New York restaurateur claims Patti Smith once made a waitress cry: “Incredibly rude”
New York restaurateur Keith McNally has claimed that Patti Smith once made a waitress at his establishment cry due to a disagreement over bread in the 1970s.
McNally, who owns more than a dozen restaurants in the Big Apple, including the celebrated Balthazar’s, Pastis and Minetta Tavern, has reflected on his life in the culinary business in his new book, I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir.
An excerpt from the book has been shared with New York Magazine’s Grub Street, which includes an alleged encounter with Smith and the late Robert Mapplethorpe at his now-closed One Fifth restaurant, which McNally said occurred in the ’70s.
“Smith and Mapplethorpe could be very difficult to wait on,” McNally wrote in the memoir when discussing his most tricky high-profile customers.
“Smith, unfortunately, was incredibly rude to the servers. It’s impossible for me to listen to a Patti Smith song today without remembering her reducing a waitress to tears because she forgot to put bread on the table,” he continued.
While Smith and Mapplethorpe were both regulars at the establishment, McNally said he never had any issues with the late photographer, who “never tried to belittle” workers at the restaurant.
Significantly, the alleged incident at One Fifth occurred half a century ago, and McNally is not claiming it happened in recent history.
McNally does have a history of complaining about celebrities. In 2022, he banned English comedian James Corden from Balthazar’s, claiming the Gavin and Stacey star was the “most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago”.
Corden’s ban was eventually lifted when he called McNally to apologise for his behaviour at the New York eatery.
Earlier this month, Smith, who is yet to respond to McNally’s claims, announced details of her new memoir, Bread of Angels, which will be published on November 4th, 2025.
Smith made the announcement on Instagram alongside an image of the musician with her parents as a young adult, writing, “This is with my mother and father who inspired much of my next book Bread of Angels. The memoir, a bright and dark dance of life, will be published on November 4th, by Random House.”
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