Who

McNally is the man behind a collection of perennially fashionable—and perennially mobbed—restaurants including Balthazar, Pastis, Schiller's, and Minetta Tavern.

Backstory

The son of a London taxi driver, McNally moved to NYC in 1975 to pursue a film career. Filmmaking didn't take root, but he managed to make a name for himself on the dining scene soon enough. Starting out as a busboy at Serendipity, McNally later became the maitre d' at a restaurant called One Fifth, a popular hangout for the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live. It was there that he met his (first) wife, Lynn Wagenknecht, and in 1980 McNally, Lynn, and his brother Brian opened the Odeon in Tribeca. An instant hit, it became the hub of all things cool, attracting young writers, artists and celebs like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Byrne, Jay McInerney, and McNally's old pals from SNL.

Over the next few years Lynn and Keith followed up with Café Luxembourg on the Upper West Side, the club Nell's on West 14th Street (now Noel Ashman's Plumm), and Lucky Strike on Grand Street in SoHo. But the empire came undone in 1987 when the couple moved to France with their three kids and ended up divorcing soon after. As part of the settlement, McNally parted with two of the properties. In the years since, he's rebuilt his dining empire with Pravda (1996), Balthazar (1997), Pastis (1999), Schiller's Liquor Bar (2003), Morandi (2007), and Minetta Tavern (2009).

Of note

McNally has a reputation for creating restaurants that endure: Balthazar, which is now more than a decade old, effortlessly transitioned from hotspot to SoHo fixture and still packs in crowds and rakes in cash. Built for $3 million, it reportedly grosses $400,000 in an average week. (Perhaps it helps that one of McNally's trademarks is meticulously designing restaurants to seem like they've been around forever.) McNally has also developed a reputation for pioneering new neighborhoods. Pastis opened years before hordes of club-goers descended on the meatpacking district, and Schiller's was plopped down in an otherwise desolate part of the Lower East Side.

For years, McNally's formula seemed to be invincible. Wherever he went, a crowd of diners followed and his openings were invariably greeted with glowing reviews and a reservation feeding frenzy. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with Morandi, which debuted in 2007. The first McNally creation since he opened Schiller's, the West Village Italian earned a lukewarm reception from both diners and critics alike. "Everything about the place feels characterless, haphazard, and slightly off-key," concluded New York's Adam Platt.

Family ties

Keith has always had a rocky relationship with his restaurateur brother Brian McNally, who once owned 150 Wooster, Indochine, Cafe Lebowitz, and Smith. They went through a stretch for several years when they didn't speak, then reconciled in the early 00's. These days, they're back to not speaking.

Personal

The restaurateur has three kids from his marriage to Lynn: Isabelle, Sophie, and Harry. In 2002, McNally's wandering eye settled on a former hostess at Balthazar named Alina Johnson. They married the same year and now have a son named George. The family lives with McNally's octogenarian father in a painstakingly restored Greenwich Village townhouse, which is decorated with the same sort of antique furnishings found in the restaurants.

For the record

Several years ago Steve Wynn wanted to open a Balthazar outpost at his casino and extended a very generous offer to the temperamental Brit to port his eatery to Las Vegas. McNally turned him down, saying the idea "sickened" him. Daniel Boulud took Wynn up on the offer instead.

True story

As a kid, McNally was one of many victims of convicted child molester Jonathan King, the pop music producer who launched the careers of Phil Collins, Genesis, and, most unforgivably, Chumbawamba. McNally is surprisingly blasé about the abuse: "Big deal. Nothing much happened… If he was going to get seven years [in prison] it should be for his bad music—but touching boys?"