Vivant by Johnny Pham

279 Beihai Road

Tel. +86 021 64399179

The dishes

Canapés

Phamily Pho

Tomatooooo

Shima Aji (miso/yuzu koshu)

Abalone (abalone liver/rice)

Bolo-Squid (porcini/basil)

Ikejime (Catch of the day)

Or

Brittany Blue Lobster (summer greens/lobster bearnaise)

Chongming Bird (petit fracis provençal)

Or

Le Boeuf Wagyu (ode to chef Arnaud Donckele/stuffed zitone pasta)

Profiterole + love = profitelove

Or

Summer Breeze (melon variations)

At many restaurants they will tell you their aim is “nothing but the best”, and at the wildly impressive and deservedly successful Vivant in Shanghai you get the feeling they really do try and achieve just that.

Super-talented chef Johnny Pham heads the kitchen brigade at Vivant, arguably one of Shanghai’s best 2024 restaurant openings (in November 2024). Pham had decided the time had come to go solo and wanted to open his own restaurant. As he told me, “I wanted my own space in which to express my personal vision of hospitality at its fullest, 100%. My investor and I share that same vision of wanting nothing but the best for us and our clients” (Vivant is backed by the Holiland Group of EHB and Jelloooo Bistro fame). Clearly, Pham had a pretty good idea of restaurant excellence given that his last post prior to opening Vivant was manning the stoves at Stefan Stiller’s prestigious three Michelin star Taian Table restaurant in Shanghai as its chef de cuisine (but significantly, when Pham first got there, Taian Table only had one star). In fact, all of Pham’s resume is fairly impressive, with time spent in the kitchens of the Auberge du Fond Rose (a Bocuse restaurant in Caluire et Cuire), then at Le 1947 à Cheval Blanc, a Yannick Alléno restaurant in Courchevel but where Pham met Chef Frank Pelux whom he credits as a friend and a mentor, followed by stint in Saint-Tropez with Arnaud Donckele (the youngest chef in France to earn Three Michelin Stars in 2013 at La Vague d’Or restaurant in Saint-Tropez, then head of the Cheval Blanc restaurants including Plenitude in Paris, and now, since 2022, with pastry chef Maxime Frédéric also at Luis Vuitton’s restaurant in Saint-Tropez at the White 1921 Hotel); Pham also worked with Christian Lesquer (of Pavillon Ledoyen and Le Cinq fame). You’ll admit, that’s a pretty impressive lineup of talented and famous chefs to have worked with. In addition, Pham also found the time to live briefly in Miami and Beijing to see and learn about the dining scene in those different mega-cities.