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I came to Hong Kong with a suitcase and $500. I was never the backpacker type.
I was 14 years old when I first started working part time through school. I washed dishes, cooked – whatever was needed.
It was a good experience; I would recommend to anyone thinking of getting into a business to learn from the bottom so you know what you’re getting into.
I’m not a chef, I’m a cook.
No one would open a bank without knowing about money, why should a group of investors open a restaurant? Watching movies doesn’t make you a director.
I started out cooking in Post 97. That led to catering, but I got tired of climbing in through people’s kitchen windows because they wanted to pretend they were the ones doing the cooking.
Chinese society is far more accepting of women in business, there’s no confusion there.
Back in 1984 it’s fair to say the attitude of cooks was a bit chauvinistic, but I grew up in a family of nine kids, four brothers, so I wasn’t daunted. It was a novelty being a female cook in Hong Kong.
I looked for a place like the Fringe for three years. You need a standalone with character. This business of going into an office building and taking an elevator up to the fifth floor to a chorus of Chinese waiters yelling ‘Ciao’ in some kind of fake Italian restaurant is just bizarre.
In 1989 we opened M at the Fringe. There were times when I just wanted to stuff it but you have to press on if you really want to accomplish something new. Now it’s been 17 years.
Back then I saw a niche. There was nothing really groovy, good and comfortable, fun and romantic. Basically there were pubs, Chinese restaurants but no real international restaurants.
I cried my eyes out the night before we opened.
What I’ve learned over the years is I don’t like working with people I don’t like, no matter how talented they are. One of our first chefs was a bloody nightmare and I didn’t really realize it until he left.
I don’t like it when places add some kind of service charge. Let it speak for itself.
If you put one thing on my tombstone, I guess it would be: “She brought Pavlova to China.”
I spent six months researching Singapore. But I realized I hated Singapore and would never want to live there.
Around 1995 I realized the future was China. It was inevitable, so why not embrace it? I thought, “Screw it, let’s go. Let’s just take the plunge.” Even the very word “Shanghai” has such mystery and symbolism.
People thought we were crazy in 1996 when we were guest chefs at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai.
Journalists couldn’t understand how to make a story of it until they realized China, this communist behemoth, was helping a foreign small business, one of the first
times ever.
Some people who love one of my places just hate the other, but for me it’s like having two children – I don’t love one more than the other, they’re just different. I love them both.
Opening a restaurant in Shanghai was very different – everyone is so new. Our oldest staff member is 32. It’s much more difficult to maintain high standards because they don’t have the background.
When we first moved into the Bund there was nothing, nobody there. It took five years for someone else to move in.
It’s important to give back to the community you live in, to become part of it. That’s why I love hosting literary festivals and carnivals for children.
Opening a nightclub in China has been terrifying. How can you make a place young, groovy and cool? Cool just is. And suddenly you have to think about things like what your policy on hookers is.
The biggest drama in my life right now is with the tax authorities in China. I’m finding out that low-level people can really persecute you if they want.
I will have such a good time if they put me in jail; I’ll call journalists first, then my lawyer second.
Any socialist part of me has been knocked out doing business in China.


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Michelle Garnaut on starting out in Hong Kong, opening M at the Fringe, and Shanghai 

Magazines

In November 1989, Australian chef Michelle Garnaut opened M at the Fringe in the historic Dairy Farm building and changed dining culture in Hong Kong. Ten years later, she opened M on the Bund and did the same for Shanghai, where she also launched the city’s first Literary Festival and opened The Glamour Bar. Bruce Dawson finds out it was no cakewalk. 
