In an industry infamous for its here-today-and-gone-tomorrow vagaries, Australia-born restaurateur Michelle Garnaut has built a small but influential portfolio of restaurants and bars in Hong Kong and China while ignoring style advice from well-meaning friends and industry ‘experts’.
As she surveys her newest incarnation, Glam, a 240 square metre bar-and-dining lounge that opened recently on Shanghai’s famed Bund, she admits her reluctance to follow trends has not changed since her first foray into the business with M on the Fringe in 1989.
The first “helpful hints” she dismissed then related to what people thought was a remote and challenging location: the compact atelier-like space was tucked away in an old dairy depot on Hong Kong’s Ice House Street, a world away from Central’s main shopping route or hotels. Inside, Garnaut created a flamboyant pink-hued boudoir-like haven complete with quirky three-legged chairs and an eclectic menu serving unpretentious modern Australian fare with a creative twist. The desserts were legendary.
“I must have been a nightmare because I had no idea about a construction programme but I knew I didn’t want it to look like any other place,” she laughs. “I really don’t get why people want to copy other places. Everything in those days was either very formal, expensive restaurants in hotels or the other end of the spectrum.”
Then, in 1998, in perhaps her greatest display of real estate foresight, Garnaut ventured onto Shanghai’s Bund.
