Celebrity Book Club.

Hey club kids, did you miss us?

We're handing out a free app this week.

It's part one of our epic two parter on Downtown Restaurant or Keith McNally.

If you want part two, honey, you're gonna have to head over to patreon dot com slash CBC the pod that's dropping next week, But for now, this one's on us.

Love you.

Who's that knocking at the door.

It's all your friends, you filthy whrse.

Your husband's gone and we've got books and a bottle of wine to kill.

It's Hollywood, it's books, It's gossip.

I'm shook.

Its memoirs Martini, Celebrity poof Club.

Come read it while it's hot.

Celebrity poof Club.

I'll tell your secrets.

We won't talk celebrity books.

No, boys are a loud celebrity boo.

Say it loud and pound.

Celebrity Book Club.

Buzz me in.

I brought the queer foe.

Hey, best friends friend?

How the hell are you?

Hey, best friend?

It's so it's so good to say it.

Yes, yes, because we don't get to say it as much now, But it's still true.

Mama, right and you have to make sure you're like is it true.

Yes, yes, check in, check in with your bestie's out there ladies, and make sure you guys are still each other's number one, because sometimes those rankings can shift.

No, they can totally fall, and in life sometimes things do fallt yes, and we all go through phases with wives and children.

And friends and friends and restaurants.

And lovers that become friends.

And then wives that become business partners.

Exactly and close confidence.

So yeah, I think you'll be able to tell by the fact that you're listening to this episode on a Wednesday and that we said, hey, best friend.

We're doing a book.

We're doing a book.

Isn't it good to be back in the old library.

A book that literally comes out and say it with me today or yesterday's this week?

No, no, it comes out yesterday.

Okay, wow, you listening to this it comes out yesterday.

So be impressed by the fact that we railed this in twenty four hours.

Oh wait, no, we got the arc ma man.

Oh yes, I'm talking about that galley bitch with big confidential letters across the page.

It's like a slight gray diagonal letter that' says confidential for review purposes only on every I will admit, well, I am not ashamed to admit that when I was reading this on the subway, I definitely was just like just taking it out a little bit more solely, just in case anyone was curious as to the cover.

Be like, yeah, that's right, this book that comes out next month.

I'm reading it.

Yeah, you're like holding it so hard, hold like a completely yeah holding galley.

Yeah, impressed, And then like letting people see the confidential review purposes only.

Yeah, that's right.

If your eyes wander over to my lap, yeah, keep your eyes off my crotch, asshole, I'm reading a galley.

I wonder if anyone at Call Lord today when I was reading it in the waiting room, was like so fucking.

Impressed, so fucking horny.

Yeah, it was just like, WHOA is that an arc?

Yeah?

Maybe they would have been impressed if it was like Ocean Wong's new book or something, or like the sequel to a Little Life or something something in the queer lit canon in which this book is not, I.

Would put this in the cannon.

Wait, I guess, I guess one is, but like by accident in this way that's so like not gay that I really love.

But right, it's so not gay that it is gay, but it's also.

Like way gayer and more honest than like any other ship book.

Okay, who are we talking about?

Let's say it.

You know him as the restauranteur who invented downtown Acquardant to New York Times, he is the owner of Baltasar.

It's so funny that you say Baltussar and not balt Bazar.

Can we unpack?

You know?

I was watching this interview of him when he's talking about opening up the London version, which we'll get into this episode, and I realized he's saying Baltzar, and then I.

Will whoa, Now you just really clipped it.

You just made that two syllables.

You just said Baltzar.

Well that's what he was kind of saying in this interview.

He was like Boltsar, Yeah, balts Are.

He was like, well, I hope to make the London bolts Are, you know, like the New York But you know, expectations.

It's like when you know a woman hears it you're good.

In bed and and and then you sleep with her and you're not good in bed.

Baltzar.

I mean that's a really clipped well of course English working class bethnal Green, like you know those clipped vowels, right Boltza.

So okay, so how do you say it?

I say both bizarre?

Oh, both are.

Both bizarre, you know the soft the soft.

And I'm giving it kind of a baltazar.

Most times that I've heard it spoken in my circles as a member of the downtown New York literati, I hear people saying both.

Thesar, bothre.

Bazaar, come over here, both tazar, come over here.

No, I want my next group of fish.

I want to name pestis bald bizarre shillers, Kathy Luxemburgva.

Is a really good name for fish.

School.

Okay, who are we talking about if you don't know already.

None other than Keith McNally and.

His spanking fresh from the Kitchen.

Book I regret almost everything.

And here he has on the cover and I wool having bone overcoat, sort of gazing somewhere in the distance.

Looks like he's on a sidewalk in New York City, maybe just thinking about his life.

Black and white photo.

It was probably in four days in this shot.

Eye.

Yeah, he has this kind of cool spiky hair in it.

That kind of name feels very fifties.

Yes, but the photo is probably from the early two thousands.

Maybe I just have to say I ate this book up.

Honey doored it.

It was fucking eight course meal devoured.

Obviously, this is like actual like catnip for us.

Yeah, I mean, it's restaurants, it's drama, it's celebrities, it's.

Martini's Sick, it's Martini's, it's fall Gral, it's Patti Smith.

And he's a great writer, and I mean he really you know, Tina Brown was talking about this on her substock, you know that one humiliation that everyone now is suffered.

So crazy that Tina Brown has a substock.

It's just like, wow, we really all just got to be out there begging for cash digitally panhandling.

And she said she was like, reading this book, I realized I should have hired him as a writer at Vanity Fair.

I mean, he just has he has voice, he has a gift for voice.

And you know, the structure of the book is quite compelling.

So it begins with his attempted suicide after his stroke.

So it's kind of these these tragedies one after another where he's it's like bam, And a lot of us didn't.

Even know that he had an attempt at suicide.

No, in my community, in your community of Keith watchers, No, I didn't know about the suicide either.

And I you know, obviously by the stroke, because if you follow him on Instagram, he's a voracious Instagram poster, partly because he had a stroke that took away his faculties with speech and he kind of speaks in his more slurred way now, and so Instagram lets him express himself much more easily.

And I feel like that was also why many of us out there were so excited for this book, because we all got this taste of you know, and he writes these long, detailed posts and kind of these these humorous but sad and you know lately, you know, in some of the gossip, you know, he's a famous.

Poster in this book, but you know, but a lot of it's posting.

He's always posting about his restaurants, and like with this very kind of romantic, cantankerous misanthrope like viewer is just like, oh and you know, another terrible night at both this are We did six hundred covers and so he's you know, there's a transparency.

He's like pulling the curtain back and telling you about like all the money they made.

Be He's always like has this kind of like faux disdain for like you know, powered and celebrity and wealth and like you love to like take people down a peg, even though obviously he's like completely enamored with celebrities and also like creating a space that is like a place to go spend your money and wants people to be rich and glamorous.

Like right, it's like his whole kind of I would say, like style of restaurant is for a celebrity to go to in jeans.

Yes, he's so, which I think comes from his generation because he is like maybe like a younger boomer.

So it like comes out of this like, oh, well, the French restaurants of New York of the sixties where you know, you had to put on a tie and and jacket and there weren't really these big French of bistros where you could wear a leather jacket and jeans and have steak free.

You know what's funny about him?

So I thank you for me them about because I feel like you know, like somewhat early in the book, he does he imagines himself as like reinventing the wheel and restaurants, and literally every restaurant thinks that they've reinvented the wheel, and he thinks he's the first person to be like French cuisine was so stuffy and uptown and menus had the longest titles of dishes on them and way too many dishes on them.

And I said, what if we made a brasserie that was a little more accessible, okay, or you could just go get a good steak frets in the neighborhood and a glass of champagne.

It's like, that's literally what every restaurant or has ever thought ever.

They're like, what if the food is really good but it's actually like kind of casual, kind of casual and more down to earth like even to this day, like every new like small Plates rethinks that they're doing the same thing of being like, you know, we saw every other place was supertentious, and we were like, how about we just do some like seven things really good good And what if.

Sorry, what if this what if it was just fucking bankots a zinc bar right now Vintage mirrors from Burgundy from seventeen ninety.

And then we wrote them menu on the mirrors.

What about that?

What about that?

But what's not to really jump ahead here, But while we're on the subject of kind of RESTAURANTSS being rocketed to head.

The two chefs he hired for both the czar who you know, became partners, you know, ended up becoming partners.

In Minetta and then Pastisee.

They opened up, Vodoor, they opened.

Up and French Chatte, where we had a lovely meal at Lily by the way, let's just say.

Let's just say we had a lovely meal there after leaving Odeon.

Oh my god, his former restaurant with his former ex wife Lynn Weggencock or wow.

No, I mean it's impossible to escape as New York if you live here and you're in the know, as of course we are.

This is but I guess sorry, just to thread my point is that those two restaurants are trying to bring back a little little bit of the stuffiness.

His ex chefs are trying to bring back a little bit of the stuff in Malagy.

Yes, in their newer French restaurants.

Yes, Vodor is spelling against but it's also.

Like, I mean, I haven't been to Vodor, you know, because I might as well.

I'm the biggest loser on earth, and like you should run me over with an NYC garbage truck.

But like I have been to the Rock, which is also theirs, and like rock is I'll say this, it's fine for like a pre dinner, the pre theater meal.

I'm not like rushing to go back.

It's like really expensive and like I don't think it's so worth it.

It's exactly what my his mom said, Well ARPI okay, but.

Like they're also thinking that they're reinventing the wheel by going fancy again, you know what I mean.

They're like, what if we were fancy?

Do you remember the days of the nineteen sixties when men with them jackets?

Okay, so, but Balthazar, as you were describing, has like a zinc bar.

It's like a French brasserie.

It's like the concept is like, it's not it is not reinventing a single wheel.

When he talks about the when this attorney goes The idea for Balta came about while I was living in Paris, seven years before I built the place.

Although it's hard for me to come up with good ideas.

A few decent ones I've ever had come about by pure accident.

I was searching for vintage curtains at a Paris flea market in nineteen ninety when I suddenly spotted an old CPIA photo of a turn of the century bar.

Behind the bar zinc counter one hundreds of liquor bottles stack twenty feet high, flanked by two towering statues of semi naked women carved in the classical Greek style.

It's like, sorry, you saw a photo of a bar with liquor bottles behind it, and it gave me the idea for her restaurant.

All of his inspiration is a photo of a naked woman's isn't thin?

Yeah?

The way?

Yes, she went, how do I say this bottle cheli esk?

But he was like, I don't know.

It wasn't one of those models.

She had curves and she was leaning.

I literally drank every time he says zinc in this book.

But it's like and bottles stashed.

I guess what he's time as he's not time about just two shelves.

He's talking about balls to the wall.

Liquor.

Yeah, I'm still just like and he's it, and it's like a photo of a bar, isn't an idea for a bar?

That just is a photo of a bar, And then you're just doing a concept that exists already, which is just like French brasserie like but mirrors.

Like I'm also like always seeing a photo of a vintage bar, being like, wait, I have an idea.

Bar, but it's old.

The concept is bar.

And then in this trip, so he gets like when he creates a restaurant, he admits very wildly, like it it takes a lot of money, honey.

Yeah, he's always running out, it's always going in a debt.

And because so he goes to France and he finds these vintage luggage racks and like French luggage racks to put on like the ceiling of baltasar and he buys them in like greater and then he comes back and the guy has like shined them and polished them so they don't look vintage anymore.

And he's like, I've never been more.

Upsetting, absolutely furious.

It was heartbreaking.

And then at Kathy Luxembourg, he like he was like, wait, what if we have the idea to do like the postcard with a check that's like a funky postcard of the restaurant.

And then he's like, let's do a photo shoot with Zoftig women like right the bar.

But then they accidentally hired these fucking Vogue models, right, So.

He calls like a model agency, right, and they said, have these Vogue models and he's like, absolutely not what I want.

So he's like, no, I want like curvy, big Luxembourgian curls.

And he was like and it was perfect.

I was wondering about the postcard thing, where I was like, people were probably doing it, but that was another thing where he was like, would it be so crazy if we gave people a post card?

Yeah.

I feel like he's probably lying about coming up with that idea because obviously lots of restaurants do that, and you know, it does add to the experience.

It's like another point of branding that I think, you know, helps sell the overall narrative of the restaurant and you know, leaves the consumer with like just like a little bit of a closer relationship to the brand.

But I can't imagine that he came up with that idea.

It's like, obviously other people.

Were doing that, right, but yeah, just to take it back a little now, like to the seventies.

So the big reveal in this book is in his early twenties he had a homosex wood relationship.

Yes, play right.

Alan Bennett, the famous.

Celebrated British playwright Alan Bennett, author of the Madness of King George, is part of.

The Beyond the Fringe group now.

And he was just a working class boy, you know, from bethnal Green and but he wanted to be he wanted to be a filmmaker.

You want to be sund by the intellect.

And he started hanging out with Alan Bennett and he was like, it's so cool the way you talk about art and culture and plays.

And I feel like he was like just experiencing like gay guy criticism.

So he says he was seventeen when they met, or no, he says he was like eighteen when the relationship started.

But I kind of think maybe he's lying about that just to protect on.

I think he was seventeen.

It's groom central.

But you know what I'm you know, I feel like he's really like grateful to have been groomed.

And I feel like he's like I learned like so much from this guy who I got to be around him and his playwright friends, and it was like it was such an education.

He says.

I've had two homosexual relationships in my life.

The first was with an actor when I was sixteen.

The second and more serious one was with the English play right Alan Bennett.

So and they're doing that.

I left his like so like and like after the plays they would have right Sorry.

Supper was always simple, a light salad and a chunk of pete or cold chicken that Alan and.

Had roasted before the theater.

During the meal, we talk about that night's play, but to avoid getting serious too quickly, Alan would preface his thoughts on the play by gossiping about the actors.

He was quite funny about short actors, with Edward fox Off in his main target.

That's something so seventies and also British of it, calling something just like, oh, just a chunk of pettis.

Chunk of pette.

It's giving cat food, you.

Know, it's very gay cat food.

So six weeks after our theater go and routine began, Alan drove me to see a small Anglican church in the countryside.

On our return we stopped the car arrestop to eat sandwiches and drink tea from a flask.

It was a dreary day, and Alan seemed unusually melancholy.

It was then that I sensed he was in love with me.

Not long after that, I stayed the night at his house.

Sleeping with Alan felt like a natural progression of our friendship.

It was uncomplicated.

I never once felt guilty about it.

After that first night, I'd say two or three times a week and I'm just like, okay, so sorry, Na Pride, what were you all doing?

You know?

I was almost up.

Because I was like, Okay, he's you know, he's very upfront, but he's also like he talks about sex a lot, but.

Like, can you talk about the positions?

Yeah?

Is twenty five?

Who's topping?

Yeah?

Like was there?

Boy butter involved?

Was there?

Chunk Pete and.

Chunks was so twink?

It's Twink Top elder gay Bottom.

It has to be, Yeah, because I don't really see Keith Bottom and such a young age and experimenting bottoming.

I think it would be a lot more comfortable for him to be this kind of well sprightly young Okay, But I could also see this very just kind of like frottage and.

Blow a lot of oral to start out with.

It was side central over there.

Yeah, I think it was a side.

It's side Eaton's green, lad.

I don't.

I don't know because also though, because there's something about this reallyationship is very very ancient Greece like that, because you have this older man who's like this the tutor, and then the younger man who was eager to learn in his feet, and those relationships the classic, you know, pederasty relationships.

The older man was always the top, the younger man was always the bottom, and that was like why it was acceptable socially.

So I do wonder if some of that played out as well, and Alan was like I'm the teacher here, you're the student, and it only makes sense for me to penetrate it.

I think penetration absolutely happened.

I'm just kind of I was more thinking about the early The early hooking up was probably like pretty.

Oral and then like maybe you think that they're like not having full sacks their first name.

Yeah, it was they were pet They were petting for three weeks.

It was a petting for three weeks, and then it was so like, I kind of feel like anal happened after the Dreary Tea from the flask.

Well, yeah, I mean, but that's he said was the first time they slept to go Oh, the dreary tea was when he realized he was in love with them, and then they slept together in the night.

So that would be the that would be the first time.

That wouldn't be weeks of petting.

Hmmm.

Well, I guess we'll never know.

I know, I just I want to Yeah, I guess I want to have it for a few weeks.

I want to have an opinion on the top bottom though.

I want to come down on a side here.

And I think it is classic, but now I'm just like, don't you think old?

So it was like a young British boy maybe like he was excited by the fact that he could like fuck your guy in the ass and was like, let me try.

I feel like that's such a modern like idea.

Well no, not really.

Well okay, here's like here's what I also think.

Like, I think it's.

Actually when you're younger, is when you are more verse before you're.

Like right, you're clay ready to be molded.

I also think though that we if we assume that he would be the top, because he like ends up being a straight guy, so we're like, well, hole, it's a hole, so he can fox.

He can do that job.

However, something I learned on the Tyra Banks Show once many years ago was that a lot of the gay for pay, like porn stars, are often bottoms because you don't need to be hard to bottom.

And so if he's not actually as gay as Alan Bennett, the whole sexual act isn't relying on his erection.

If he's going to be the bottom, what.

About this cut to the whole pod just being about this?

When so he goes on this huge hitchhiking trip very like seventies, literally goes like Catman do.

Yeah, hitchhikes the Catman do from London.

It's iconic.

You can never do this today, It's like.

Literally never do it.

He's always been like, oh, the Afghans are so such good hosts.

And he falls in love with like so many girls in bookstores who like sell maps.

Yeah.

And when he comes back, Alan is a little bit like, so I'll be starting up again, yeah, And he realizes, like, you know, after falling in love with so many map girls.

He's like, I don't really want to, but he also, like I think, really appreciates and loves Alan as a friend, so he feels bad totally ending the physical relationship.

Yeah, so I could see him coming back and bottoming.

Oh you think he was like almost like guilt guilt bottoming.

Yeah, in the when he returns from the big hit.

So he was topping before Catman do guilt bottoming after, Okay, and that it's ultimately going to be the truth that we're gonna have to say.

Right, that's where we've kind of sided on and feel free to get in the comments after reading this.

But it's beautiful because they stay literally like bestie is throughout his whole life and actually, of course in restaurants, right Lynn, his first wife becomes even better friends yeah.

With Alan, and they're all just being like, oh God, of course we're all former lovers.

But we'll have to say business partners forever, kind of like.

You and me, right, sorry, we have to stay business.

We have to open up a restaurant.

This road trip which is like so iconic and like there's this thing where you can send a letter to any city in the world.

How cool is that?

And you just go to the post.

You just go to the post.

Yeah, and it just like has a name on it, just like a person's name.

You just send a letter to Keith McNally in timbucktoo, and then you go to timbuckto and you're like, oh, here's my letter.

I actually acted like that exists in the world today.

If I made tangent for one second, I was acting like Keith.

I ordered a T shirt off of T Pop and I it said it was delivered, but I couldn't find it.

And then I saw I had in my dpop a wrong address listed.

So I just went to the building.

I was like, is there a package for me here?

Yeah?

No, that's exactly the same thing as mailing a letter to timbuk two.

But I'm just saying as I was being so like, hello, I'm here, my name is Lily.

Where's my package?

And this like old woman was just like get off my lawn.

It was a little like younger woman with like a doll being so sketch by me.

Yeah, just call it the package.

So I love when he's talking about being in Istanbul, like at the pudding shop and like there was so many hippies and drifters, because like there was a lot of like hippies doing the old like like the Silk Right.

Everyone hitchhike to then you do row Darling.

No, the pudding shop sounded so iconic.

It was like yeah, like a cool place for hippies that did serve like Middle Eastern food, but it also was being like they were playing like the New rock and role that he had missed because he was away right on his like hitchhiking, and there was like all these books there that you could.

Like love right and you could like get out like a pamphlet from Fuco.

Like the was like rolling around at the coffee shop.

I was just like if this were today, It's like if you were doing this Silk Road today in the pudding shop, I mean, it would all just be like I mean, first of all, you wouldn't build hitchhig you would have to be like paying for so many like e visas and like down leaving like absolutely awful apps like in every country.

And I'm sure just like Ron has like a really shitty app like it's difficult to us and that I would say that, and then you would just be with like all these content creators like to put.

The phones out at the pudding shop would be crazy, and it would be like the new Boy Genius being played and someone being like, oh my god, you've been on the Silk Road.

You haven't heard any song.

And then are you like the books being left?

Are you like picking up the new like actually like trick Mirror or whatever.

At I'd be like, oh, I'm having I kind of missed this one.

It's like de Transition, baby Mirror.

I'm reading The Guest by Emma Kleine in istan Pool.

Well while I'm like filming my TikTok, just being like sexty countries and a hundred's come with me.

I love.

The Turkish people are so kind.

You have to go to this mom, it's amazing.

Follow me for more chips about jerky.

This is a really dope bookshop.

They had all these really cool books.

They've never heard of Transition.

If you go through this curtain, all of a sudden it's a record shop.

And if you go through another curtain, yeah, it's a vintage clothing store where you can find tons of dead stock.

Carhard and then one more curtain you're in the Ace hotelis stock Pool.

Oh god, you know there's shades of I kind of like this book to me felt a little bit like a mix of Verna Hoozog's book and Anthony Bourdines book, like you have like Anthony Boardines like really misanthropic, like like fuck this system, but man, there's nothing better than this, like in New York City and counting your tips at the end of the night with all the busts.

But it's so, what's so funny about Keith mcdally, would she what?

I like?

He's more kind of self aware than Anthony Boardame, where he's like, I've literally never been a chef.

I I've just been dying to become like a filmmaker, which kind of happened but didn't really Like I'm so and he's like my best memory End of the Night odeon nineteen eighty eight watching all the service counter tips, drink beer and smoke, and man we had some.

Laughs and talk shit about the customers.

That's what I's all about.

Okay, wait, can we talk about the celebrity the unnamed celebrity actress that he sleeps with x X.

Okay, I have some guesses.

I have some guesses.

So he this woman like comes and sleeps with him, and she arrives at his house.

They like talked on the phone like a couple of times.

Then she comes to New York.

She rives in his house with two huge suitcases at one in the morning and she's bringing.

A baseball high and he's discussed.

He goes, nothing puts me off sex more than a woman with a huge suitcase case.

Best line, literally the best line.

And he was like, caps are discussed.

He was already like caps are disgusting and a woman with a suitcase and he was like he was.

She said she was tired, which I thought man code for sex, but he was like, she actually did want to fall asleep, which thank god because with that suitcase, in my vision, I wouldn't be able to get hard.

He hates hats because I feel like half the people at Bulta Thar are so with their little moment the moment yeah, I was literally about to say that with the moment design store, like yeah, I literally want to throw up.

So he says that she's an actress and a television show that teenagers watch, and Night sent him it's nineteen ninety eight tapes.

She sent him tapes of the show for him to watch so.

Here are my guesses.

Shoot, Katie Holmes, Nev Campbell, Party of Five, Michelle Williams Dawson's Creek or then I was like, what if it's Heather Locklear from Monroe's Place teen show?

Okay, because Heather Locklear is so like sexy and badass and like kind of would be with big suitcases.

Maybe, but I could also see Michelle Williams being kind of suitcase.

But I could also see Nev Campbell being so I'm coming in the night.

I think it's a more Nev.

Michelle is like, I don't can she carry two suitcases?

Well?

No, that's why he had to carry them up the stairs.

She was rolling it.

Probably I was imagining it someone from maybe Nino to and oh, I'm just like Shannon Doughty Jenny Garth.

Something's so funny to me about the name Jenny Garth, and like always will be.

Wait, maybe it is Shannon Darty and that's.

Why he hooked up with Derinda.

He likes blonds.

He hooked up with Derinda.

Yeah, they had a quote unquote tour affair for three months in nineteen ninety six.

Wait, he didn't mention that in the book.

No, But it like he that was one of his crazies.

I feel like that's just like him saying something crazy on Instagram that can't be true.

I mean also, they are like the same age.

That does make sense, right, it's not that weird.

She is always like dating a huge like fat guy.

Okay, Jenny Gary Spelling, Jenny Garth, Heatherlocklear, Shannon Doherty, Alyssa Milano, charmed.

Milano is because he's so she At one point she says the thing, She's like, you just tell it like it is, and he's just like, oh, that's like she's too dumb, like also because I don't tell like it is, and I feel like I'm such a faker and like I can't like keep this going.

And he brings I could see a Lissa Milano being like, you really tell it like.

It is, right, Like I love your honesty.

That's her, and he brings her to his son hockey games and staring Jenny Garth.

I just wanted to beat Jenny Garth.

Let's go with Jenny garrandom so random.

She said it kid use like tapes, but by ninety eight might have been over already done.

Yeah, I don't know, and but like all the teens at his kid's hockey game are recognizing her, So it's like, would they be recognizing the Campbell?

I mean they would where they be recognizing how they're Lockley or maybe not, because that was kind of I think is too old, too old, And like melrose Place was also like you had to be an older team to watch it, not a younger team.

Right, So it's like ninety eight.

Dawson's Well, that's why I'm saying, like, was it Katie.

William or Michelle or Katie?

Katie makes a lot of.

Sense, yeah, and like Katie is looking for like an older man to like make her feel safe, safe family.

He also said that they were photographed in the post together at one point, so I'm like, maybe we can just look it up, right.

Dawson's Creek premier in ninety eight.

I don't know.

We're gonna have to do some more deep diving on this.

We'll continue our investigation.

Drop your ideas in the comments about who you think.

But that really riles up Elena and she then is like so fucking pissed at him, but they get back together after that.

He actually has this quote that is so true.

He said a couple always breaks up or usually breaks.

Up when they finally get their dream home.

M yeah, unless you're Ellen and Porsche and Porsias has an ankle monitoring on and she's not pready to leave, and then you can just buy another house and make that your dream house, you know.

Because he meets his first wife Lynn at working at one fifth Ave, which he says also like started what it was.

Like to have a first down and didn't fIF that become auto.

Oh no, yeah auto, but Tali's more where your actual friend worked.

Literally maxin friend worked when we first moved to New York, and she would bring us home like so much family meal Penney.

Yeah, and that I guess opened her world of you know, downtown New York food, and honestly say with us because I feel like then we like got to go to restaurants again.

Some fucked up so kind of did the same thing that did for keeping.

Right, Like the one fifth was our like entry point into like the glamorous world of like restaurants, food and restaurants and artists and publishers and writers going to.

Restaurants over there.

And so at one fifth Ave is where his first bad interaction happens with Maplethorpe and Patty Smith.

Yeah, and he sees her reduce a waitress to tears, yeah for not bringing bread.

Patty Smith is a huge bitch who's shocked.

Who is shocked, And it's like, the funny thing is he also talks about Maplethorpe being still a bitch, but less of a bitch, and he's like, actually, when he had his leather jacket on.

He was more of a bitch.

Oh yeah, wait this It was like this costume that he had on to be this you know, bad boy photographer, and he was like and I saw it off.

Of him once and it was like he was totally different and kind of.

Under He goes, although Maplethorpe with this tough boy leather jacket image could be terseed with the service, he never charged to belittle them the way Smith did.

The only time I saw Maplethorpe without his leather jacket, when the restaurant's air conditioning broke down, he seemed strangely reduced and like a policeman out of uniform, surprisingly ordinary looking.

Maybe it was coincidence, but without the leather jacket, he was also friendly to the staff.

I mean he's just like making up this narrative, but I.

Mean, yeah, I think it's probably very true.

A little bit of truth to that.

It's like, I'm sure the difference between being nice to the staff and like Keith's story and him not being nice is just being like, oh, we have the check and just like I'll take the check, you know what I mean.

It's like a pretty mean I think it's this classic like downtown observation people have where it's like, you know, maybe you see someone in Dime Square and you think they're like so intimidating.

This isn't me, of course, I'm saying.

One, Oh, of course you've never been intimidated by anyone in Dimes Square, which is actually.

I'm always like so intimidated by someone, and then it's just like and then you see them in this other context and you're kind of just like, oh right, you're like actually normal, You're not like the king of Downtown, or maybe you are, but you're not as scary as I thought.

Yeah, I mean I feel like, you know, Keith has this very like he's like intentionally iconoclastic.

I guess it's like he has this view of himself where he's just like I'm such a rakish, I hate everyone.

I'm like an ugly, nasty man.

I'm not having a fucking restaurant tour.

And like it's you know, and it's it is quick to a joke, and you know, I think that's that's beautiful.

But you know because because he has this like working class ship on his shoulder, right, and he's constantly referencing the best not going upbringing, and how like he's never felt at home in these settings and yet is so clearly enamored with this world of a well and it's like and is absolutely bragging about all of his relationships within a winterur and like and also like dropping so many it's like he'll be like he'll reference like you know, we just we just like you know in this Camu novel.

Or no right, it's the classic proof that he has now read and he collects art and he takes Limos to see every year.

Right, and he's like, oh, you know, he's like personally I love the Fovists and like, I mean abstract expressionism not really for me.

And you're like, okay, so like that's not very working class and like he would maybe admit that that's an affectation that he's doing like because he has the chip on his shoulder.

But like, there also is I don't know, as much as like he is honest about it, there is also this just like kind of never ending performance of being just like I actually am really pretentious and I'm pretending that I'm the most salt of the earth person, you know.

Which is he couldn't be who he is.

Yeah, I don't think if he was, you know, salt of the earth, he couldn't create the most like popular restaurant, literally the most popular restaurant in the.

Right because he wouldn't have the taste level.

Right if I made this quote about Anna Wintour when he befriended her at One Fifth f So she came in and order eggs benedict.

That was her order every time, which I think now has changed because I saw a video now.

She why is she so obsessed with always having like one because like her whole thing in like Devil Worre's product has she only gets the steak and mashed potatoes.

Right, which is true, And I've heard actually it's not even a steak, it's just a hamburger with no bun, no bun.

Although I made, so he's making He asked the chef to make her eggs and they're like, fuck off, no, like my services done, so he goes.

Although I made a hash and the eggs benedit, the incident itself had rich consequences.

The young woman was future Vogue and Earn chief Anna Wintour, and despite coming from opposite ends of the English class system, we became friends.

Nothing romantic happened between us, yet we'd often watch movies together in the afternoon, which, outside of the bedroom, is the most intimate thing two people can do at.

That time of day.

I love that line.

He has a lot of amazing, like just really really brilliant observations that he just like drops with such authority.

I like, right.

I love that when he said I'm like many divorced fathers.

I spent most of the time I have with my kids in and around sports, just like you have to have this like activity to do with your driving, picking up, picking up.

Also, the day when Anna Wintour was just watching Taxi Driver at a theeder on Houston with Keith at four pm.

Because because New York City used to have theaters Bay it used to have cinemas, it used to have everything.

I mean, this is why he's such a like figure of our time.

And like you know, we all like he became like very famous, like the Instagram and then like he does talk about his Instagram later on the book and the whole James Corden thing, and like I like that he admits to being so like thirsty for.

Likes, but like he was good.

He's such a retro fetishist and like, you know, there is this real overlap with the whole like you know, downtown New York City, like whether it's dimesquare reactionary or it's just the whole general like trend of all like restaurants and bars and everything being retrotinged.

He is one hundred percent of that moment and like he is like he's still doing that and people are still fucking living for it, and they're still just like I want to red both on a martini.

What a fucking photograph of a nineteen forties boxer framed above that?

Like no, you talk like and I think, I mean we've talked about this a lot, but it was like the thirst for what the McNally universe creative.

Yeah, at the end, like coming out of the pandemic.

That is all people want it because they wanted state.

They wanted you know, vodka and red meat, you know, and the excess and what he's created and leather jackets and red booths and as he says, and.

Thin girls dancing, like let's say.

That because girls dancing within booths and part.

Of his like I'm photographing like women who've had kids or whoever he describes like a woman not being thinn like is because like what he really loves and what like the whole world he's creating it is about like thin girls dancing and it is it's like this more like raventist you know America.

Yeah, like fetishism, which.

We have to if we can now lead into talk about a place I've never been of his.

I think it was closed before my time, Pravda.

I mean the name Pravda alone.

It's like I so sex and the city time to go to Pravda.

This was his like eastern block like themed bar and soho that where he hired like sexy waitresses and it was like so many like canisters flavored vodka.

And I looked at this old Pravda ad it just it brought me back to being a teenager looking at ads.

Yeah, like absolute ads, being like I can't wait to move to New York City.

And it's like women's mouths laughing.

It's a joke, block letters women and heals and well.

When he describes meeting his second wife, Elena, who was half Japanese, although she was born in awais Shoud grew up be to Aska with her mother and three siblings.

And this was at the next time.

I was two weeks later at Pravda, a subterranean vodkabar.

I owned the phrase a subterranean subterranean.

It was raining heavily, the night in the place was packed and steamy.

I was helping they made her DC customers and Elena walked in with some girlfriends.

I took a break and sat down with them.

It's like, it's the most sex in the city scene you could describe.

Sorry, Alena, she's half Japanese and so glamorous, and she's like you can just picture this wearing this like sheath red dress, little she dress, long, straight hair side inside, coming in with all her girlfriends and their keels closed and they're laughing.

And it's like soaking wet outside and Carrie it's like voice over comes in and being like there's only one place to be on a rainy Saturday night, Pravda, the downtown Russian themed.

Vodka he goes.

Just before closing time, the DJ played a Cat Stephens song Moonshadow.

Elina said she loved Cat Stevens because he had such integrity to bring us closer, and said, I agreed, No.

He's such a cat.

But hearing his voice, that's funny, Like he actually does sound kind of this is pretty stroke.

He does sound kind of gay, not just in like a British people are gay way, but it is.

Like, so this brings us back to the guilty bottom the post Catman do a guilty bottom.

And a lot of times he says in this book, which I think is also true maybe of like a middle aged bricking class man rose up in ranks, is he's afraid of hanging out with men as a group straight men.

Yes, yes, he's very fearful of that.

And you know there's this hole there's which was a famous Instagram post of his where there was a group of you know, Wall Street traders who ordered the most expensive bottle of wine, a bolts Us Bolt Boltzar.

Oh yeah, and this isn't the book, Yeah, this is a yeah.

And then a couple who ordered the pino on the menu, and the.

Couple saw the Wall Street guys getting their Chateau Child like three decanted, and they were like, wait, can we have ours decanted?

And so they kind of has a joke, and so they decanted their pino and then somehow the it was it was switched, and so the Wall Street guys get the cheap pino.

And they're swirling it being like the Tannins.

And then the and then the couple is swirling the Chateau muton Roth's Child, not realizing that it's like a three thousand dollars bottle of wine, and they're pretending to be like, oh the tanni.

When actually and then so the you know, the waiter realizes his mistake and calls Keith, and Keith comes down to the restaurant.

Keith is like, I was afraid of even approaching.

The Wall Street traders, Yeah.

Because like I'm afraid of a group of men.

Yeah, and what do I do in this situation?

Do I tell the truth?

And he did he did because he was like, I mean I think he realized like obviously he loved the kind of romance of like letting them believe it.

But I think he's so funny to kind of like play a prank on these things.

If they found out, like they would be so mad and it would be like such a liability.

But I really like this thing where he goes so knowing he's talking about the couple.

So when the actor like, they fixed the mistake, so they then they give the the rich guys like they open another bottle.

So he's kind of out two thousand dollars.

Right, but he's like it's worth it.

And his also his fear was that he didn't want to also embarrass the trader.

Yes, so that they would have to admit.

But then of course they all immediately a like, oh I knew it wasn't a rothschild.

But then he goes talking about the couple.

So the couple just gets to keep drinking the fancy wine that they accidentally open for them, knowing they were drinking expensive wine for real.

They switched from acting out drinking expensive wine in jest to acting out in earnest, which was a pity in ways I couldn't explain, which is.

That such an amazing sentence it's a he's kind of watching like how he has changed.

And yes, yes, yes, exactly, he's watching how he does exactly it.

Right, it's crazy.

It's like he's being like, oh, but the romance of making fun of rich people, it's all gone because now you are literally just being there.

Yes, oh, oh my god.

That is brilliant, doctor Lily.

That that's exactly what it is.

He's he's seeing his own selling out or is it cashing in?

He would say, there's a difference that is there, and that is the end of part one of our Key McNally episode.

Stay tuned for next week when we discuss chillers, Minetta Tavern, the rules of service at Balthasar Class, analysis of salvage workers versus antique store owners.

Keith McNally is an anti woke icon, the deep rift between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and mythologizing the past, which is something we love to do here.

On the thought.

To hear that episode, which will be out next Wednesday, quit to patroon dot com slash tvc the pod where you also get new episodes every Friday.

There's another one this Friday too, so it's a lot of content