25-02-2017
A photo from Chop Chop Club, the third restaurant opened a few days ago by French Paul Pairet, soon to speak at Identità Milano. The restaurant has a simple yet often unmet essential goal: serve large dishes cooked in the best possible way
According to an urban legend, he got the idea from railway station departure boards. His team says it’s not true and he simply got the idea following the desire to cook “old style”. Given I’ve known him for years now, I simply think it all began from the spirals of smoke of one of his frequent cigarettes. In any case, Paul Pairet has had one of his great ideas.
After the Mr & Mrs Bund “modern eatery” and the avantgarde and hyper-sensorial cuisine of Ultraviolet, the French chef has now decided to turn “back to the cave”. «The watchword», he says «is existentialism, in fact, we’re returning to the primordial primitive!». Hence the opening on Saint Valentine’s (a pagan and primitive holiday par excellence) of Chop Chop Club (or CCC, as they enjoy calling it here) at Unico, the famous building 3 on the Bund in Shanghai, an outpost focused on the carving station with Bertha ovens that can reach even 500°C and bake main dishes every 15 minutes after they reach full cooking power.
A preview of the lesson Paul Pairet will hold in Milan. For details, you’ll have to wait for the lesson on Sunday the 5th March at 11.30
In other words, we’re in the middle of the sharing economy. Huge and scenic turbot, or fillet and so on come out of the carving station: people open up their mouths, take selfies, increase their salivation, and then the course is divided and served to those who ordered it. Yet next to the high speed trains there are slower trains too: on top of the clockwork main courses you can still order side dishes à la carte. All in the usual Paireticious style. Among these, “Bertha’s Shiitake” stand out. An entire bunch of Shiitake mushrooms with a whole trunk grilled and smoked, and served with gloves and scissors so that guests can pick the mushrooms from the table and take their selfies.
52 year-old Paul Pairet from Perpignan in France has been in Shanghai since 2005
Tasty reports from China and the Far East from our collaborator Claudio Grillenzoni
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A journalist with the bad habit of xenophilia (natural, he's a Germanist) and food (he's from Modena ), he now lives a happy life in China, in Shanghai, building connections between East and West