Food & Drink Magazine

Restaurants Meets Design 110: Ultraviolet, Shanghai

By Nogarlicnoonions @nogarlicnoonion

A single table of ten seats only. A 20-course “Avant-Garde” set menu. All the guests sit together. The experience begins. Food leads. Dinner unfolds as a sensory play choreographed by chef Paul Pairet and the Ultraviolet Team.

Restaurants Meets Design 110: Ultraviolet, Shanghai

No décor, no artifacts, no paintings, no views… Ultraviolet’s dining room is ascetic by nature. Specifically equipped with multi sensorial high-end technology, the dining room is dressed-up by lights, sounds, music, scents… a cool air blow, an immersive projection, images and imagination… and food. Each course is enhanced with its own taste-tailored atmosphere.
Ultraviolet is the first experimental restaurant of its kind.

Restaurants Meets Design 110: Ultraviolet, Shanghai

WHY

To Influence, Entertain, Challenge, Interact, Celebrate, Boost, Immerse, or simply Support the perception of taste through a tailored atmosphere. To induce the role of the elusive “Psycho-Taste”, and acknowledge the influence, on taste, of everything about taste, but the taste. To offer a bold and exclusive dining experience that engages all the senses to create
the ultimate luxury: Emotion

 

Restaurants Meets Design 110: Ultraviolet, Shanghai

You won’t find much Luxury as such in Ultraviolet (only in the toilets ironically…).It is quite a naked body stripped down to its core essential. It is about cement, steel and glass actually…But if you want to understand how could this restaurant claim to be one of the most of anything in truth, than you might measure it within its exceptional context of 10 customers only…
Or you might want to visit the back office, the engine and its power.

THE FOOD FROM ULTRAVIOLET
After the populist and popular Mr & Mrs Bund, Ultraviolet stamps Paul Pairet’s return to the author’s cuisine he became known for at the Pudong Shangri-La’s Jade on 36. All guests receive the same 20-course set menu at the same time, which pushes the experience towards the essence of what a meal is about: a communion.

Ultraviolet’s 20 courses (or so) menu will move in a series of dishes grouped by size and nature. Dinner may begin with just one or two bite dishes, move to more substantial fare, before hitting uphill a “pivotal moment,” where the meal might suspend its synchronization to introduce a choice.

The menu will then shift downhill for a series of digestives and sweets in diminishing sizes. What dishes make up the series is entirely flexible. Pairet reserves the freedom to express his personal “avant-garde figurative” cuisine (understand modern with flesh and bone) as much as his right to express the essence of a product, simplicity and anti-theatrics. The rhythm and size of a 20 courses meal lend to both experimentation and comfort, to Wwows and Haaas.

Restaurants Meets Design 110: Ultraviolet, Shanghai

 


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