Let's do launch(2)
It's no secret that mainland China's burgeoning wealthy class is still relatively uneducated when it comes to Western food and wine.
In fact, they couldn't be further from the savvy, sophisticated types who frequent Pearl in Richmond. Mainlanders prefer simple dishes - and are happy to pay for what they want.
"We have customers who order a $1000 bottle of wine and drink it with Coca-Cola," Lindsay says.
Still, as the restaurant celebrated its first birthday this month, Lindsay has no regrets. "We want to be there for the long haul," he says.
Lindsay is just one of a wave of Melbourne chefs who have tackled Hong Kong in the past few years.
Greg Malouf has consulted at Olive, Hong Kong's first Middle-Eastern restaurant, since it opened in 2004 and has just opened Malouf's Arabesque Cuisine; Teage Ezard opened Opia, the restaurant in the boutique hotel Jia, in 2005; and Three, One, Two's Andrew McConnell worked at M at the Fringe in the late '90s for three years (one of the first western fine dining restaurants in Hong Kong, M at the Fringe was opened in 1984 by Melburnian Michelle Garnaut, who also owns Shanghai's M on the Bund).
More recently, Harry Lilai, head chef at Cecconi's Cantina, has been involved in the launch of two new Cecconi's - one in the city's buzzing Soho district and one in Macau - a booming Special Administrative Region of China an hour from Hong Kong that has recently overtaken Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world.
For chefs from Melbourne thinking of expanding overseas - or just working in a different environment - Hong Kong is an obvious choice.
It's close, it's an exciting place to live and it has one of the most vibrant dining scenes in the world.
In the past year alone, a host of big-name restaurants have opened including Nobu, Joel Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire and Zuma.
The chefs themselves might rarely set foot here but in Hong Kong that's not the point. It's all about the brand.
Most Melbourne chefs with businesses here work in partnership with Hong Kong-based restaurant groups. Lindsay's Pearl on the Peak operates as a joint venture with m.a.x. concepts, the Western arm of the Maxim's Group, which owns scores of mass-market restaurants as well as the Starbucks franchise in Hong Kong. Lilai, Malouf and McConnell work in partnership with a company called Dining Concepts, which operates 12 restaurants in the city.
Working with a local company has its advantages and disadvantages. "Being involved with a large company is a very different culture," Lindsay says.
"One of the main challenges has been how financially accountable the business has to be. We had to make a return in the first month - in Melbourne you would not expect to make a return for the first year."
One of the risks for chefs who lend their name and brand in return for a fee is that the quality will lapse when they are no longer around to oversee things. It was after a great deal of thought that the Bortolotto family, owners of Cecconis, licensed its name.
As part of the deal, head chef Harry Lilai is consulting and has also provided the chefs - Peter Birks in Hong Kong and Darron Paul in Macau.
"It's a big risk for all of us," he admits.
Although the Soho restaurant has been open for only six months and the Macau one for seven weeks, Lilai says the early signs are good: "We get a lot of expats coming in for our signature dishes like osso buco and tiramisu."
Even though he was expected to be highly visible during the restaurant's opening phase, Teage Ezard did not lend his name to the restaurant in Jia, the independently owned, Philippe Starck-designed boutique hotel tucked away in an unremarkable corner of Causeway Bay.
His executive chef at Opia, Dane Clouston, trained at ezard and has been in Hong Kong since the launch.
Again, menu planning wasn't easy, says Ezard.
"Opia was a hit with the expats from the start but the Hong Kong Chinese market is difficult (because) they are used to very plain foods," he says.
"We opened a cafe downstairs called Y's that caters more for the Hong Kong Chinese set with lunches including congees, noodles, char sui pork and dumplings."
Pearl on the Peak's executive chef David Ricardo agrees the key to success in Hong Kong is flexibility.
