Shanghai members club death match: Prive vs. KEE vs. M1NT
With the arrival of Prive from Hong Kong, there are now three households, all alike in quasi-exclusivity, throwing down for the confusing title of ‘most popular Hong Kong club in Shanghai that maybe doesn’t want your patronage.’
Here, they finally face off.
Round 1: M1NT vs Kee Club
Locale: M1NT
Crowd: Editorial interns pretending to be bankers and good looking people who don’t want to sleep with them. Also, Australians.
Defining characteristic: A predatory atmosphere that’s almost as strong in the 17-meter shark tank as it is on the dance floor.
Annoying quality we've grown to love: Those unsexy paintings of nudes by the bathrooms. Seeing them is like taking a cold shower -- it’s a good way to wash off that crust of desperation. The restaurant bathroom has exactly the opposite effect.
Secret weapon: M1NT is known first as a club, but the dagger in its sock is an impressively consistent restaurant, currently headed by London’s Grant Brunsden.
Locale: Kee Club
Crowd: Anyone who ever used scale model ships to recreate their favorite Opium Wars skirmishes.
Defining characteristic: Upholstery buttons, but Kee’s menagerie of furniture also includes a pair of whimsical horse saddle stools.
Annoying quality we've grown to love: Exclusivity. Unlike M1NT and Prive Shanghai, Kee club really will turn you away if you’re not a member. It’s nice to see a member’s club putting its RMB 50,000 per year annual membership fee (with RMB 60,000 food and beverage credit) where its mouth is.
Secret weapon: Kee is diversified, like a smart investment portfolio. In addition to the club’s own well-stocked bar, 54-seat Western cuisine restaurant and four private rooms, you can get a bespoke suit made at the in-house Alfred Dunhill store, sit down for a cut-throat shave at The Barber, or pick out a watch at Vacheron Constantin.
First blow: Kee Club hits first, slamming M1NT right in its paltry annual RMB 6,500 membership fee (with RMB 3,000 credit). That’s no way to keep out the riffraff.
Knock out punch: Tweed is tough but it does little to protect Kee against M1NT’s militia of lingerie models and plus-size R&B artists. So, in a move to gain back the upper hand, M1NT decks Kee with an everyone-saw-that-coming haymaker. It ain’t subtle but it works.
Round one winner: M1NT with a low blow.
Round 2: Kee Club versus Prive
Locale: Prive
Crowd: Triads and some of the slower moving new bar fetishists.
Defining Characteristics: Prive is on the Bund and it has the terrace, with views of the Huangpu and the Pearl Tower, to prove it.
Annoying quality we’ve grown to love: Having gothic window frames in a historic art deco building actually does make sense, at least when it comes to inter-club combat. It allows Prive to go medieval on its competition.
Secret Weapon: Privé has a 400-inch television screen. Just imagine the winter Wii tournaments they could host.
First Blow: Hoping to hit back at M1NT, Kee catapults some of its musty neoclassical artwork towards the Bund. Despite the relatively short distance from Kee’s respectable Huaihai Lu address, the missile overshoots and hits Prive, bringing it into the fray.
Knock out Punch: Prive scrambles its in-house army of UNESCO sleeper agents to defend the historic Bund 6 building. Kee’s 1920s villa is deemed mere collateral damage when it comes to protecting Prive’s generous assemblage of salon style bars, a decent dance floor and that all-important terrace.
Round two winner: Prive
Round 3: M1NT versus Prive
First Blow: Prive lands a jab right where Kee hit M1NT, reopening the wound of its itty bitty membership fee. Individual Prive memberships weigh in at RMB 15,000-30,000.
Knock Out Punch: Almost evenly matched, both Prive and M1NT are big clubs where pedigree comes second to partying. In this death match though, it’s Shanghai experience and determination to be number one that wins out with savvy M1NT grabbing Prive by the privates and squeezing out a win by submission.
Suffice to say, it’s not classiness that gives M1NT the sort of "lastability" not seen in Shanghai since Bar Rouge, but it's still around nonetheless.
Round three winner: M1NT
