorous, the memoir includes stories of his friendships with New York personalities like Anna Wintour, Lorne Michaels, and others.
Tusk and Wolfson called I Regret Almost Everything "the epitome of what makes New York City so unique. It is an immigrant story. It is a cultural history. And like our city, it is a testament to resilience. McNally has long been recognized for his culinary achievements, and now having written a memoir that so masterfully captures life in New York, we are honored to award his literary achievements too with this year's Gotham Book Prize."