BREAKING BREAD

NYC Restaurateur Reveals ‘Rude’ A-Lister Who Left Staff in Tears

The eatery owner claims that an iconic singer once became enraged over forgotten bread.

Legendary restaurateur Keith McNally revealed that a famous singer once made a waitress cry when she was a regular at a New York restaurant he ran in the 1970s. In an excerpt from his new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything—published in New York Magazine— McNally claims that an “incredibly rude” Patti Smith would “belittle staff” and once brought a waitress to tears at One Fifth in Greenwich Village “because she forgot to put bread on the table.” McNally, was general manager One Fifth at the time and went on to open some of New York’s most famous restaurants including SoHo’s Balthazar, The Odeon in Tribeca and Pastis in the Meatpacking District. He recalled that Smith used to dine there with her ex-boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe and art curator Sam Wagstaff “a few times a week.” He wrote, “On nights when Wagstaff wasn’t at the table, Smith and Mapplethorpe could be very difficult to wait on. Smith, unfortunately, was incredibly rude to the servers.” The 73-year-old claimed that the incident shocked him enough that “it’s impossible for me to listen to a Patti Smith song today without remembering her reducing a waitress to tears.”