A New York City-based restaurateur has lifted the lid on an 'incredibly rude' well-known singer who he claims left a waitress 'in tears' back in the day.
Keith McNally is known for owning many much-loved food spots across the Big Apple, including the likes of Balthazar, Pastis, and Minetta Tavern.
Some of these establishments attract A-listers residing in New York or those who are there for a quick visit, and there's one celebrity McNally is not a fan of based on alleged previous encounters.
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In an excerpt of his forthcoming memoir, I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir, McNally recalled encounters with the celebrity while he worked at the One Fifth restaurant back in the 1970s.
Singer-songwriter Patti Smith is the celebrity McNally says he didn't have a great experience with, as she dined in the restaurant her then-boyfriend, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the late Sam Wagstaff.
In the memoir shared with New York Magazine’s Grub Street, McNally wrote: "Smith and Mapplethorpe could be very difficult to wait on. 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."
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While interactions with Mapplethorpe were said to be 'tense', McNally stated he 'never tried to belittle [waitress'] the way Smith did'.
As for Wagstaff, McNally had nothing but good things to say as he added in the memoir: "There are only two or three people in life that I wish I’d known better. Sam Wagstaff was one of them."
In a March Instagram post, McNally spoke further regarding his alleged experiences.
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The restaurateur wrote: "I spent four years at One Fifth and Smith was - by a country mile - the customer least liked by the servers. In fact, there was always a squabble whenever she’d arrive because none of the staff wanted to wait on her."
McNally then spoke further about what it was like with Mapplethorpe, who was in a relationship with Smith at the time before she was famous.
"The only time I saw Mapplethorpe without his leather jacket—when the restaurant’s air-conditioning broke down—he seemed strangely reduced and, like a policeman out of uniform, surprisingly ordinary-looking," McNally wrote.
"Maybe it was a coincidence, but without the leather jacket he was also friendlier to the staff."
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UNILAD has reached out to Smith's representatives for comment.
Callum Jones