In the next breath, Lintott then admits that if Taiwan was the same as other, more developed countries, then it would not have the same appeal.
"Especially a few years ago there was a fantastic energy, an almost adolescent dynamism here. It was like you could wake up in the morning and open a restaurant or something. Anything."
Lintott just about refrains from saying he loves Taiwan and instead attacks whinging foreigners.
"I don't like their attitude. I'm emotionally attached to Taiwan. I have a loyalty to the place and a lot of luggage here."
Lintott tied the knot again in Las Vegas seven years ago with a Taiwanese-American and they now have a five-year-old daughter.
Domestic and commercial stability has brought him to a point where he has to balance the attraction of new opportunities with the necessity of keeping what he's got.
Though he has worked on projects in China and elsewhere he doesn't want to spend half his life on a plane going from one appointment to another.
"I don't want to put my family at risk and I don't want to jeopardize my business. As a young man you have no loyalty or baggage."
Even so, Lintott describes himself as a person who "grinds on things mentally and who is naturally restless. He has projects in the pipeline that excite him, such as opening a large swanky restaurant, putting out a range of entertainment furniture and opening a London-style members club.
He smiles when he says he wants to reverse the flow and export design to England. It's his competitive edge.
He reckons that he has succeeded because, "What I do has a very definite commercial angle. I'm quite good at that and I always make money for my clients."
This is borne out by the fact that places he has worked on such as Opium Den, Plush and the original Room 18 have done well. People like his aesthetic.
"Design can create a buzz. It could be a beautiful place, but crap commercially because people don't feel comfortable. It's better if it looks like shit but does well."
Asked to come up with a definition of his work, he calls it "eclectic modernism. This is diametrically opposed to postmodernism which was re-appropriating the symbols, objects and features of past architecture and putting it together in blocks, like children's toys. I'm very against that banal and irrelevant attitude."
"[My work] is theatrical, even feminine, an entertainment for people. It should be an illusion, transparent and delightful. This is what people respond to."
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