MANE, has joined in partnership with ‘Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet’, a bold new sensorial dining encounter in the city of Shanghai. Ultraviolet is a cutting-edge, 10-seat restaurant where food creations prepared by world-renowned French Chef Paul Pairet are served amidst an array of ambient sights, sounds and smells, all choreographed to enhance and interact with each dish in a 20-course meal. Each of Chef Pairet’s distinctively prepared courses is accompanied by its own superbly curated five senses experience – hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste – which includes tailor made scents created exclusively for Ultraviolet by MANE.
Delivered by a unique dry-scent diffusion system, the MANE catalogue of scents includes Church, Walking Through the Forest, Sea & Rocks, Provence-Garrigue, The Forgotten Peach and Toi Ma Rose, among others. To produce the scents, MANE perfumers followed a process that was in-line with Chef Pairet’s overall concept of merging sensory elements into a unique ‘psycho taste' immersion. In this quest – with the help of MANE – Pairet is not to be denied.
Equal Parts Science and Sensory Imagination To produce the scents, MANE perfumers followed a process that was in-line with Chef Paul Pairet’s overall concept of merging sensory elements into a unique overall experience. “To achieve MANE’s part in the Ultraviolet, we focused on enhancing the dining environment with scents that seamlessly connect the course dishes being served with a subtle, yet deep olfactory encounter,” says MANE perfumer Benjamin Belizon. “This called for us to visualize the entire setting for each course. For example, in realizing a scent to match Chef Pairet’s Burnt Truffle Bread, I imagined what a mix of wet earth and moss might smell like in the forest; mixing patchouli, cedarwood and oak moss, Walking Through the Forest was born.” “We worked to represent the smell of the provenance of each course. Provence-Garrigue was created to accompany the Bouillabaisse,” adds MANE perfumer Virginie Pons. “In the creation process, I imagined a small village in Provence, its landscape and, of course, its aromatic plants. To achieve this scent, I combined aromatic plant with something more ‘citrusy’, such as lemon; by pushing the lemon to front, we are able to exalt the freshness of the aromatic accord, which has turned out to be truly something special.” What MANE has achieved in partnership with Paul Pairet has allowed the celebrated French chef to create individual dishes that each comes with their own sensorial universe. “One of my strongest memories ever of food has got to be that of a single forgotten peach left on a tree close to my hometown of Perpignan,” says Chef Paul Pairet in reflecting on the sensory connectedness of food and environment. “What remains with me from this perfect moment: a blurred image and a scent, vivid and palpable.” Prior to Ultraviolet, Chef Pairet’s most recent celebrated achievement in Shanghai has been the creation of Mr & Mrs Bund, unquestionably the city’s most chic French eatery. “At Ultraviolet, the scent is meant to leave a trace that subtly sets the stage with a snapshot of nature,” says Chef Pairet about the diner experience at the one of a kind venue, a place he admits has been spiritually 15 years in the making. “The sea on a Seaweed Lobster Cocotte to enhance the trace element of iodine; a ‘mushroomy’ ground on a burnt truffle bread to bring out a deeper, more earthy ground sensation.
“Working with Mane has been about tailoring scents, about decoding intuition – about pairing odours with food to enhance its memory.” When Chef Pairet approached MANE to consider collaborating on bringing the Ultraviolet experience to life, it emerged as irresistible opportunity for the company to explore its powers of innovation – something Victor Mane, in founding the company in 1871, would have certainly approved of. “Smells evoke strong emotional reactions in people,” says Denis Raffaud, Managing Director, MANE-Shanghai. “The perception of smell comes not only of the sensation of odours themselves, but also of the experiences and emotions associated with olfactory sensations. The scents we’ve created for Ultraviolet play a unique psychological role in realising the taste of each course served at this remarkably unique restaurant. Always looking for innovative new challenges and to capture what moves, this is something MANE truly enjoys being a part of.” You can read more about Ultraviolet at uvbypp.cc.
Picture: Paul Pairet, Benfamin Belizon, © Scott Wright, Limelight Studio