I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir

The author writes the way he runs restaurants: candid, opinionated, and straight to the point. He’s behind a lot of NYC stalwarts: Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, The Odeon, and the whole downtown “scene” that grew up around places like that. The memoir is funnier than I expected, but it’s also intense and surprisingly vulnerable: how he arrived in New York (illegally), how he learned taste (food and otherwise), how rooms get built night after night, and what it costs to keep them alive. It’s one of the better books I’ve read on hospitality as both art and controlled chaos.