At the outbreak of World War II, the family moved to the village of Mionnay 12 miles outside the city, where his father opened a bistro called La Mere Charles in an old coaching inn surrounded by lush gardens.

[1] In the 1960s, Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, and Michel Guérard "disrupted restaurant culture...

Breaking away from the long-established rules of French haute cuisine, the group pushed for food to look and taste more like the stuff it’s actually made from, to be leaner and lighter and brighter.

Food critic Craig Claiborne writing for The New York Times in 1977 described Chapel's gateau de foies blonds as "his ultimate triumph" and "one of the absolute cooking glories of this generation".

The speed of transformation and the elaborate cuisine turned the village of Mionnay into a culinary landmark on any serious gastronomic tour of France.