Here’s a bit of New York trivia: Keith McNally’s flagship restaurant, Balthazar, shares its name with one of the Three Wise Men.
And with each passing day, the irony of McNally owning a restaurant named after a guy with insightful things to say about the Middle East grows ever more stark.
The famed restaurateur whined on Thursday that he’s lost “a big chunk” of business after he posted an incendiary remark about the Hamas attacks on Israel — then he immediately made a brand new set of even more incendiary remarks that somehow made the whole thing worse.
On Monday McNally stunned New Yorkers and hospitality biz insiders by posting about the terrorist atrocities that have left more than 1200 people dead in Israel, with the caption: “The More Utterly Repugnant The Facts, The Greater The Responsibility Becomes To Listen To The Other Side.”
The next day, the Brit — who has also launched Pastis, Morandi, Odeon, and others since 1980 — apologized and deleted the post, which could easily have drawn a close to the regrettable episode.
But no! On Thursday, he inexplicably returned to the fray, painting himself as a victim and stunningly comparing people defending Jewish victims of terrorism to — of all possible things — Nazis and terrorists!
This time he posted a screenshot of a call to boycott Pastis, argued that he had not encouraged people to praise or support terrorists but merely to listen to them, and said: “For saying Listen, I’ve received 4000 hate messages. For saying Listen, I’ve been called a Hamas lover, a Jew hater and a hater of mankind. For saying Listen, lies have been spread about me on Social Media causing my restaurants to lose a big chunk of their business. For saying Listen I received a message from somebody on Tuesday threatening to Cut my Head Off.” [sic].
(It’s unclear how he is able to differentiate the business he thinks he’s lost because of alleged lies about him…
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