M1NT's Soft Opening: Pros and Cons

Everyone likes a good party, especially one with free flow champagne like last night’s M1NT pre-launch. In spite of the copious amounts of alcohol, we are sad to say this exclusive billionaire-millionaire club opened not with a bang, but with a pop. As an old China hand, maybe Shanghaiist is just too jaded to enjoy the hype, but here's our summary of Shanghai's newest club.

The Good

• All black decor, very classy looking.
• Cathedral ceilings with huge windows.
  
• Great balcony, except for the occasional waft of sewage. Or maybe that was just the smell of the Huangpu River.
• Central location
• Fantastic Bund views, even in some of the bathrooms.
• It's huge. You can avoid people you don't like.
• According to friends, smoking hot women and a lot of them.
• Shiny chandelier, which looked really expensive.
• Chocolate lollipops.
• Rumors that Jude Law would make an appearance.

The Bad

• Screams pretentious (which we understand may be a good thing for some people, especially the shareholders).
• Despite the attempts to create a feeling of luxury and exclusivity, it didn't seem all that different than any other Bund establishment or swanky nightclub.
• So elite the place was relatively empty for a pre-launch party in a city like Shanghai where people will beg, barter, and steal to get on an invite list. (No, we aren’t talking about ourselves. Although, our media invitation did get lost in the mail.)
• It's huge. We lost our friends.
• Women’s bathrooms. Way too few - 6 stalls in the whole place by our count. Even though according to a That's Shanghai interview, M1NT says most of their members are men, we still don’t think they should have scenes of topless women covering the ladies' room.
• Where was the furniture in the restaurant area?
• The promised shark tank was not filled with the elusive hammerheads, but small, common blacktip reef sharks. One friend referred to them as fish.
• Painting of women wearing g-strings and 'entertaining' men. Totally crass. Maybe if this really was a gentlemen’s club that would be acceptable. Otherwise, it's just sexist.
• Fish salad with onions appetizer. Anything with onions is never a good idea at a social function.
• No hot tub in sight, despite advertisements.
• We never saw Jude Law! Did anyone else?

We are certain that many will disagree with our comments (except maybe the number of women's bathrooms) and that M1NT will still be very successful for some time (predictions on how long it will last have already begun here).

Photo courtesy of L.K.'s iPhone (which obviously has fantastic night mode options).