Carlowman savouring taste of success in booming Shanghai

WILD GEESE: Brendan Brophy, Restaurateur and entreprenuer in Shanghai

SHANGHAI IS China’s most western of cities, the financial capital of a country experiencing an unprecedented economic boom. The city is home to 20 million people, and sometimes it feels like half of them are at the expo, so long are the queues to enter the national pavilions at the World Fair.

A fair few of them are supping pints at the Porterhouse pavilion, which Carlow-born Brendan Brophy runs for the Irish microbrewery group, which is dipping its toe into this fascinating market. He also co-owns one of the latest additions to the city’s small selection of Irish pubs, The Irishman, in the Pudong district, and has a stake in one of the city’s bustling sports bars, The Camel. On top of all this, he runs a successful sourcing business in the city.

“This is the new America. And it’s not just China; it’s the whole region, everywhere. Learn Chinese and get out here, it’s all happening,” says Brophy, as another group of Chinese Expo visitors take their seats in the Irish-themed pavilion.

Brophy is a familiar face around the Shanghai social circuit. During his time here he managed Sasha’s, a popular bar and nightclub, and seems to have contacts everywhere.

It’s a long way from Rockwell catering college near Cashel.

“I always loved cooking, it was in the family since my grandmother cooked for a French countess in Glenmore early in the last century.

“But I went early to study after my father, who worked at the sugar factory in Carlow, died suddenly and I needed to learn a trade,” says Brophy. Rockwell was a tough regime, with the students allowed out one weekend a month. “It must have been the toughest culinary school in Europe, but it put manners on me,” he laughs.

His early working life was spent at the Hotel Kilkenny, AIB Bankcentre in Ballsbridge and then the Mirabeau, that early bastion of good food in Dublin. He won a Chef Ireland award in 1987, of which he is still extremely proud. Stints on cruise ships followed, including the Wind Starand the boat formerly known as the Love Boat.

He returned to Ireland, where he set up his own business in Wicklow before running a chain of restaurants out of Gorey, one of which was a Chinese restaurant.

“This was the first China connection. I had to go to England to learn how to cook Chinese food,” he says.

When a job offer in Shanghai came up in 1998, he jumped. It was at The Dublin Exchange with one of Shanghai’s best-known Irish entrepreneurs, Rob Young, who owns the O’Malley’s pub in the city.

“We set up the Dublin Exchange in the HSBC Tower in Pudong, and it was the best food I have ever been able to cook. Pudong was only taking off back then, there were just two or three towers, and the Asian financial crisis was biting too. Now look at it,” he says.

When people think of the Shanghai skyline, they mean Pudong. It is the face of New Shanghai, a metropolis built out of swampy farmland in just a few short years.

Brophy stayed for eight years, spending one year in Budapest, before coming back to Shanghai.

“In 2008 myself and Declan Surlis from Sligo opened The Irishman, and the Camel has been open for six months – you want to see the crowds we get in for things like the All-Ireland,” he says.

Brophy is very involved in the Irish community in Shanghai, which is the biggest in China. Six years ago he started the St Patrick’s Day ball in the city, while he was also involved in the founding of the Shanghai GAA.

“We also have a sourcing company for Irish companies. We source everything across the board, from hotel equipment to granite to furniture to paintings. We’ve even done rat traps,” he says.

The sourcing business has become less frantic since the Irish boom dried up, but the fact he has enough opportunities in Shanghai means that what happens in Ireland has a fairly neutral impact on his business.

He regularly goes home to Carlow and has had mixed experiences of returning.

“It used to vex me when I’d be there and some 20-year-old upstart would tell me about how I should be getting into property, someone who’d never worked a day in their lives,” he says.

“We got spoiled. This recession will bring people back to reality, maybe. We’d lost a lot of our Irishness,” he says.

An option is always to come to China.

“There is so much going on. If you’re coming out here, do your homework. A lot of people coming out here are very naive, but make sure you have a watertight contract; it’s no different here from anywhere else. I’ve seen big companies coming out here unprepared, so I would say do your homework,” he says.

“Everything happens at its own pace in China. It can be frustrating, but it’s not people sitting around talking. Things really happen here.”