FOOD SHOULD SPEAK FOR ITSELF
I can hear you…"Food should speak for itself"…true…it should.
So why on earth do we need to detract the attention of the dinners with all that technology?
And voila…the typical assumption that technology will distract when we think that invisible technology could enhance, support…play a role, interact.
What shocks me the most in any restaurant is this random "ambiance" which hardly matches with the food: Where is this light aiming at? What does this Mozart soundtrack have to do with my green pea soup?
Do you think that a simple beautiful steamed sea bass salt lemon and olive oil will taste better on the ocean or in a Parisian silver service dining room? Well actually, the tastes are the same, but the memory… the taste after the taste… what do you think?
What if I could at least enhance this fish taste with the sound of the ocean, the smell of the sea, the freshness of a salted breeze, some moonlight…
Far from being a distraction, the entire concept ofUltraviolet revolves around providing the best possible context for the food.
HAVE CHEFS BEEN ABLE TO CONTROL THE PSYCHO
TASTE BEFORE?
In a limited way, yes, and it's possible to create expectation mostly through presentation, dish design. As in Paul Pairet's Foie Gras Opera, a dish modeled on the classic French pastry, a "look-alike" that mimics its sharp, layered design. In Pairet's world, it's a play on the taste of foie gras and bitter chocolate, a savory dish crafted to resemble the traditional dessert. It influences the psycho taste by exploiting the discrepancy of its sweet appearance and savory reality to finally reveal a chokingly unexpected familiar taste.
IS DISH DESIGN STILL RELEVANT?
(Considering Ultraviolet's other technologies)
Absolutely! At Ultraviolet it is the chef's primary tool to influence psycho taste.
Design is always a consequence, not a purpose. Here there may be courses in which technologies play a stronger role than the design. A course meant to evoke summer, for example, might be composed of sun-like lighting, the flower scent, and a bubbly soundtrack, while dish's design remains plain, anti-theatric.
INSPECTOR COLUMBO: THE REAL MAN BEHIND
ULTRAVIOLET
Columbo, the 1970s TV detective, fought the psycho taste. There's an episode Paul Pairet likes to use as an example of the psycho taste's power, called Double Exposure. It's about a marketing genius who used subliminal messages in commercials to boost sales at his company. Eventually, he gets greedy and starts blackmailing people. When his boss finds out, Dr. Bart Keppel, the self-styled "motivation research specialist," uses his subliminal messages to cover his tracks.
Keppel invites the boss to a screening of a new promotional film, but not before plying him with salty caviar first. While watching the film, which Keppel has interspersed with subliminal frames of hot deserts and cool water,the psycho kicks in: the boss needs a drink of water. Fast. He plays right into Keppel's hands, who by now is laying in wait at the water fountain. When the boss leaves the theater, suddenly thirsty but not sure why, Keppel kills him, and Columbo has a psycho taste murder case on his hands.