08/05/2025
As a french woman leaving in New York for the past 25 years, I have read only two books in english: The Diary Of Bridget Jones and memoire! How come i felt closer to an old grumpy english man rather than a fun young 30 years old lady with two appetizing boyfriends? Guess? i am not so young anymore and i happen to work in this crazy world that we call service industry. But there was more than crunchy date stories.
Devouring the book, I realized how Mr McNally played a huge part in my New York life.
Before moving permanently to NY, I was lucky to spend many of my teenage summers in the city. Sumner 1991, i was 14, so many nights dancing at Neil’s (at that time, carding was not a thing) one night a guy pinch my but, i slapped him… it was LLKoolj🤣
After hours of dancing at the club, we would cross downtown and gathered for 3am burgers at Lucky Strike. In 2000 my newly husband and I moved to NY. Can’t count the many extravagant nights at Pastis (at that time, my husband was lookalike John Cusack, we were seated in 5 minutes when the wait was 2 hours). Schiller’s was our number one get together with friends but as I was working on Lafayette street, Balthazar was our number one date night spot. Sitting at the bar, sipping wine with oysters. Till one night i ordered a fruit juice, that was the night I handled a positive pregnancy test to my husband. Months had past then my best date at Balthazar was my 14 months old son with whom i shared french fries and steak tartar, him sitting in a high chair and the entire room full of ladies who lunch being in love with my very cute baby having lunch with his mom. Last, three years ago, we became American citizens, no doubt we went to Odeon to celebrate.
As Mr. McNally says… « Happenstance might have made me a Frenchwoman, but I chose to be a New Yorker. » thank you for this wonderful book.
