I Regret Almost Everything, the new memoir by celebrated New York City restaurateur Keith McNally, reveals a life marked (so far) by serendipity, ambition, vision, love won, love lost and sometimes retrieved and, finally, the shock and disability of a stroke. 

Mr. McNally’s life journey is a rich alchemy of theatre, filmmaking, art and breakout restaurants, all of it mixed with a series of grand successes and a few near knockout punches. 

Put another way, I Regret Almost Everything is a page-turner and a terrific read. 

Mr. McNally, 74, recently made his annual sojourn to Chilmark. It’s a treasured return, he said, but one with a distinct beginning, middle and end.

I Regret Almost Anything was published in May.

“Although I love my house in Chilmark, if I’m on the Vineyard more than 10 weeks I begin to miss Manhattan. I never allow myself to forget how privileged I am to have homes on both of these Islands,” he said.

Because his 2016 stroke left him with a speech impairment and paralysis on his right side, the Gazette’s exchange with Mr. McNally occurred via email. At the time of his stroke, he was running seven successful restaurants in the city.

The stroke left him so dark and depressed that 18 months later, he attempted suicide at his Chilmark home in Windy Gates. After regaining consciousness at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Mr. McNally was committed to McLean psychiatric hospital in Belmont where he stayed for nine weeks. It was during his second week there, that he began writing the book.

Mr. McNally first came to the Vineyard in 1976, although that wasn’t the original plan. A friend had hyped Nantucket but while waiting to board the ferry he saw another boat from the Vineyard arrive at the terminal.

“Watching the Nantucket passengers saunter ashore,” he writes in the book, “I was put off by how white and preppy they all looked and much preferred the look of passengers coming off the second boat: a mixed bag of farmers, dropouts and long-haired academics.... I quickly switched tickets and boarded the ferry... to a place I never heard of until five minutes earlier.”

It was love at first sight. 

“There haven’t been many times in my life when I’ve been conscious of being happy,” he writes in I Regret Almost Everything, “but cycling the Vineyard’s empty roads that early July morning of ’76 was one of them.”

He purchased his Chilmark home in 1992 by selling his half share of The Odeon, the iconic brasserie that many say defined New York City in the 1980s, to his first wife, Lynn Wagenknecht, when they divorced. 

This “run-down clapboard house” became another of Mr. McNally’s artistic creations. To that end, he circled New England salvage yards and antique stores for nearly a month looking for unique and one-of-a-kind housewares and furnishings. 

There are Vineyard references and people sprinkled throughout the book. Chilmark neighbor Richard (Dick) Robinson, who died in 2021, did very well as Mr. McNally’s financial partner for 20 years, beginning with Balthazar. John Belushi was a regular in the early days of The Odeon. Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin of nearby Allen Farm introduced him to organic gardening and animal husbandry. 

There are also, of course, friendships, acquaintances and celebrity interactions that are interwoven throughout this remarkable life. An early dalliance and lasting friendship with the playwright Alan Bennet, friendships with Picasso’s ex-girlfriend and painter Francoise Gilot, with famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour, with Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live and with the late English director Jonathan Miller, just to rattle off a few.  

But striking, too, is Mr. McNally’s affection for his staff, from the maître d’, to wait staff, to the kitchen. In an industry known for constant turnover and hysterical blow ups, you won’t find them here. Many of his staff have been with him for decades. It shows up on the floor, too. Diners eating alone would get a complimentary glass of wine; waiters are instructed to pay more attention to diners without a celebrity card to flash than those who do; and he has a weak spot for the unassertive, shy first-time diner over the brash New Yorkers who know how to bully their way to the bar. 

To Sam Sifton, assistant managing editor of the New York Times and the paper’s former food critic, Mr. McNally has a defined signature to everything he touches.

“I think what’s remarkable about Keith is how skillfully he translates a particular aesthetic to wherever he hangs his hat or opens a restaurant,” Mr. Sifton said. “His Vineyard home, his New York apartment, that place he has or had in the Cotswolds, his every restaurant — they’re all as recognizably McNallyish as Balthazar or Minetta Tavern. People look good in them. And that’s not nothing. Along with good food and impeccable service, it’s everything.”

This reader was left with the apparently false impression that despite the ongoing physical limitations left by his stroke, Mr. McNally seemed relatively content. After all, his restaurants and bakery are as popular as ever, his first wife remains a loyal friend, all five children from his two marriages are part of his life, and his friendships are deep and treasured. 

But that’s not the way he sees it.

“Everything hangs by a thread,” Mr. McNally wrote back by email. “Not just for me but for everyone. All relationships are prone to sudden and inexplicable change. I’m not content by a long shot. But I never was, even before my stroke. And nor would I like to be.”

Some of that world view comes across in Mr. McNally’s Instagram account where he has 157,000 followers. For example, he famously chastised the actor and former talk show host James Corden for berating the wait staff. The internet literally blew up. It’s one of his regrets that arrives with a wink and a nod.

“...Since my stroke robbed me of 80 per cent of speech, Instagram has, unfortunately, become my voice,” he wrote. “It also helped me become a better writer. Instagram’s restrictions with captions has forced me to be more economical with words which, in retrospect, has unknowingly helped shape my book.”

And while most postings have lately centered on the book, his family, friends, well-wishers and staff, there’s the occasional sting.

“I don’t believe my Instagram voice is softening with age,” he added, “unless you look at my recent post that Lauren Sanchez was ‘revolting looking’ as an example of me mellowing. (By the way, I really regret writing that.)”

What he doesn’t regret is his longtime relationship with the Vineyard, nor even the changes that have come to the Island. While many people of his era vocally bemoan today’s Vineyard in comparison, he is decidedly not joining in, choosing instead to take the glass half full rather than half empty approach.

“Of course there have been changes on the Vineyard,” he noted. “But compared to everywhere else — or what they could be — the changes are microscopic. Middle and North Roads remain exactly the same today as they were when I first arrived 50 years ago. The same with the Edwardian feel of Lobsterville Road and Red Beach.”

His memoir quickly became a New York Times best seller but for Mr. McNally that’s not saying much.

“All it does,” Mr. McNally wrote, “is confirm my belief that I’m able to fool all of the people all of the time.” 

Keith McNally will take part in the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, August 1 to 3.