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Famed restaurateur Keith McNally once observed. Like plays and films, restaurants work best when they create their own universe. Today, the man behind some of Manhattan's most celebrated eateries is on our menu and in conversation with Mo Raka. Do you really hate New Year's Eve? Yes.
Yeah. Why? Because um don't like to be forced to enjoy myself.
So you don't like being told to have a good time? No, no, not no not at all. And you're not a big smiler either. Um inside. I want to ask about your speech.
I know aphasia is a broad term. Is it that you have trouble finding the right word or or producing the word? I can sing over the the word as quickly as I did before, but Getting hold of that word and bringing it up to my down heart. Got it.
So you know the word that you want coming out of your mouth. That has to be frustrating. Slightly. Slightly. Yeah, yeah.
Aside from the speech, before the stroke, you were right-handed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I read the book left, one more hand. I have to teach myself type with one hand, but I often think that there's a prize. For the left hand uh book.
With written written with one hand, I'm sure, to be short-listed. You're going to be shortlisted for the prize for authors who wrote books with their left hand. Yeah, yes, well, I think so. I think I'm a shoe-way in there. How long did it take to write it?
Six years. Every day from five to ten hours. Every every day, including Christmas and New Year's. No days off. Yeah, but I loved it.
Your book is a bestseller. You don't need to go on TV. and talk. You're doing fine.
So why why are we here? Because uh naturally I'm a bit embarrassed to be on T V talking like this. Who wouldn't who wouldn't be? It's good for me to uh do it because it gets me free of my m em embarrassment. I'm actually I'm embarrassed talking to Baba marshmapper.
Let me just offer this. Could it be a way of getting over it? Yeah, yeah, me, meh, for sure. I mean, are you drawn to sort of something that you're afraid of? Yeah, meh, yeah, yeah.
First I ran away and then I came back. I have to say you didn't cancel on us, you didn't postpone. I know you've done that with print reporters. It's a kind of thing. Nothing gives me more happiness than cancellations.
When things that you're scheduled to do, if you're going to go to a dinner party and then it ends up getting canceled. Yeah, I love it. I'm sorry, but I'm lucky to have been invited, but the day for fun is like a phobia. Don't want to go. And so that's my thing.
Well, you've described yourself as the least hospitable person in the hospitality business. Yes, maybe the second least. Oh, the second? Maybe I'm not joking.
Okay. Let me ask you, what was the hardest part of the book for you to write? The hardest thing was my suicide because my kids, I remember didn't want to leave them at all. And your boy, your younger boy, George, is the one who found you. Yeah.
He was uh supposed to not find me. I've planned it to he usually on the holiday it was fifteen and then like most Indian teenagers he wouldn't w sleep at um noon. But that day he wake up early and uh eight o'clock. You expected him to be sleeping later. He woke up early.
He saw you. The other bastard just said, I saved my life. Yeah, yeah. When you look back on that attempt, Do you think you really did want to end your work? Yes, of course, of course.
Not because I didn't want to do this interview, I was happy with this, but I was so down at the time because of my speech, my rigs were breaking up, and I realized I can no longer do the things that I did with my young kids. Again, like cycling on pain football, and even reading. My back was also hurting me a lot, and depressed. And I know. a couple of years earlier after the stroke initially.
And they were obviously younger. Your two youngest, George and Alice, and you saw them. What was that meeting like? In the hospital, yeah. Not good.
I've d I've cancelled it first this year on the meeting but because I didn't want that my kids and I mean young kids to see me in in such a uh um dependent state. But then it was much worse. Um I went um I didn't uh I could barely talk and uh I was really embarrassed and uh I felt sad, um uh desperately sad. Just have them see me in the hospital to work like this. Uh But that's that's when I tried, uh cried for the first time uh over.
When they saw you. After they left. After they left. After you tried to take your life. you read about the effect Of the kids or the kids the uh parents kids who killed themselves, the kids have a much higher percentage chance of killing themselves.
Uh that that's a fact, that's why I would never do it again. And I want to repeat that. The children of parents who take their lives have a much higher likelihood of taking their own lives. Yes. That's true.
You didn't come to New York to open a restaurant. I came to make films. To make movies. And you ended up making two of them. Yeah, yeah.
Is opening a restaurant kind of like opening a show?
Some ways, yes, but I suppose the enjoyment of the last three weeks of the rehearsal and the three weeks leaving enough, so the restaurant opening is similar. I think that the best time in the restaurant is actually before it opens, when you're on the verge of something great. I think that there are two types of restaurateurs. One is closest to people customers, the other one is closest to the restaurant itself.
So yeah, one kind of restaurant owner is closer to the restaurant staff and the other is closer to the diners. But I tend to more myself.
Well, you identify more with the staff. And you think that that's, obviously you think that's a better approach. Yeah, but myself know this. Many have stayed years and years. Your staff, it is true.
You have people that have been with you. For decades. I mean, many up to 40 years. One man's been working there for 500 years. For how many?
400 a year. Methuselah, the dishwasher washer. He's amazing. An amazing man. No, the guy who bought the bunch of houses.
Yeah, but 44 years. 44 years. Came to the Odin in 1981. The first year the Odion opened, I mean, what? Harold Pinter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the cast of Saturn Live.
I mean, all of these sort of Andy Warhol came. Anna Winter, Lommer. Your friend Anna Wintur.
So that must have done something to your ego. Um Yes, but not much because every night I would talk not about the very famous people. It wasn't about Andy Warwick and not chevy enough. All I thought about each night what what went wrong. You have certain rules.
You don't say my special, you say our. Um when there's people sit two uh women next to two women, I don't like it. But because but um I don't know, but um I feel the same sex should be not next to the same sex. And then when when uh AC is too fierce, uh like it is on uh on most restaurants in the summertime, music's too loud or not loud enough, the wrong playlist of the envelope, the way some will um g herself dirty strong, the food too.
So this waiter what? It's uh uh unclean uh crime the French fries and uh to whoever we cooked uh many things. People say you're so lucky to be able to eat every night at no it's work for me. Um um I'm the lucky, of course I'm lucky, but I don't enjoy in the night especially. You can't go to certainly one of your own restaurants and just enjoy it.
No. Why is it important to have a hamburger on the menu? I don't like hamburgers much myself. But to me, it's a sign of snobbery not to have hamburgers. It's a sign of snobbery to not offer a hamburger.
The house you grew up in, you were embarrassed. No, but no, it wasn't a house, it was called a prefab in London. I wasn't embarrassed growing enough. But when I got to 16, I entered the world of the theatre, and suddenly I met All these fancy, challenging people whose houses I would love them. I would go back to my small free private and get angry inside.
Why have we got this life? But it didn't last long. But I got angry inside my parents because we had no books in the house, no pictures on the walls. But they couldn't help it. They weren't working class, they grew up with nothing.
You know, you wrote that the saddest sight to you is two people, a married couple, sitting at dinner and not talking. And you explained. That was about your parents. That they endured a 50-year grim and joyless marriage. And and how much of that do you think motivates what you do?
Who knows about I s I I suppose everybody is motivated by something they They don't know him. I suppose that's true because when I was writing the book, they came to me, I was desperately unhappy. Parents, especially my mother, because they're quite different than my father, but there was a dog worker. My father was an illiterate dock worker, Steve Adore. Yeah, lovely man, loved sports, but he didn't.
and know anything about books at all. My mother hated books, sports, and read a lot. She learned Spanish 45 or something, right?
So 40 years. Then started to learn German. She read her blog about German history. They were quite different. But my mother was more intended and had the ideas.
But she was really difficult. We were very unhappy. They didn't reach their potential. Reading about your mother, I can see how frustrating it was to be a smart woman, to be self-taught. She obviously wanted something but was limited by circumstance.
But she was a cleaner, a house cleaner, office cleaner, but she really read it a lot. There were few books in the house because she couldn't afford to buy them. She borrowed them from the library. That's why libraries are so great. Without the library, she wouldn't have learned.
She couldn't have had books at all without a library. And she's married to your father, who seems like a very genial, charming guy who comes and works in your restaurant. He seems like a great guy. But for her, it's really frustrating. And so when you see a couple not communicating.
Uh uh uh the them and water over the stem. And even now, does that pain you when you see that? But also, when I stream that's a couple outside the restroom, looking the prices that reminds me my personal parents too because I didn't go into a restaurant until I was well not a proper restaurant until I was 17. But most of the time we went on a holiday, we would go to the restaurant, they would look at the price of it and stand around for five minutes, then just go not for us. Do you remember the first time you went into a restaurant?
Yeah. I was in a play in London, 40 years old, written by Anna Bede, and he would take a group after dinner every week. And it made me more nervous than being at the play because I didn't know how to eat properly. I didn't know which course was coming. I didn't know which 40 years of which knife.
It was a nightmare. And you described the terror of eating cantaloupe in a restaurant. For the first time. For the first time. Because what was it that you didn't know?
Did you try to eat the rind? Yeah, yeah. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview. After this break. Hi, I'm Kristen Bell.
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You gotta put that in the paper back. Because that's a great detail. One of the ways that you've said the stroke has changed you is it's made you Outspoken on the outside. What do you mean? Because the first year I was so embarrassed by my speech and the way I looked, I didn't go to Most restaurants won with you for one year and eventually I thought It's a embrace it's nothing but I was a shame, but Eventually, I realised nothing to be ashamed about.
So not only did I admit it wasn't a bad thing, but I went in on Instagram.
So Instagram is something you did after the stroke? Yeah, how did you choose the word? Technophobe. I didn't know the difference between Twitter and Instagram. Right, so you were you said you were a technophobe.
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about Instagram, Keith. I mean, it's not a different person. Would you say it's even A clear reflection of who you are or what? Not really, but because I'm not as bold as the person writing their Instagram.
You're not as bold. In real life, as you are on Instagram.
Okay, you wrote this post describing this torrid affair you had with ABC's Diane Sawyer after seeing this play in London in 1972, and it turned out to be totally new. Bullshit. I love to dine in Sawyer, even with friends. The night I wrote the post, I had to actually had to dinner with her. You had dinner with her that night.
And I said, Let's have a photo. And she agreed. I know she enjoys more than one things. The post. You know that she enjoyed that post.
You know that she was amused by that. Yeah. So, did you only do it because you thought she would write? But let me ask, I don't I'm not a prude, but is this a little bit of an acting out, you know, doing something like that? No, no, but not really.
She's conventional inside Diana seems to me more rebellious. She's more rebellious, okay. And so, but people got upset at you.
Some people believed it. Most people believe it. Yeah, well, right.
Some people say, listen, Keith, you know, it's really not cool for you to be sharing this. And so, did you enjoy that back in the day? I'm crazy about it. And I wonder, do you think that the that the stroke I don't know. What do you think?
Well, is it that you feel a little trapped inside of yourself? No, not really. No. I've always been a little inside, but the same thing I throw now on the outside.
Okay. All right. But then, what about calling Lauren Sanchez, who is, by the time this heirs, will probably be married to Jeff Bezos, calling her revolting-looking. Maybe I shouldn't have been writing her, but the thing is, she had so much work done. Obviously, work about her.
Imagine you're a young teenager girl, seeing her. She's supposed to have been rich and famous, fashionable. It's somehow not quite right to flaunt everything that they're. She's not a bad person. I don't know.
I've found her funny. Not intentionally. Why are you even weighing in on that? Because you're a father of five, you're a successful, high-profile restaurant owner, you're a public person. Why are you weighing in on this?
Because people did juke change, juke change. Oh, come on. No, it's true. Do you need to weigh in on Lauren Sanchez's looks? Anybody's fair game.
I mean, maybe found myself alone. But maybe I did go with them a little farther. Maybe I actually apologize. The James Cordon affair, he had an incident. with your staff.
at Balthasar.
Okay? And then you went on Instagram, and you called him a tiny Cretan of a man. He's a great actor. Bob. A tiny cretin of a man.
Okay. You generated lots of attention, you got tens of thousands of new followers. And you now say that it left you intoxicated with power. and a little contrite, but afterwards everybody bad about it. 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 Cordon to.
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. It's true. But afterwards, it felt really badly.
You have great taste. How did that happen? I don't know. I don't know. How do you think you developed your eye?
Because your restaurants, listen, it's not, you've had all these successful restaurants. It's not. It's not a chain where they all look the same. I mean, each one. is so distinctive.
So where do you think that came from? I don't know, but in some ways it uh is a curse because uh I'm I'm so frustrated by things. And that there's they must look right. To me, being Perfect means an impulse. You don't want it to be in the cutter or.
I hate the perfection, but I hate also in time theoretic designers. I hate them. The lighting, you learned in the theater. Yeah, yeah. I was unconscious of learning, but I obviously learned a lot because I was working the lights of the Rocky Horror show.
The original Rocky Horror show, a stage production in London, the original original. What was that like? It was okay, but looking back. It seems the flip-flops, but at that time it's a job it's just a job. But you were learning on bananas TV.
Which is the best of ways to learn anything. Right, right. What did you learn about lighting? Shadows and where lights look good and where it doesn't look good. Many small lights around the room.
I don't know on those walls like sconces or lampshades on tables. There are many different lights, low level lights, but it's great in your houses too. People look better. But that's not the reason I do it, but but the place looks better. Not so much I don't care about the people, the place.
The place so that when you walk in, you want to be there. You say you have special sympathy for the people standing but near the host stand who don't know what to do. But uh I'm run into my matrix. Um the cocky New Yorker is going to get a table with no mudworm. The but the shy, insimulated person Even having no voice is a one that you much reach out to.
That's that's true. I'm not being modest.
Okay, but I had to push back a little bit because your restaurants. Many of them became very hot it spots, right? Yeah. I don't know enough.
Okay, but. Did they remain welcoming to people who weren't glamorous? Yeah, but never give rings to famous people. And when it never gets a free drink, Anna went to her who's a good friend of yours early on before you succeeded. She doesn't get a free drink.
No. But hold on, you do give a number to some people.
Okay, who are those people who did, you know, I'm not one of them. But never gave the number to anybody called Mo. We gave them a number soon. Um people seem to like the place. Um it doesn't matter the age or the sex of a famous breach of money.
The people have a number and um look at that they enjoy this place. But that doesn't mean Uh other people um can't get in. Uh we always take Wilkins. Ugh, it must be hell firing someone. I love it.
No, no, no, no, I hate it. I hate it. What's the key? To be honest, don't ever say I must let you go. Always say you would be infired.
Are you serious? Yeah, but I often rehire people. I believe a big believer on in second chances.
Okay. Because everybody screws up. Everybody, every time. I've often fired people one day and I am in back or her back two days later. But often they've turned out to be great employees.
So give second chances where you can, but don't sugarcoat the firing. No, no, no, no. Never say, I'm going to let you go, or you're fired. The first time post-stroke Seeing colleagues, seeing staff. Which restaurant was that?
Balthazar. It was at Balthazar. Because I'm really close to my staff there.
So you're really close to the staff there. When was that? Was that? 2019. Yes, 2019.
One of the effects of the stroke that I thought was pretty profound is your appreciation. for reputation. Yeah, yeah. Well, what did you mean by that? The first restaurant I built after my sport was Pastis.
Um I was scared because um I had to s to talk to myself. And they were really nervous, and they were really, really kind. In the end, Kindness is very essential. lifted the veil on what They thought of you. I'm Jane Pauley.
Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts. Mama, papa, my corporate a grinu la mante. Ya ropa que me comprena, me que dora muy pe queña, very pronto.
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