KUALA LUMPUR, June 13 — Every night, 10 diners sit at a long table for a 20-course dinner at Ultraviolet in Shanghai where food is paired with a multi-dimensional experience orchestrated by French chef Paul Pairet using images, sounds, and scents. 

Pairet explains, “What makes Ultraviolet is the control as it opens up a lot of doors in terms of creativity.

“Because time and food are controlled, we can control the atmosphere and every dish with scenarios that enhance it,” he adds. 

He calls it “psycho taste,” as described in his talk at The World’s 50 Best in 2018. 

“Psycho taste is everything beyond the taste. It’s the taste of the taste. If you can anticipate the taste, you can play on the mind to trigger the way you will eventually perceive the taste.” 

Ultraviolet is labelled by many as avant-garde, defined by Pairet as “not just making something that looks modern but bringing a tangible ingredient to the plate that is a disruption, which he has never seen before.” 

Dinner at Ultraviolet starts like a theatre performance with a first act designed to shock: the lights go off in the room, a foghorn screams, and the door between the kitchen and the dining area opens. 

A Haka chant from the All Blacks rugby team echoes in the darkened room as a man lights a blazing fire to cook the first dish. 

First scene over. Shock factor achieved. 

Once you strip away all the drama, it’s all about the food and Pairet’s ultimate goal is to serve it at the exact moment it tastes its best. 

In an interview with The New York Times, Pairet credits his mother for the inspiration, as she controlled his eating time when he was a child, calling him to eat when the pork chop she cooked was at its peak. 

Pairet was recently in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation of his mentor Professor Dr Jean-Pierre Poulain from the University of Toulouse. 

Poulain, who is also the director of the Centre for Asian Modernisation at Taylor’s Culinary Institute, invited Pairet to share insights on Ultraviolet with the students and alumni.

The Frenchman once worked at Paris’ Cafe Mosaic in the 2000s, where French culinary icon Alain Ducasse noticed his talent and hired him for the Ritz Carlton in Istanbul.

His globe-trotting adventures took him to Sydney, Jakarta, and Hong Kong, eventually landing him in Shanghai, a city where he built the French restaurant Mr and Mrs Bund and Ultraviolet with the VOL Group in May 2012. 

Throughout the years Ultraviolet was opened, Ducasse remained someone Pairet sought for advice and approval.

The idea for Ultraviolet began taking root as early as 1996, about 16 years before the restaurant opened ,as he wanted to break the traditional rules of dining, such as following a set course.

“When the freedom exists for a 20-course menu, it allows you to disbalance the dish so you don’t need to follow the classic rules regarding flavour or the requirement for a main course.

“We can make food too sweet or salty but we can rebalance it in the next course,” he added.

“Ultimately what is important in the restaurant has always been the food and we take a lot of time to perfect one recipe.”

Some items like the iconic UV Gummies took him 20 tries before they were perfected. 

However, the Beijing Cola Duck — a Peking-style crispy-skinned duck lacquered with Coca-Cola — took him 12 years to perfect, all driven by Pairet’s stubbornness to get it right.  

As described in an article on SmartShanghai, the Coca-Cola with its glucose and citric acid ingredients causes the skin to soften. 

Eventually Pairet got the drinks company to create a dry Coke syrup in powder form, where he swaps the glucose for isomalt to crisp the skin and adds the citric acid just at the last moment. 

The lacquered skin is cut into pieces and served to the guests. 

One notion of psycho-taste is the sense of belonging, which allows one to experience the food in the atmosphere that suits it best. 

Pairet discovered this as a teenager when he ate the best peach while surrounded by peach trees as the sun set. 

Inside Ultraviolet’s multi-sensory room, he re-enacts moments to enhance a mushroom course, using an earthy forest atmosphere with visuals like the forest floor and the scent of wet leaves and soil. 

Pairet frames the iconic Haribo gummy bears in two different menus: “The Race of Gummies” and in his last menu, “Bye-Bye Gummies”. 

Diners pick their favourite gummy bear for dessert and watch it race on the wraparound screen, which the service staff also joins by running around the room. Sometimes even the diners join them for the fun experience. 

It’s a play on an artificial world where gummies, an iconic artificial food, are served in Evian water, Lapsang Souchong syrup and mountains of Coca-Cola, racing in an artificial video game universe to the tune of Super Mario Brothers music.  

For “Bye-Bye Gummies” the tiny, chewy bears are placed in a bath and slowly soaked in hot consommé, causing them to melt away to the tune of Staying Alive sung by the Bee Gees. 

As more people started to take notice, the awards started coming: The Michelin Guide awarded Ultraviolet three Michelin stars in 2018. World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants listed Ultraviolet from 2013 to 2022. 

Pairet also picked up the Chef’s Choice Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. 

He is also active as a judge on Top Chef France television series, earning him fame with many who recognise him from television. 

In 2025, as renovations around the building that housed Ultraviolet threatened its existence and would have caused about eight months of disruption, Pairet decided it was time to close Ultraviolet and shift his focus to becoming a restaurateur. 

As he reflects, “It was a very good thing to stop at the peak rather than wait and slowly go down.”

In Shanghai, there’s the timeless Mr and Mrs Bund, the French cafe Polux and in Paris, there’s the French grill and deli Nonos & Comestibles.

In November last year, Pairet’s footprint also expanded to Singapore when the French carvery Moutarde and the ice cream parlour, Sundae Royale opened in Resorts World Sentosa. 

Expansion is on the cards for the all-day dining concept Polux as he entered into a licensing agreement that will see an outpost in Taipei opening soon. 

“It is a concept that can go into any city. It is simple but sometimes finding simplicity is difficult because someone always tries to make it complex. I don’t need to show things anymore.”

“I am happy doing simple things. It’s not so easy to do simple things as there’s a lot of reference for people with the dishes but you can always elevate the dish to whatever level you want.” he added. 

He also emphasises that ensuring consistency at all times is important. 

Pairet’s passion and relentlessness is the key to his achievements and creativity. 

“If from morning to night, you think only about food and your life revolves around restaurants, you’re pretty dull.” For him, creation stems not from innate ability but from training and determination. 

“Creation is not a gift, it’s a craft and a trade that you are trained to do.” Many may give excuses that they aren’t creative but Pairet believes it’s just a state of mind. 

“A lot of people who think they can’t but it’s because they have never pushed themselves to try and try again.  This confidence can increase by going into a trade and the more you know, the more confident you become,” he adds. 

Honesty is also an important factor as Pairet believes if time is wasted on copying, one can never create.  “This is the case for almost 90 per cent of people as you will never create shit as at the end of the day if you spend all your time to secretly copy.”

Keep up to date with Paul Pairet on his website and Instagram: @paulpairet