Top NYC restaurant owner’s criticism of ‘con artist’ Zohran Mamdani leads to public insults from Keith McNally

A top New York restaurateur’s anti-Zohran Mamdani stance has led him to bump up against his former idol Keith McNally, who has become a passionate supporter of the Democratic socialist.

“I don’t want Mamdani to be mayor,” said David Rabin, the force behind some of the city’s most iconic bars and restaurants including Lambs Club, American Bar and the Skylark, adding:  “I will do anything to try to stop him.”

Meanwhile, McNally — owner of Balthazar in SoHo and the Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village — seems to be doing everything he can to ensure that Mamdani wins, including ranting against Rabin and calling him “raving mad” in an Instagram post earlier this month.

Things started off with a “nice” online conversation between the two bigwigs after Rabin reached out to compliment McNally on his memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything.”

“I’ve been in awe of him for years,” Rabin told The Post. “I sent him some of my posts on Mamdani, and instead of responding to me, he took one of them and posted it and called me a racist.

“My sending him posts was only in response to him sending me post after post trying to get me to support Mamdani, and I kept asking him to stop.”

Then without warning, McNally railed against Rabin’s post, showing Mamdani with his arm around anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil — a former Columbia University graduate student who spent three months in federal custody for his role in organizing violent protests against Israel.

Rabin included a long caption, which reads in part: “Two chums. Pals. United. In their hate for the Jews and their newfound optimism that they’ll be running s–t. BC a bunch of dumbass white yuppie schmucks think Marxism and a 3rd intifada might be fun.”

McNally put him on blast, re-posting the image and calling it “the most disgusting post I’ve ever seen on Instagram,” writing in all capital letters on July 1.

“I told him repeatedly that I thought Mamdani was antisemitic and bad on crime and Marxist,” said Rabin.

“He knew my feelings. That’s why the post was such a shock to me. One minute we’re having a ‘debate’ that I didn’t want and kept begging him to stop and the next minute he’s calling me a racist.”

McNally did not respond to The Post’s request for comment, but he is long known for being a provocateur. Last year, he slammed Lauren Sanchez, now married Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as “repulsive” in a series of Instagram posts. He banned and then unbanned comedian James Corden, citing alleged abusive behavior to his restaurant staff, and admitted to making up an affair with broadcaster Diane Sawyer in order to generate publicity for himself.

He also once picked a fight with AirMail editor and fellow restaurateur Graydon Carter, calling him a “fancy f–ker” in 2021 after he skipped out on a reservation for 12 at Morandi, another McNally restaurant. 

For Rabin, Mamdani’s ascendancy is deeply personal. He said after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, he went to Times Square to watch pro-Hamas demonstrators who held up their phones, showing swastika screensavers.

“It’s 2023, and people are unashamedly waving swastikas in my face,” said Rabin, adding that he is a non-practicing Jew. “At that point, my whole life did a 180.”

Mamdani becoming frontrunner for mayor is bad for business and he has little government experience, said Rabin.

Mamdani, a member of the State Assembly since 2021, ran on a campaign to freeze stabilized rents and open government-run grocery stores.

“He’s a con artist trying to get in office so once there he can implement his Marxist and ‘anti-zionist’ agenda,” Rabin claimed.

In order to assuage some of his critics, Mamdani recently met with some of the city’s biggest business leaders, and said he would refrain from using the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been interpreted as a call to violence against Israel.

His campaign has also insisted his criticism of Israel does not amount to antisemitism.

Last week, McNally called out the state’s Democrats who have refused to endorse Mamdani, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Rep Hakeem Jeffries, among others.