When she arrived in Hong Kong as a young traveller nearly 30 years ago, Michelle Garnaut was brimming with determination but had no money, job or visa. She did, however, possess a dream and the strength of will to fight a rather entrenched stereotype.

“No-one was really used to the idea of women cooking,” she says. “I was told I would earn more money as a waitress, and it was more appropriate.”

Garnaut soon won a job as a second chef at Restaurant 97 in Hong Kong and spent the next five years developing her craft. She was good in the kitchen, but it was her ability to pull together many strings that helped her branch out as a proprietor in 1989 and set the gold standard for what would become today’s M Restaurant Group.

As the sun was setting on the 1980s, Garnaut opened M at the Fringe with Sandra de Pury as chef. She credits the success of her first restaurant to timing.

“It was an entirely new thing for Hong Kong, rather than a new style of food,” she says. M at the Fringe set the pace in modern and international dining in Hong Kong for years.

It wasn’t just the beautiful location on Lower Albert Road in the city’s historic Central district or the non-fussy manner with which Garnaut ran the restaurant, it was the genuine and honest nature of the venue and its food.

Garnaut had, in fact, introduced independent fine dining to Hong Kong. Ten years later, Garnaut made a brave early move to Shanghai, opening M on the Bund in 1999. She is credited with rejuvenating the Bund, a waterfront area in central Shanghai that now has a thriving scene with restaurants, bars, cafés and shops.

It was a very different place when Garnaut set up shop. “It was a challenge and there was a lot of negativity. Most people thought I was crazy,” she recalls. “I was told I would earn more money as a waitress, and it was more appropriate.”

Again, Garnaut’s experience and perseverance through the challenges of establishing an independent business in China helped pull her through. Turning M on the Bund into a success carved a global name for Garnaut and attracted rich and famous diners from around the world.

Capitalising on her success, Garnaut opened The Glamour Bar in 2001, before moving it to a bigger venue five years later. It was in the same building as M on the Bund, but was a sophisticated “bar for grown-ups” in a stylish atmosphere.

“China has changed in the last 20 years more than most places on the planet have changed in the last 200,” says Garnaut, who was named 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year in the International Woman of Influence Awards and received the 1999 Business Entrepreneurial Award in the ANZ Australian Business Awards. “I think that makes it quite a tough place, but it is also what makes it exciting.