Mr& Mrs Bund - Words from Paul Pairet

A conversation with Chef Paul Pairet… Just to get it out of the way, let’s first tackle the question we’re all wondering: the Mr & Mrs Bund menu looks nothing like that of Jade of 36. What gives? What happened to the avant-garde, molecular cuisine? This menu – soupe à l’oignon, tartare de boeuf, sole meuniere – is, in essence, the polar opposite of Jade’s. True, Mr & Mrs Bund is the complete opposite of what Jade was, but I want to make one thing very clear: both are expressions of the food I love the most. Jade was about an author’s cuisine, and the 20-plus daily food experiments and recipe tests I did in the kitchen were all for the sake of challenging, surprising, amusing the diner. Every dish needed to have something new: a new idea, a new flavour, a new presentation. Mr & Mrs Bund, however, is about consensual food, popular food, comfort food. It’s the food I love to eat, that I eat on a daily basis, and that I cook for my family. As much as I loved what I was doing at Jade, I never could have served this food there. It’s actually been some time now that I’ve wanted to open a place like Mr & Mrs Bund. Did you really need to start a whole new restaurant though? Couldn’t you have incorporated some of this style of food at Jade on 36? No, because when a restaurant tries to be cutting edge – as was Jade’s ambition – it can’t do this sort of food. It simply can’t, it needs to take risks. At Mr & Mrs Bund, I’m not trying to be cutting edge. Quite the contrary: I am trying to please. Thus, every guest that walks in will be able to find something on this menu that he or she likes. This time, food is not trying to challenge or confound, it’s just trying to taste good. That’s it. And that’s really the core difference: at a place like Jade on 36, I was somewhat cooking for myself and hoping that I would find people that loved what I was doing. At Mr & Mrs Bund, I am cooking for the guests, and catering to what they love. The way you’ve presented the Mr & Mrs Bund menu is very interesting. It’s almost in the style of those massive Chinese restaurants, with one page for chicken (with six different styles of preparation), another page for beef (with eight sauces), another page for fish… That is precisely where we drew the inspiration from for the menus: traditional Chinese restaurants. It’s a great concept, and one which suits what I am doing at Mr & Mrs Bund: a `declension` of dishes. Think about it this way: a traditional Western menu tries to avoid repetition at all costs, it tries to present very different items to the guest. But the fact is if I truly want to do consensual cuisine, to offer guests the food they love best, the menu cannot be structured this way, it cannot be so limited. It needs to open up. What exactly do you mean by ‘open up’? I mean, in simple terms, offering choice and allowing each person to select from, and interpret, the menu to create their ideal meal. At Mr & Mrs Bund, I play on concepts of decomposition and recomposition, and invite the guest to do the same. I am sticking things together: I take one main item, I take one of the many side items, maybe add another garniture, and I stick them together. Why would I only offer one style of sole – a sole meuniere, for example – when somebody might prefer a sole grenobloise, with some capers and some lemon, and somebody else might regret that there is not a sole normande on the menu? And for the sole normande, the same kind of sauce normande with mushrooms goes very well with the veal cutlet, and someone may want the veal. You see what I mean? Why should a restaurant, without knowing each guest’s preferences, narrow the guests’ choices? I want to enlarge their choices. I think of it as Lego model of sorts. So what if there is repetition on the menu? Can you talk us through the sharing concept, this ‘family-style dining’? It is rather Chinese-style, no? Yes, Chinese dining is rooted in a strong sharing theme but, you know, historically, food in France was served in exactly the same way as it is in China – communal, sharing style. Then French nouvelle cuisine took over. But before that, pre-1970s, all restaurants were serving food the same way I’m serving it at Mr & Mrs Bund. Historically, family-style dining does not belong exclusively to the Chinese. It’s true that Chinese food may be more suited for sharing because of the utensils used (the chopstick), or because of the preparation and presentation (the fact that everything is chopped and thus designed to be taken in parcels), but French food was supposed to be served in big dishes, too. It was slightly different – for instance, a chicken dish would have whole pieces of chicken, one for each individual, in a dish – but conceptually, it was the same. The dish was meant to be shared. I want to bring back a family-style approach to modern dining. I want to give people incentives to share the dishes, and to allow them to taste everything. That’s reflected in everything from the way the menu is structured to the tableware we have custom-designed for this menu. And, really, I like this style of service because it relaxes the food, and it lets the diner take charge of the dining experience. But in fine dining, traditionally, guests don’t have to do a thing. They are waited hand and foot, so the concept of ‘taking charge’ is rather foreign… Well, first of all, we are not a fine dining restaurant, nor are we aspiring to be. Let’s make that clear. And so we are not observing the ‘rules’ of fine dining, be they real or imagined. And, the question of fine dining aside, there are different restaurants for different occasions. What I’m presenting at Mr & Mrs Bund is a restaurant where you, the diner, takes charge. A restaurant where you lead through what you know, through your own choices. You are going to be able to, out of all the menu ‘proposals’ on offer, find something that suits you, something that you like. That’s what makes it consensual.