Paul Pairet

Paul Pairet (born 29 June 1964) is a French chef. He is the founder, partner and chef de cuisine of restaurants Mr & Mrs Bund and Ultraviolet, both located in Shanghai, China. In 2013, he was presented with the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants,^[1][2] a list affiliated with the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. His cuisine is often described as avant-garde (a few press reference links at the end of the article).

Biography

Pairet was born in Perpignan and studied at a hotel school in Toulouse after a scientific study background. A chef/instructor who demonstrated diffusion and biochemical reactions in cooking impressed him as a student, and he decided to become a chef.^[3]

Restaurants

He was first noticed by the press while helming Café Mosaic in Paris in 1998. Over the next 15 years, he also worked in Istanbul, Hong Kong, Sydney and Jakarta. In 2005, he settled in Shanghai to open Jade on 36, an avant-garde restaurant in the Pudong Shangri-La Hotel.^[4]

In April 2009, he opened Mr & Mrs Bund in the Bund 18 building, where has been lauded for his witty takes on bistro classics. The restaurant was ranked the seventh best in Asia and the 43rd best in the world in 2013, making it the first restaurant in Mainland China to be ranked on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.^[5][6] In 2014 Mr & Mrs Bund was ranked No. 11 in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants,^[7] and No. 76 in the world's list.^[8]

In February 2010, he presented his idea for a restaurant of one table that used technology to offer an immersive, multi-sensory dining experience in public for the first time, at the OFF5 Omnivore Food Festival in Deauville, France.^{[9][10][11][12]}

After 15 years of planning and development, this idea became the restaurant Ultraviolet, which opened in Shanghai in an undisclosed location in May 2012. The restaurant’s unique concept is based on Pairet’s theory of “psycho-taste” , or the psychology and emotions associated with food. He believes that our perception of taste can be altered through engaging different senses and emotion triggers as we eat, and has been quoted as saying “Food is ultimately about emotion, and emotion goes beyond taste.”^[13]

Ultraviolet was ranked the eighth best restaurant in Asia by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list in both 2013 and 2014,^[14][15] and the 60th best restaurant in the world in 2013,^[16] and the 58th in 2014.^[17] In 2015, it has been ranked No. 3 in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants,^[18] and No. 24 in The World's 50 Best Restaurants.^[19]

Since October 2014 it also became one of the restaurant members of Les Grandes Tables du Monde.^[20]

References