Michelle Garnaut
Michelle Garnaut set the standard for independent restaurants in Hong Kong when she opened the legendary M at the Fringe, which is due to close at the end of this month after 20 years of unparalleled success. She talks to Dorothy So about her love for hospitality and the future of M.
I moved to Hong Kong in 1984 with the intention of getting a visa to go to China.
Although I’m Australian, traveling made me realize I wasn’t made to settle down there. Before coming to Hong Kong I lived in Europe and America and spent a couple of months in Thailand and Singapore.
When I first started cooking, it was really out of necessity. I’m the oldest of nine children and my mother wasn’t very well when we were growing up so I had to do most of the cooking.
I started waitressing when I was 14. I love that old-fashioned sense of genuine hospitality. That’s what sparked my love for the restaurant business.
My first cooking memory wasn’t in the kitchen. I liked mixing things together in the bath—the talcum powder, the shampoo.
Hong Kong was still very conservative when we opened M at the Fringe in 1989. We wanted the restaurant to be more fun and casual. An alternative to all those stiff fine-dining Western restaurants in Hong Kong at the time.