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Pioneer of the Bund makes it 10
By David Maguire |
January 11, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT was not just "any" pink party last night at the waterfront eatery M on the Bund. It celebrated with customary flair and style the 10th birthday of the restaurant and bar that has become an institution in Shanghai.
And it was another milestone passed by Michelle Garnaut, restaurateur, entrepreneur and culture patron who was the right smart person in the right place at the right time in Shanghai in the late 1990s when she started the business.
In the past 10 to 15 years, Garnaut has discovered Shanghai, created M on the Bund and then reinvented it with the Glamour Bar and an international literary festival.
The Melbourne-born resident of Hong Kong was a trail-blazer on the Shanghai food scene when she opened the restaurant in January 1999. But she was also in the vanguard of the world awakening to Shanghai.
"We opened right at the time people were starting to wake up and think Shanghai's really interesting. And suddenly everybody was talking about the place," she said.
Her first foray into the market was a guest hosting stint for a couple of weeks in 1996 at the old Peace Hotel and it proved a valuable, if nightmarish, introduction to Shanghai.
"We were doing about 50-60 covers a night, whereas the Peace Grill was used to doing between 10 and 12 customers a week so the staff couldn't cope at all," she said.
"We got our bread from the Hilton and it took up to four hours every day to get from the Peace Hotel to the Hilton in a cab, get the bread and get back again. There were no highways, the traffic was absolute chaos."
Garnaut kept her candle burning to start a restaurant in Shanghai and looked at options, including buildings on The Bund, an area she was warned against.
"Life in those times for the international, affluent community existed between the triangle of the Okura, the Hilton and the Portman. Everybody said to me you cannot be more than five minutes outside the triangle and preferably you should be in it," she said.
"In 1997 I came back and looked at various places, had a terrible experience negotiating for six months on one, paid for the contracts myself and when we came to sign, the other party got the documents redrawn. I turned around, walked away and cried.
"I'd wasted a whole year. It was going into the Asian financial crisis and everyone was depressed. A bit like now. I thought forget it, it's never going to work in China, never in 100 years."
Her interest was soon reignited on the advice of friends who insisted she look at the current premises at Number 5, The Bund. "Everything beautiful had been taken out of the building during renovating, and the current space was literally a concrete block, no water, no electricity, cords and wires everywhere, an empty shell.
"The front was just a wall with a tiny door and a tiny window. The terrace was full of broken concrete, bits of trees, rats running around and was just open space.
"But when I went out, I thought 'oh my god.' It was such a sense of 'wow' ownership over Shanghai, even though you were only seven floors up. It was this incredible thing in front of you, the busy river, and behind you were 1930s urban, really old buildings.
"Really relevant then was that nowhere in Shanghai could you get a sense of that river in front of you and a new city being built," she said.
The start-up days were with one oven, one deep fryer, a couple of little toaster ovens, bottled gas, Guangdong Road flooding twice a year, isolation from taxis not knowing the location and customers who refused to make reservations.
The restaurant is now an icon of international dining in tandem with the Glamour Bar, a sublime Shanghai salon of the 1930s. It is also a focus of international culture through literary events, and musical and artistic performances.
"I think a lot of it's luck that we were here at the right time," Garnaut says of her continuing Shanghai odyssey.
"We were the first on the Bund and we've had a parallel history with it. We were in this pivotal place with the old and the new and there was nothing like it in China," she said.
"I'm very proud of what we've done," she added.
And so say all of us.
And it was another milestone passed by Michelle Garnaut, restaurateur, entrepreneur and culture patron who was the right smart person in the right place at the right time in Shanghai in the late 1990s when she started the business.
In the past 10 to 15 years, Garnaut has discovered Shanghai, created M on the Bund and then reinvented it with the Glamour Bar and an international literary festival.
The Melbourne-born resident of Hong Kong was a trail-blazer on the Shanghai food scene when she opened the restaurant in January 1999. But she was also in the vanguard of the world awakening to Shanghai.
"We opened right at the time people were starting to wake up and think Shanghai's really interesting. And suddenly everybody was talking about the place," she said.
Her first foray into the market was a guest hosting stint for a couple of weeks in 1996 at the old Peace Hotel and it proved a valuable, if nightmarish, introduction to Shanghai.
"We were doing about 50-60 covers a night, whereas the Peace Grill was used to doing between 10 and 12 customers a week so the staff couldn't cope at all," she said.
"We got our bread from the Hilton and it took up to four hours every day to get from the Peace Hotel to the Hilton in a cab, get the bread and get back again. There were no highways, the traffic was absolute chaos."
Garnaut kept her candle burning to start a restaurant in Shanghai and looked at options, including buildings on The Bund, an area she was warned against.
"Life in those times for the international, affluent community existed between the triangle of the Okura, the Hilton and the Portman. Everybody said to me you cannot be more than five minutes outside the triangle and preferably you should be in it," she said.
"In 1997 I came back and looked at various places, had a terrible experience negotiating for six months on one, paid for the contracts myself and when we came to sign, the other party got the documents redrawn. I turned around, walked away and cried.
"I'd wasted a whole year. It was going into the Asian financial crisis and everyone was depressed. A bit like now. I thought forget it, it's never going to work in China, never in 100 years."
Her interest was soon reignited on the advice of friends who insisted she look at the current premises at Number 5, The Bund. "Everything beautiful had been taken out of the building during renovating, and the current space was literally a concrete block, no water, no electricity, cords and wires everywhere, an empty shell.
"The front was just a wall with a tiny door and a tiny window. The terrace was full of broken concrete, bits of trees, rats running around and was just open space.
"But when I went out, I thought 'oh my god.' It was such a sense of 'wow' ownership over Shanghai, even though you were only seven floors up. It was this incredible thing in front of you, the busy river, and behind you were 1930s urban, really old buildings.
"Really relevant then was that nowhere in Shanghai could you get a sense of that river in front of you and a new city being built," she said.
The start-up days were with one oven, one deep fryer, a couple of little toaster ovens, bottled gas, Guangdong Road flooding twice a year, isolation from taxis not knowing the location and customers who refused to make reservations.
The restaurant is now an icon of international dining in tandem with the Glamour Bar, a sublime Shanghai salon of the 1930s. It is also a focus of international culture through literary events, and musical and artistic performances.
"I think a lot of it's luck that we were here at the right time," Garnaut says of her continuing Shanghai odyssey.
"We were the first on the Bund and we've had a parallel history with it. We were in this pivotal place with the old and the new and there was nothing like it in China," she said.
"I'm very proud of what we've done," she added.
And so say all of us.
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