Behind The Scenes: We Took Paul Pairet to Homeslice. He Made Us Pizza.

Plus SmartShanghai's first video in ages!
Last updated: 2020-05-12
Photos: Brandon McGhee
When we scheduled a photo shoot with Paul Pairet, the chef behind Ultraviolet, Mr & Mrs Bund and Polux, we didn't expect this.

Usually our photo shoots are predictable. We shoot portraits. People stand still. We set up lights and reflectors.

Pairet was having none of that. We had managed to convince him to come down to one of his favorite pizza places in the city (he likes Mercato too). That's where our plan died. "Allez!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands for effect. "Let's go!" We were still setting up lights in front of the pizza counter. "No, no, no static shots," he told us. The SmartShanghai photographer's heart missed a beat. "I'm going to make a pizza! Can I start?"

For the next thirty minutes, Pairet expounded on, of course, pizza, why Marseilles was once the world capital of pizza (as he said in the accompanying Industry Nights article), the proper concentric distribution of toppings, Homeslice's method for applying cream and much more, while stretching the dough, piling on toppings (every kind of cheese in the place) and sliding the pie into and out of the oven.

After the pizza came out of the oven and we moved out of the kitchen area and to a table, Pairet told us a story about his first "culinary success" and how it related to his Homeslice creation.

Throughout all of this, we also had Graeme Kennedy filming for a video we commissioned to accompany the article.

See it — the first SmartShanghai video in years! — below!



Then see what happened when Pairet got behind the counter at Homeslice in Found 158 (scroll down).

And read the Industry Nights article that kicked all of this off.











"Pizza is a fabulous dish," Pairet told me. "I would have been so happy to invent pizza."











"Every chef loves pizza."



















"I don't know one three Michelin star chef that doesn't love pizza. Good pizza. Everybody eats pizza."

TELL EVERYONE