Michelle Garnaut, Hong Kong restaurant pioneer, still wants to reopen in city despite fruitless 7-year search for premises

When M at the Fringe closed in December 2009, after 20 years as one of Hong Kong’s most loved restaurants, many regulars felt a loss. It was the city’s first fine-dining restaurant that wasn’t in a hotel and the place had soul – a testament to the warmth and hospitality that Australian restaurateur and former chef Michelle Garnaut had injected into it.

Softening the blow, Garnaut promised she would open another M in Hong Kong – it was simply a matter of finding the right venue. That was seven years ago.

There are plenty of whispers about why it’s taking so long. My hairdresser had heard Garnaut would launch a venture as part of the Central Police Station revitalisation project on Hollywood Road. A friend insisted no, Garnaut had ditched that because the proposed opening hours were unworkable. Another friend said she’d been put off after a building in the compound partially collapsed last year.

They were all wrong. Garnaut tried for several years to secure a space in the heritage project, but it was going nowhere fast and she threw in the towel.

I was meeting Garnaut for the first time since 2009, when she had vowed to look for a suitable site for a new Hong Kong restaurant – and a heritage building was a key qualifier. All M Restaurants have been in impressive locations. In Shanghai, Garnaut foresaw that the Bund would come into vogue, and helped make it a destination with her M on the Bund, which opened in 1999. And in Beijing, her Capital M, a restaurant, opened in 2009 with a massive terrace overlooking Tiananmen Square.