One of the luckiest things that can happen to a restaurant is for it to remain open long enough to become a place that famous people used to go. That was part of what made the March reopening of Balthazar, a SoHo mainstay since the height of the dot-com bubble, unusual. Patrons made out at their tables, took trips together to the bathroom. “People are horny!” said Jonathan Wynne, the bartender. But all those shows have been upstaged by the one the restaurant’s 69-year-old owner, Keith McNally, is putting on daily over Instagram, where, instead of art directing his life, he has reveled in the mess of it.

Source: New York Times July 17, 2021 12:45 UTC