Alain Chapel; French Master Chef, Renowned Restaurateur

Alain Chapel, the quiet, unassuming master chef who ran one of the world’s most highly praised restaurants, died Tuesday in southern France of a heart attack. He was 52.

His restaurant, Alain Chapel in Mionnay, outside Lyon, was among only 19 in France awarded the coveted three-star ranking in the 1990 Michelin Guide. It also received the highest ranking in the latest Gault-Millau restaurant guide.

Chapel died while staying with his wife at a hotel near Avignon. Paramedics were summoned, but were unable to save him, colleagues in Paris told wire service reporters.

Los Angeles Times food editor Ruth Reichl recalled an earlier encounter with Chapel:

“Alain Chapel expected to die young; he was a driven man, constantly striving for perfection,” she said on hearing of his death. “ ‘Twice a day I have to be champion of the world,’ he once said. All he wanted was to be the best.

“But Chapel’s definition of being best was almost impossible to attain. He believed that just finding the best farmers, the best cheese makers and the best fishermen--he was constantly looking for the finest products--was not enough. . . . For Chapel, each dish that came out of the kitchen had to be the perfect dish for the person who was going to eat it. He wanted to know each customer.

“What Chapel did--more than any other three-star chef--was to create a connection between the kitchen and the dining room. For him, being a chef was ‘a permanent act of love.’ ”

He was born in Lyon, the son of a restaurateur. He succeeded his father as head of the family restaurant in Mionnay in 1969 and swiftly built a reputation that earned him appointment to the Academie Culinaire and decoration as a knight of the National Order of Merit.

He earned his third star from Michelin at the age of 34, the youngest chef ever so honored up to that time.

Food critics and celebrities from around the world, including former President Richard M. Nixon and film director Milos Forman, flocked to his restaurant.

This year’s Michelin Guide singled out for praise his mushroom broth and Bresse chicken in foie gras sauce, and the Morgon and Macon-Clesse wines in his cellar.

Chapel was a close friend of another prominent chef, Paul Bocuse, who called the death “a huge loss for our profession.”