Chapel’s Supreme Inventiveness

There is no other menu like it. Here is a chef who is deeply rooted in his region, strictly schooled in the tradition of classic cuisine—yet there is not a dish on Alain Chapel’s menu which does not reveal an inventiveness and imagination which lift him into the rare class of supreme chefs. There is no dish which does not surprise. No-one else cooks a calf’s ear, let alone stuff it with sweetbreads and truffles and sprinkle it with fried parsley. Who but Chapel would add the subtle flavours of the morille and écrevisse to the classic combination of cockerels’ crests and kidneys? His salads, too, are extraordinarily inventive; for instance pigeon’s breast and lobster with a mustardy green sauce, or warm foie de canard with purple artichokes.