The Hell Fire Dining Club – even the name evokes mystery. The project is shrouded in a sulphuric cloud of secrecy, but when the smoke starts to settle, the man behind it all, Austrian artist Paul Renner, emerges, brush in one hand, glass of cognac in the other.

Renner’s work is Gesamtkunstwerk, a “synthesis of the arts” influenced by the years he spent as an assistant to controversial Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch. With the Hell Fire Dining Club Renner creates a theatrical experience of food and art.

Though new to Shanghai, Renner has orchestrated Hell Fire Dining Clubs in cities around the world for a decade, crafting each amalgamation of food and art to reflect a marriage of local inspiration and European artistry. The theme however, has always remained the same: decadence, excess and sensual intoxication.

In preparation for his elaborate meals, Renner paints richly rendered oil paintings before transforming them into surreal realities: seaweed covered walls, Champagne chilling in baby grand pianos, lavish plates adorned with gold-wrapped risotto and calf tongue. To say the Hell Fire Dining experience is anything less than debauched is perhaps as sinful as the affair itself.

This month in Shanghai, Renner will be joining forces with renowned chef David Laris to create his fanciful feasts at Three on the Bund, painting while Laris transforms Renner’s work into its culinary equivalent – turning gold into fat and fat into gold, as Renner says.

While most details about the menus are being kept secret, Renner was willing to disclose a few elements of the week-long Shanghai event, more than enough to tempt perverse epicureans.

“We are going to give visitors an overdose of the most expensive truffles in the world, White Alba Truffles from the Piedmont region in northern Italy,” Renner says. “After the dinner, they are sure to lead home a throng of people under Aphrodite’s spell.”

And if the promised aphrodisiacs are too slow to take effect, Renner, unsurprisingly, has plenty more magic in store, including: “Experiments from Chinese pharmacies, distilled fruit beverages high in alcohol content, shaman cocktails, gilded fat and edible money.”

The sensual experience will extend beyond the palate. Renner plans, for instance, to make the diners into actors. What does this mean? Set in a studio, guests will be seated on a stage while Renner and Laris watch from below. Under the tables are live musicians who play compositions specially tailored to complement each meal.

Renner promises the Shanghai experience will exceed those he has created in the past in cities like New York and London – after all, the Hell Fire Dining Club, founded on the concept of extravagance and indulgence, is right at home in Shanghai.

“Shanghai has a tradition of decadence. Only a few cities in the world have that. Perhaps, Rome with the Pope … and that’s about it,” he says.

So what kind of mindset should diners come in with? “Curiosity,” Renner says. And what does he hope they leave with? “Hangovers.”

The Hellfire Dining Club. RMB 2,300 per night. 7-9.30pm, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 26, 28 and 29 May. Space by Three, 2F, Three On The Bund, Tel: 6248 5926 x 107