Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet is a single-table restaurant in Shanghai, China, opened in May 2012 by French chef Paul Pairet and the VOL Group. Since October 2014 Ultraviolet became one of the restaurant members of Les Grandes Tables du Monde, the first restaurant in this organization from China. In September 2017, the second edition of Michelin Guide Shanghai released the result for 2018, and Ultraviolet received 3 Michelin stars. Overview Billed as the first multi-sensory restaurant in the world, Ultraviolet uses sight, sound and smell to enhance the food through a controlled and tailored atmosphere. The restaurant has a single table of 10 seats and serves a single 20+ course dinner menu for ten guests each night. The dining room of Ultraviolet is ascetic with no décor, no artifacts, no paintings, and no views. The room is equipped with multi-sensory high-end technology such as dry scent projectors, stage and UV lighting, 360 degree wall projection, table projectors, beam speakers and a multichannel speaker system. Each course of the menu is accompanied by lights, sounds, music, and/or scents, and enhanced with its own tailored atmosphere to provide context for the dish's taste. Ultraviolet originally evolved from Pairet’s desire to reduce the technical constraints of the traditional restaurant, which is organized to provide “a la carte” service. This type of organization requires preparation methods that Pairet considers “sub-standard”. By monitoring the timing of the courses and offering a fixed menu, Ultraviolet is able to optimize the control and the quality of cooking in ways that the majority of traditional restaurants cannot – a model that has roots in the historical “table d’hôte” concept. This control allows Ultraviolet to play on and direct the atmosphere for each dish through multi-sensory technology. Ultraviolet incorporates technology traditionally used in unrelated fields to drive and control the “psycho taste” and enhance the perception of food. This concept is based on Pairet's interest and desire to stimulate what he calls the ‘psycho-taste’. Howie Kahn, writing in The New York Times, conveyed Pairet's idea that ‘psycho taste’ allows eating to “act as a gateway to the mind” and “it delves into the notion that memories, associations, expectations, ideas, misunderstandings, joys and fears all play a role in the experience of a meal.”