As Shanghai restaurant M on the Bund closes, what’s next for the woman behind the legendary venue that hosted royals, film stars and prime ministers?
- Australian restaurateur Michelle Garnaut, who also owned Hong Kong’s M at the Fringe, will close her Shanghai fine dining restaurant on February 15
- She talks about the ups and downs, working out the best exit and maybe starting a podcast series on personal stories of China
In the spring of 1998, Australian restaurateur Michelle Garnaut signed a lease for premises on the seventh floor of the 1920s Nissin Shipping Building on the Bund in Shanghai. She already had an award-winning restaurant in Hong Kong called M at the Fringe, which she’d opened in 1989, that managed to be committed to fine dining yet also fabulously blithe. Doubts were expressed that she could pull off the same feat on the Bund where (so locals warned) no one went except Chinese tourists from the countryside, carrying their jam jars of tea.
In the spring of 1999, she opened M on the Bund with its wonderful terrace overlooking the Huangpu river. In the summer, she learned that her landlord had been arrested for corruption. In the autumn, she signed a second lease. (Opaque is a word she uses about the leases in her life; they’ve always had a slightly wintry relationship.) Soon other restaurants, taking note of its popularity, began to stud the Bund. In 2001, Garnaut opened Glamour Bar on the sixth floor.
Expats, locals, tourists, consular staff, journalists, writers, musicians, film stars, royals – even North Koreans, as she likes to remark - came to Garnaut’s cheerful, cosseting worlds, transported in a lift that cost 750,000 yuan to renovate. Cultural events were staged, charities nurtured, special occasions marked and new relationships forged (the food and drinks editor of the South China Morning Post met her future husband at M on the Bund’s third anniversary).
Her success inspired Garnaut to look further north. In 2009 she opened Capital M, in Beijing, with its spectacular view of Tiananmen Square’s Zhengyang Gate.
Now, the show is – almost – over. M at the Fringe closed, after 20 years, in 2009. Capital M closed in 2017. Glamour Bar was reincarnated as Glam in 2015. Despite its rickety beginning, M on the Bund has lasted the longest of all her ventures. But in December, Garnaut sent out an email saying that it – and Glam – are closing. The final day will be February 15, 2022.
