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Boston Globe
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
From omakase to casual, these seven spots are a sushi lover's dream
.bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } No Relation No Relation Hidden in the back of Shore Leave, a South End tiki bar, this nine-person sushi counter is a serene oasis from the moment you pull up a seat at the bar hewn from Japanese cypress to the first bite of the 17-course omakse menu. No Relation's rotating menu is always inventive, unpretentious, and unexpectedly filling. If you do find yourself craving more, there's several add-ons including two different sake pairings. It's an intimate dining experience you won't soon forget. Address: 11 William E. Mullins Way, South End Phone: 617-530-1772 Find online: .bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } O Ya O Ya Ask sushi aficionados where to go for a blowout meal and the answer is still likely to be Tim and Nancy Cushman's prix fixe hideaway near South Station, open since 2007. O Ya was one of the first to bring omakase to Boston, before everyone watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi on Netflix and began to seek it out. The format has evolved over the years, but it's now a 20-course prix fixe of sashimi, nigiri, and cooked dishes, with a worthy beverage pairing available. The menu is chef's choice, but expect exquisite bites like fried oyster with yuzu kosho aioli and squid ink foam, hamachi nigiri with banana pepper mousse, and foie gras with chocolate-balsamic soy sauce and cocoa-raisin pulp. Address: 9 East Street, Leather District Phone: 617-654-9900 Find online: .bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Uni Uni Adam DeTour for The Boston Globe. Food styling by Sheila Jarnes. Many sushi parlors are hushed and precious. Not Uni in The Eliot Hotel. This is a slinky yet scrumptious backdrop for all occasions, from a big date to a big deal, thanks to a tight list of pristine sushi paired with a broad izakaya menu of shared plates dressed up with surprises, like pork belly confit enriched with ramp honey. It's dark inside, and it's loud. That's perfect: You'll tumble back onto Comm. Ave. blinking and transported. Address: 370A Commonwealth Avenue, Back Bay Phone: 617-536-7200 Find online: .bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Wa Shin Wa Shin Opened in 2024, this Bay Village omakase restaurant was poised and polished right from the start. Chef Sky Zheng, previously head chef at New York's Michelin-starred Sushi Nakazawa, presides over the sushi bar in this peaceful space decorated with pale wood, bonsai trees, and ceramics. Courses feature beautiful seafood — from live sweet shrimp to Hokkaido uni to fatty tuna topped with caviar — and are made with perfect rice, hand-grated wasabi root, and perfectionist soul. Address: 222 Stuart Street, Bay Village Phone: 857-289-9290 Find online: Related : .bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Washoku Renaissance Washoku Renaissance Chef Youji Iwakura's food has always been excellent, whether it was at Snappy Ramen or his ambitious downtown restaurant, Kamakura. During the pandemic, he began offering curbside takeout, a venture that grew into Washoku Renaissance, located in Charlestown food hall Foundation Kitchen. The focus isn't limited to sushi — Iwakura specializes in artful, multicourse kaiseki meals — but the sushi omakase are special, offered in several different formats and filled with carefully sourced ingredients such as baby eel and firefly squid. With just eight seats, the bar is as intimate as they come, providing an opportunity to learn more about sushi and Japanese cuisine. Address: 32 Cambridge Street, Charlestown Phone: 617-952-4211 Find online: .bofbpic img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Yamato Japanese Restaurant If you're craving sushi – and mountains of it – head to this all-you-can-eat Brighton spot for lunch. For about $25 per adult, and cheaper for children, eat fresh fish to your heart's content. The lineup of rolls is predictably solid; for something different, try the Osaka-style pressed sushi – layers of rice, fish, and toppings put together in a mold. The catch (pun intended): Yamato will charge you for wasted food on unlimited meals. Another location, Yamato II, is in the Back Bay. Address: 117 Chiswick Road, Brighton Phone: 617-787-8881 Find online: Boston Globe Best of the Best winners for 2025 were selected by Globe newsroom staff and correspondents, and limited to Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline. 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Los Angeles Times
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Nobu' strains to showcase a humble man at the center of a sexy global brand
It takes a little over an hour for 'Nobu' to marinate long enough to approach a point of complexity, not exactly bitter but no longer cloyingly sweet. Nobu Matsuhisa, the celebrated sushi master, is running quality-control checks in one of his restaurants. A poor chef is sweating the test so badly, he won't need soy sauce soon enough. His dish keeps being sent back: Chop the chives finer. Why is this pile of raw crudo smaller? Why did you paint a line of salt instead of a dot? The scene goes on, excruciatingly. A few minutes later, Robert De Niro — an early investor and co-founder — dominates a private board meeting with concerns about too-rapid growth. It's not quite the ominous Waingro showdowns of 'Heat' but in the ballpark. Fastidiousness, precision and a kind of reputational exclusivity are at the heart of Matsuhisa's enterprise. These are hard things to make a documentary about. But it's also why Nobu needed to come to Beverly Hills for his concept take root — not just any Los Angeles but the '80s-era boomtown of power lunches and spend-to-impress dining. Spago's Wolfgang Puck makes an appearance in director Matt Tyrnauer's half-interesting film, fawning over his longtime friend sitting next to him but not quite articulating the essence of their revolution: high-end branding. You wish more time was spent on that conceptual idea, enabled by celebrities throwing around money on food they barely ate. The kind of doc that 'Nobu' more often resembles (as do most foodie-targeted profiles) is a gentle chronology of a humble genius and everyday guy who just happens to fly private. Matsuhisa bows to euphoric local fishmongers, does a lot of hugs and selfies with his staff, visits his roots in Japan and Peru. There are family interviews and a detour to Alaska, where, years before he had a 300-person nightly waitlist, an early restaurant of his caught fire — in the bad literal way (Tyrnauer cuts to the Anchorage newspaper headline). These false starts are somehow exhausting, lacking in suspense. He contemplated suicide, then came to California. The food sails by: wedges of black cod with miso, delicate plates of thinly sliced fish adorned with tweezer-manipulated herbs. All of it is crazy-making and delicious. Still, apart from former Los Angeles Times food editor Ruth Reichl, who witnessed the rise of Nobu as it happened, there are few on-camera voices who speak directly to Matsuhisa's gifts and experimentation with form. 2011's 'Jiro Dreams of Sushi' does a better job of delivering the intimate discipline of cutting and shaping. More testimony to the experience of eating at Nobu would have helped this feel less like a commercial. 'Nobu' is a film oddly unconcerned with the communal experience of dining. We hear about the way his sushi workstations are elevated (a 'stage,' Matsuhisa calls them) and that's central to the performance going on here, also the remove. Something clicks when the film heads to Nobu Malibu and visits the table of supermodel Cindy Crawford, whose 'Cindy rice,' a dish he invented for her, adorns the menu. There's a deep mutual gratitude between them that goes back years. An appreciation of the finer things? No doubt. Game recognizing game? Definitely.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Chef's Table: Legends': David Gelb and Brian McGinn reflect on a decade of redefining culinary storytelling
David Gelb and Brian McGinn revolutionized food storytelling with their Netflix series Chef's Table, launched in 2015. Inspired by Gelb's critically acclaimed 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef's Table has spent the past decade shining a spotlight on the world's most exceptional chefs. Beyond its core seasons, the series has expanded into unique breakout installments dedicated to barbecue, pizza, and noodles. This evolution continues with Chef's Table: Legends, a 2025 spin-off series that debuted on April 28. The four-part series honors a select group of iconic chefs whose pioneering work and global influence have reshaped modern gastronomy. "Brian selected the chefs for the bulk of it — especially the Legends season," Gelb tells Gold Derby. "Brian is so steeped in chef lore. He knows every chef, every story. When it came to picking out legends he had a very specific agenda. We wanted to do something that was bigger than just being a successful chef." More from GoldDerby 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' 'Eureka Day' playwright Jonathan Spector talks vaccine debates, vicious comment sections, and 'the failure of a utopia' Breakout star Owen Cooper admits 'Adolescence' was 'very out of my comfort zone' McGinn elaborates further: "When we first started casting the show 10 years ago, we were looking for that intersection of passion and a way of looking at the world that overlapped with the style of food they were making. The way things have evolved over 10 years ... we kind of understood that there's a lot of inspiration that chefs can teach all of us about how to live our lives even if we don't cook. It has to do with overcoming adversity, finding your voice — universal things that we all face in our lives." Selecting the legends for this season was no small feat. Gelb and McGinn share how they grappled with the gravity of the choice, carefully narrowing their focus to four chefs whose impact transcends borders. "We started thinking about legacy," McGinn notes. "What do these people leave behind?" The final lineup includes Jamie Oliver, José Andrés, Thomas Keller, and Alice Waters. Each chef symbolizes a transformative movement in gastronomy. "Jamie Oliver made food accessible and advocated for people to eat higher quality ingredients in the U.K.," McGinn says. "José Andrés is changing the world right as we speak with World Central Kitchen and providing for people in their darkest hour. Thomas Keller is probably the most important fine dining chef in American history. Alice Waters, for our generation in particular, was the single voice that introduced us to the farm-to-table movement." Three directors brought these stories to life, each preserving the cinematic essence that defines Chef's Table. McGinn helmed the episode on Jamie Oliver, Gelb directed Alice Waters' installment, and Clay Jeter was brought in to craft the narratives of José Andrés and Thomas Keller. "We're not teaching you how to cook," Gelb emphasizes. "The idea is to have a human story about why they cook. That's the secret sauce of it. We wanted to bring in different directors that all have a special power — there are certain things that make a Chef's Table episode. It's the philosophy of letting the chef tell their story, finding the imagery, the sounds, and the feelings that take you into their perspective." McGinn credits their "incredible" team of craftspeople for the show's signature style. "The core of that group are the cinematographers, the editors, and the story teams that have been with us since the very beginning," he says. "When you start as a cinematographer on Chef's Table you've often been an assistant cameraperson before — or shot additional photography for an episode. That shared DNA in the photography and crafts standpoint gets handed down from one production team to the next." "The same thing happens in post," he continues. "Our editors that have been with us since the beginning — and cycle in and out of seasons — everyone has this institutional knowledge. We have this incredible group of people who haven't left the show for 10 years. That's an incredibly rare thing. Part of it is we're all friends. It's not a bad job to go to the best restaurants in the world and hang out with your friends for two weeks. The other thing is that it's so incredibly rewarding to keep pushing the boundaries." Gelb also notes how Netflix's unwavering support gave them the resources to redefine unscripted television. "The ability to shoot with prime lenses with cinema cameras — these things were not done in unscripted before," he says. "We are so lucky that Netflix believes so much in what we are trying to do. Nobody else was willing to take this pitch. The idea that Netflix would take a swing on a show like this — and the fact that we would even get to be here for 10 years and have an institution — together we're able to make some really special things." All episodes of Chef's Table are currently streaming on Netflix. This article and video are presented by Netflix. Best of GoldDerby 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' 'The Better Sister': Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks on their 'fun partnership' and the 'satisfying' killer reveal The Making of 'Beast Games': Behind the scenes of Prime Video's record-breaking competition series Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How the Best Restaurants Can Make You Feel
A funny thing about food is that you don't need to eat it to appreciate it. You can revisit David Gelb's 2011 documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, or his subsequent work on Chef's Table, a docuseries that paired sweeping orchestral music with close-ups of food. You can witness the creation of elaborate bites on Top Chef, stan a tormented genius on The Bear, or browse images on Instagram of carefully plated culinary masterpieces. You will probably still want to eat it all, but this abundance of cultural attention makes the message clear: Chefs are artists worthy of devotion, because they can transform raw material into something sublime. Restaurateurs are another matter. As the procurers of finances and managers of staff, they're often seen as the hard-nosed businesspeople behind the whimsical auteurs. Yet the best of them are also auteurs, I would argue. They know how to create something special too: They are architects of the inexplicable, know-it-when-you-see-it thing called 'vibe'—the warm sensation of being treated like a VIP, the collective energy of a roomful of loyal patrons, lighting that makes you think your date looks more attractive than ever. These joys don't translate well to television or social media, and even if they did, there's no guarantee the viewers would experience the same thing should they go on their own. The restaurateur is the director of a live theater performance—intimate, fleeting, and different every night. After you try a new restaurant, people typically ask, 'How was the food?' I like to ask: 'How did it make you feel?' In New York, Keith McNally is the exception to the rule of restaurateur obscurity. Few people have been as recognized for their understanding of atmosphere as McNally, who chronicles his life and work in a new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything. For the cost of dining at his restaurants ($31 for salade Niçoise at Pastis, $29 for eggs Benedict at Balthazar), one could easily find much better food in the city. But to the question of whether they make you feel good, the answer is usually yes. On occasion, during the heyday of his restaurants, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the most yes. McNally's vibes have been so irresistible to diners that, for better or for worse, they've reshaped where the city's heart beats, helping turn sleepy neighborhoods into crucibles of spiraling rents. Pastis appeared on Sex and the City multiple times as a stand-in for all that's thrilling about a night out in Manhattan; Carrie Bradshaw once referred to it as 'the only restaurant that seemed to exist.' But the real trick of the McNally experience is its accessibility. Bathed in lighting that critics have called 'McNally Gold' or a 'fairytale glow,' you might feel as though your meal is already a wonderful memory. His restaurants are where Jude Law can brighten your breakfast meeting and Rihanna might enhance your date night, but because they typically have ample tables and walk-in bar seating, they are also readily available to you, the totally-normal-yet-especially-beautiful-tonight you. If anybody can make the case for the restaurateur as an artist, it's the creator of this particular vibe. [Read: Dining out isn't what it used to be] Although McNally is a downright legend in New York, he is not a national household name. These days, he might be more broadly known for his deliberately provocative Instagram, where he's gone viral for defenses of Woody Allen and jabs at James Corden. (He mentions these incidents in the book too, admitting that he exaggerated his Corden outrage.) His restaurant work, meanwhile, is part of a dining-out culture that doesn't get as much adulation as it once did. Following the coronavirus pandemic, fewer Americans want to eat outside their home. Since I started covering the restaurant industry nearly a decade ago, more people seem to be opting for fast-casual chains, takeout, delivery. Some critics argue that, because of this, the people who do still go to restaurants care more about ambience than ever, and that establishments are responding by making it a priority. I think this is true! Still, I can't help but sense a hint of derision in the way this development is discussed. Such efforts to find a distinguishing aesthetic are analyzed as 'branding' or good business sense rather than craft; the adjective sceney is rarely deployed as a compliment. In his memoir, McNally doesn't explicitly say that he considers his work to be an artistic endeavor, and when critics have compared him in the past to a director, he's scoffed. (McNally, who had dreamed of being a filmmaker and did eventually make two movies, complained that when these projects debuted, 'no movie reviewer ever compared them to restaurant dining rooms.') But a lot has happened to him over the years: In 2016, McNally had a stroke that greatly impaired his speech and challenged his sense of self. He attempted suicide, and got divorced for a second time. All of his restaurants closed in the early days of COVID, and eventually, a couple of them shut down forever. Reflecting on his near-death experience and its fallout seems to have shifted something in him. With the same self-deprecating voice he uses on Instagram, McNally's memoir offers up the backstory on his style, and in doing so, it embraces his status as one of New York's most influential creative minds. The book is filled with tales of the playwrights and writers and filmmakers who have inspired him, his obsessiveness in the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, and his perspective on restaurant service. It paints a portrait of the artist as a restaurateur, and shows how a singular point of view can translate to the world of dining. His restaurants, for instance, are frequently decorated with objects described as 'distressed.' The credit for this flourish, arguably responsible for decades of faux-antique decor and color-washed walls proliferating through American dining districts, goes in part to the British theater director Jonathan Miller, whom McNally met through the playwright Alan Bennett. Miller found everyday objects in junk shops and then displayed them in his home as if they were sculptures. Bennett was even more significant to the McNally aesthetic. The two of them dated—one of two gay relationships the restaurateur says he has had in his life—when the playwright was 35 and McNally was 18. Bennett introduced him to plays, books, paintings, and the art of home renovation. Once, Bennett stripped his own sitting room of decades of wallpaper and then applied wax and paint to plaster 'until it turned an extraordinary deep mustard color,' McNally writes: 'the same color I've been trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to reproduce on my restaurants' walls for almost fifty years.' [Read: Who wants to sit at a communal table?] McNally's flair for heightening the ordinary pairs well with his canny ability to stage restaurants that are posh enough for celebrities yet homey enough for tourists. This insistence on approachability stems, he explains in the memoir, from his working-class background. He writes that he demands sensitivity from his servers when it comes to price: Always mention the cost of specials; never assume that you can keep the change from a customer paying cash. As for his background in lighting, McNally describes a succession of jobs he held earlier: running lights for a live production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, managing a strip club, working as a manager at the once-legendary restaurant One Fifth. 'Of course, seductive lighting doesn't compensate for tasteless food or inept service,' he writes. 'Likewise, extraordinary food, design and service never guarantee a successful restaurant. Nothing does except that strange indefinable: the right feel.' These are not the tips and tricks of a corporate honcho's management book or the gauzy reminisces of a self-help sage; they are the experiences and deliberate choices that culminated in a fruitful creative career. McNally is neither the only vibe master in the restaurant business nor the last. Plenty of newer restaurants treat dining out as not just a vehicle for sating hunger but also a source of moments to remember. The see-and-be-seen prime of Balthazar and Minetta Tavern is over; these sleek establishments continue to fill up, but the hottest of the hot young things have largely moved on to other parties. Like a buzzy play that ends up with a long Broadway run, his restaurants stay busy and still promise delights, but many dining devotees remember to revisit only when a cousin comes into town. [Read: Why The Bear is so hard to watch] The restaurateur recognizes the ephemeral nature of his line of work, though he mostly nods to it while discussing other artists. He notes that Miller, the theater director, enjoyed much more fame than Bennett did for several decades but that Bennett's published work is far better known today. 'After a director dies, his or her specific staging can never be seen live again,' McNally writes. 'After a writer dies, his or her books can be reread and plays restaged.' Nevertheless, he seems, after a period of serious crisis, to have made peace with his own impermanence: 'Who's to say that even if I did possess the talent to write plays that I'd be able to affect—even in the most superficial way—as many people as my restaurants appear to have done for nearly half a century?' McNally is still breathing, as are his spots in New York, London, and Washington, D.C., some of which are run with the savvy Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr. And his memoir, like Bennett's scripts, will outlast a single evening out. A perfectly orchestrated meal creates the illusion of effortlessness; McNally's book serves as an enduring reminder of the work and talent that go into creating such memories, and of the artists whose vision sets the scene. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
A Portrait of the Restaurateur as an Artist
A funny thing about food is that you don't need to eat it to appreciate it. You can revisit David Gelb's 2011 documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, or his subsequent work on Chef's Table, a docuseries that paired sweeping orchestral music with close-ups of food. You can witness the creation of elaborate bites on Top Chef, stan a tormented genius on The Bear, or browse images on Instagram of carefully plated culinary masterpieces. You will probably still want to eat it all, but this abundance of cultural attention makes the message clear: Chefs are artists worthy of devotion, because they can transform raw material into something sublime. Restaurateurs are another matter. As the procurers of finances and managers of staff, they're often seen as the hard-nosed businesspeople behind the whimsical auteurs. Yet the best of them are also auteurs, I would argue. They know how to create something special too: They are architects of the inexplicable, know-it-when-you-see-it thing called 'vibe'—the warm sensation of being treated like a VIP, the collective energy of a roomful of loyal patrons, lighting that makes you think your date looks more attractive than ever. These joys don't translate well to television or social media, and even if they did, there's no guarantee the viewers would experience the same thing should they go on their own. The restaurateur is the director of a live theater performance—intimate, fleeting, and different every night. After you try a new restaurant, people typically ask, 'How was the food?' I like to ask: 'How did it make you feel?' In New York, Keith McNally is the exception to the rule of restaurateur obscurity. Few people have been as recognized for their understanding of atmosphere as McNally, who chronicles his life and work in a new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything. For the cost of dining at his restaurants ($31 for salade Niçoise at Pastis, $29 for eggs Benedict at Balthazar), one could easily find much better food in the city. But to the question of whether they make you feel good, the answer is usually yes. On occasion, during the heyday of his restaurants, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the most yes. McNally's vibes have been so irresistible to diners that, for better or for worse, they've reshaped where the city's heart beats, helping turn sleepy neighborhoods into crucibles of spiraling rents. Pastis appeared on Sex and the City multiple times as a stand-in for all that's thrilling about a night out in Manhattan; Carrie Bradshaw once referred to it as 'the only restaurant that seemed to exist.' But the real trick of the McNally experience is its accessibility. Bathed in lighting that critics have called ' McNally Gold ' or a ' fairytale glow,' you might feel as though your meal is already a wonderful memory. His restaurants are where Jude Law can brighten your breakfast meeting and Rihanna might enhance your date night, but because they typically have ample tables and walk-in bar seating, they are also readily available to you, the totally-normal-yet-especially-beautiful-tonight you. If anybody can make the case for the restaurateur as an artist, it's the creator of this particular vibe. Although McNally is a downright legend in New York, he is not a national household name. These days, he might be more broadly known for his deliberately provocative Instagram, where he's gone viral for defenses of Woody Allen and jabs at James Corden. (He mentions these incidents in the book too, admitting that he exaggerated his Corden outrage.) His restaurant work, meanwhile, is part of a dining-out culture that doesn't get as much adulation as it once did. Following the coronavirus pandemic, fewer Americans want to eat outside their home. Since I started covering the restaurant industry nearly a decade ago, more people seem to be opting for fast-casual chains, takeout, delivery. Some critics argue that, because of this, the people who do still go to restaurants care more about ambience than ever, and that establishments are responding by making it a priority. I think this is true! Still, I can't help but sense a hint of derision in the way this development is discussed. Such efforts to find a distinguishing aesthetic are analyzed as 'branding' or good business sense rather than craft; the adjective sceney is rarely deployed as a compliment. In his memoir, McNally doesn't explicitly say that he considers his work to be an artistic endeavor, and when critics have compared him in the past to a director, he's scoffed. (McNally, who had dreamed of being a filmmaker and did eventually make two movies, complained that when these projects debuted, 'no movie reviewer ever compared them to restaurant dining rooms.') But a lot has happened to him over the years: In 2016, McNally had a stroke that greatly impaired his speech and challenged his sense of self. He attempted suicide, and got divorced for a second time. All of his restaurants closed in the early days of COVID, and eventually, a couple of them shut down forever. Reflecting on his near-death experience and its fallout seems to have shifted something in him. With the same self-deprecating voice he uses on Instagram, McNally's memoir offers up the backstory on his style, and in doing so, it embraces his status as one of New York's most influential creative minds. The book is filled with tales of the playwrights and writers and filmmakers who have inspired him, his obsessiveness in the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, and his perspective on restaurant service. It paints a portrait of the artist as a restaurateur, and shows how a singular point of view can translate to the world of dining. His restaurants, for instance, are frequently decorated with objects described as 'distressed.' The credit for this flourish, arguably responsible for decades of faux-antique decor and color-washed walls proliferating through American dining districts, goes in part to the British theater director Jonathan Miller, whom McNally met through the playwright Alan Bennett. Miller found everyday objects in junk shops and then displayed them in his home as if they were sculptures. Bennett was even more significant to the McNally aesthetic. The two of them dated—one of two gay relationships the restaurateur says he has had in his life—when the playwright was 35 and McNally was 18. Bennett introduced him to plays, books, paintings, and the art of home renovation. Once, Bennett stripped his own sitting room of decades of wallpaper and then applied wax and paint to plaster 'until it turned an extraordinary deep mustard color,' McNally writes: 'the same color I've been trying—mostly unsuccessfully—to reproduce on my restaurants' walls for almost fifty years.' McNally's flair for heightening the ordinary pairs well with his canny ability to stage restaurants that are posh enough for celebrities yet homey enough for tourists. This insistence on approachability stems, he explains in the memoir, from his working-class background. He writes that he demands sensitivity from his servers when it comes to price: Always mention the cost of specials; never assume that you can keep the change from a customer paying cash. As for his background in lighting, McNally describes a succession of jobs he held earlier: running lights for a live production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, managing a strip club, working as a manager at the once-legendary restaurant One Fifth. 'Of course, seductive lighting doesn't compensate for tasteless food or inept service,' he writes. 'Likewise, extraordinary food, design and service never guarantee a successful restaurant. Nothing does except that strange indefinable: the right feel.' These are not the tips and tricks of a corporate honcho's management book or the gauzy reminisces of a self-help sage; they are the experiences and deliberate choices that culminated in a fruitful creative career. McNally is neither the only vibe master in the restaurant business nor the last. Plenty of newer restaurants treat dining out as not just a vehicle for sating hunger but also a source of moments to remember. The see-and-be-seen prime of Balthazar and Minetta Tavern is over; these sleek establishments continue to fill up, but the hottest of the hot young things have largely moved on to other parties. Like a buzzy play that ends up with a long Broadway run, his restaurants stay busy and still promise delights, but many dining devotees remember to revisit only when a cousin comes into town. The restaurateur recognizes the ephemeral nature of his line of work, though he mostly nods to it while discussing other artists. He notes that Miller, the theater director, enjoyed much more fame than Bennett did for several decades but that Bennett's published work is far better known today. 'After a director dies, his or her specific staging can never be seen live again,' McNally writes. 'After a writer dies, his or her books can be reread and plays restaged.' Nevertheless, he seems, after a period of serious crisis, to have made peace with his own impermanence: 'Who's to say that even if I did possess the talent to write plays that I'd be able to affect—even in the most superficial way—as many people as my restaurants appear to have done for nearly half a century?' McNally is still breathing, as are his spots in New York, London, and Washington, D.C., some of which are run with the savvy Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr. And his memoir, like Bennett's scripts, will outlast a single evening out. A perfectly orchestrated meal creates the illusion of effortlessness; McNally's book serves as an enduring reminder of the work and talent that go into creating such memories, and of the artists whose vision sets the scene.
