Ask Michelle Garnaut, the pioneering Australian chef and restaurateur, how much the Hong Kong dining scene has evolved, particularly from the point of view of female chefs, since she opened M at the Fringe — the first independent fine-dining restaurant outside a hotel in the city — in 1989. You can expect by way of response a very wry, very worldly, very expressive snort. “Back then, cooking wasn’t even seen as a proper job,” she says. “Virtually no women were involved. I had one talented young female chef — a local — who quit to become a manager at KFC because her parents thought that any managerial role was more respectable than being a chef.”
問問澳洲主廚和餐廳老闆的先驅蜜雪兒•加諾特(Michelle Garnaut)，自1989年她開設了香港第一家酒店外獨立高級餐廳M at the Fringe以來，香港的餐飲界發生了多大的變化，尤其是從女主廚的角度來看。作爲回應，你可以期待她非常揶揄、非常世故、非常意味深長的哼聲。「那時候，烹飪甚至不被視爲正經工作。」她說，「實際上沒有女性做廚師。我認識一位才華橫溢的年輕女廚師——一個當地人——辭職去了肯德基(KFC)當經理，因爲她父母認爲任何管理職位都比當廚師更受人尊敬。」