For one of the world's most immersive dining experiences, you'll need to sign up to a waiting list of several months. Head to Shanghai's secret restaurant, Ultraviolet!
Shanghai is said to be a once-in-a-lifetime destination - but living here is less recommended. The city of nearly 25 million people is smoggy by European standards, but it really feels like the future. As a tourist, it's impossible to believe, and dizzying to think, that this single Chinese city has two and a half times the population of Hungary.
Paul Pairet has brought a modern French brasserie concept to his restaurant, the Mr & Mrs Bundot Shanghai. A Michelin Guide but the informal style of the place, also recommended by the French chef, was only a stepping stone for him in the Chinese metropolis.
A French innovator in Shanghai
The restaurateur-chef had been planning Ultraviolet since 1996 and it took six years before the place was actually open. With an investment of 900 million forints in today's dollars, chef Paul Pairet's dream was born, and it is literally a dream: Ultraviolet breaks almost every expectation and idea we have of a restaurant.
Ultraviolet: location unknown
In 2012, the restaurant world was bursting with the Ultraviolet - which is not even known where it is actually located. Its location is secret. They only serve ten people a night, but there has been a waiting list for 11 years. Gastrotourists from all over the world come to the city just to try this unique experience, matching their flight reservations to Shanghai with their access to the restaurant.
If the location is secret, how do guests get to the restaurant? Reportedly by private transfers with blacked-out windows, like in an action movie. While Paul Pairet's other restaurant, Mr & Mrs Bund, is famous for its lavish panoramic views, Ultraviolet is a windowless, not very large space, most likely in a warehouse.
1 table, 10 people, 20 courses
There is only one table in the restaurant, and even if the ten guests are made up of different couples or groups, they must dine together. To say that the dining room is equipped with state-of-the-art technology is to say nothing.
If you think of a candlelit, dimly lit restaurant with soft music as cosy, imagine the world of Ultraviolet, which the owners try to keep as little of in the press as possible to avoid the surprise factor.
The multi-sensory dining experience
The „room” is projected all around, but not only from the sides, but also from above and below. Everything that appeals to all the senses is thrown in: serious lighting, sounds, music, the sound of the smells, full 3D projection, and a view in which anything can shift at any time and turn out to be a hoax. The whole experience is playful, as the 20-stop dinner party unfolds before us as a kind of gastronomic play.
We don't really know too much about what goes on inside the walls, and guests are not allowed to take pictures inside. This preserves the mystique of the Ultraviolet experience, which is that each of the 20 courses is surrounded by its own unique atmosphere. At the moment, a set menu for one person in the restaurant costs around 210,000 forints.
Copying is a sure sign of success
Another restaurant team had the audacity to copy the concept of the restaurant in the city of Ultraviolet, Shanghai. This is how a Chinese magazine described the Queen's 3D, noting that several diners said the food was overpriced and “terrible”.
„It seems that not even three Michelin stars can protect Chef Pairet's brilliant brainchild from copycats. (...) Even more shamelessly, Queen's is apparently more expensive than Ultraviolet, with one reviewer on Dianping [a local restaurant review community site] complaining that they charged 8,500 Chinese yuan per person. By comparison, a meal per person at Ultraviolet usually costs around 6,000 yuan.” A 2017 article sharply criticised the unimaginative Queen's 3D, and it says a lot about the phenomenon as a whole that Ultraviolet is still going strong today and Queen's 3D has closed for good.
