China's first pop-up

Today's Glam is a chic bar in the heart of Shanghai. [Photo provided to China Daily]

On the opening night, her team hosted about a dozen guests from the hotel company and a similar number of journalists and guests from the local restaurant industry. By the final weekend, bookings were up to 47 per night in a dining room of 50 tables.

Garnaut still has the reservation book, which she thumbs through as she reminisces. One guest, a French traveling salesman, appears on the list almost nightly. She also has a thick scrapbook of photos from the time, advertisements for "M at the Peace" and other memorabilia.

"Somehow, we didn't save an actual menu－I can't imagine how that happened," she sighs.

The menu definitely ended with pavlova, a fantasy of meringue, fresh fruit and cream that has become a signature at her restaurants.

"It was very pricy," she says. "With all of the preparation and ingredients we had to fly in, the average bill was about 750 yuan－and that was back when the exchange was about 8 yuan to the US dollar."

She had a sense of working 24/7 the whole time.

"I'm sure that on the last day, I was saying 'Never again!'"

But she wasn't through with the Chinese mainland－or perhaps it wasn't through with her. In any event, the potential was just too great, and the country was opening up in the 1990s very quickly, which made it more practical for foreign ventures to come and operate.

She says she weighed some attractive options in Singapore, but in the end she found the idea of returning to Shanghai－and opening the first independent Western restaurant, not one in a hotel－irresistible.