about us: Steve Baker - Executive Chef & Owner

“Mesa [offers] one of the most exciting meals in Shanghai.”
-- Gourmet magazine, 2005

Talented Australian chef Steve Baker has won rave reviews for his cuisine in restaurants from Bali to Bermuda to Zermatt, but when the time came to open his own place, it was Shanghai that he selected. “This place is electric. There is so much energy,” Baker says, “I have never been anywhere that felt like you could come up with an idea and just make it happen.”

As it turns out, Steve’s idea – serving modern Australian cuisine in an urbane restaurant and bar – is perfectly suited to cosmopolitan Shanghai. Grounded in seasonality and freshness, “modern Australian cuisine takes on the influences of all the cultures that have settled there,” he explains, “and just like Shanghai today, it is constantly evolving.”

Steve, who is a native of Adelaide, completed his apprentice chef training at the Regency Institute of Tafe before heading for Terence Conran’s dazzling Quaglino’s Restaurant in London, the first stop on a culinary career that would take him to some of the finest restaurants around the world.

He arrived in Shanghai in 2000 from GHM’s Serai Hotel in Bali with the mission of setting up T8 restaurant and the boutique Fuchun Resort (both GHM properties). Both venues won critical acclaim. Steve’s cuisine at T8, in particular, has been credited for making it one of a handful of pioneering international eateries that put Shanghai on the world culinary map.

At mesa & manifesto, Steve continues to make his mark with a menu whose soul remains modern Australian, but is constantly changing, inspired by the seasons, the kitchen’s creativity, and guest preferences. “Our cuisine is modern, chic and contemporary,” says Steve, adding, “which really defines mesa & manifesto.”