McNally Family Values

In 1980, Keith McNally, his brother Brian, and Keith’s then-wife Lynn Wagenknecht, who had all cut their teeth as waitstaff at One Fifth in Greenwich Village, opened The Odeon on the corner of West Broadway and Thomas Street, and effectively invented a template for downtown dining that New York is still aspiring to. The Odeon became an instant hub for writers, artists, and celebrities, and its neon sign turned it into a symbol of Tribeca’s cultural rise. 

Brian went on to open Indochine, Canal Bar, 150 Wooster, and 44 through the ’80s and ’90s, earning him a reputation, per a Vanity Fair profile, as the “undisputed King Midas of downtown eateries.” Keith and Lynn kept building together, opening Café Luxembourg and the nightclub Nell’s before their marriage and business partnership ended in the early ’90s. (As part of their split, Wagenknecht took over The Odeon and Café Luxembourg—also opening Cafe Cluny in 2006—and she still owns and runs them today.) Keith went on to define his own legacy with Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi (not to mention Lucky Strike, Pravda, Schiller’s, Cherche Midi, and Augustine) before expanding nationally and globally in recent years. Balthazar alone, opened in 1997, became such a fixture of New York dining that it functionally rewrote what a “brasserie” meant to an American audience.