Beaujolais Classic: Le Cep

It’s important to know where she came from, says Chantal Chagny, to understand what happened later: how she came to start the restaurant Le Cep in Fleurie, win two Michelin stars and then return to her roots by forsaking foie gras and truffles for a traditional Beaujolais menu par excellence.

Her father, she explains, was born in Beaujolais, one of five sons of a local winegrower. At age 13, he left home and walked to Paris, finding a job in a Renault factory and later moving to Brittany to work in marine construction. Eventually he rented a garage and brought in barrels of Beaujolais to bottle and sell. He and his Breton wife also had five children, and when the Nazis occupied their property during WWII, the children were raised on a local farm. “And that was very good for the way I later decided to live my life.” She was, she says, “a naughty girl at school,” but because of her father’s wine business she was often taken along to visit hotels and restaurants, and she was enchanted. “From the age of seven, I dreamed of having my own restaurant.”

In the 1950s the family moved to Beaujolais. The dynamic Chagny spent several years at school in England, learning the excellent English she speaks today. When she returned she found “this little bistrot for sale in Fleurie—no electricity, no running water, just a well in the courtyard. It was a rough life, but I had already known that on the farm in Brittany.”

Le Cep opened in 1969, serving home-style regional dishes. “We had no staff, no clients, and a menu at 11 francs.” But clients soon came, first on Sundays when visiting town for wine tastings, and her reputation grew. She was well on her way in 1972 when she teamed up with young chef Gérard Cortembert, from nearby Macon. When recruiting him, she said her restaurant was in Fleurie. “His voice changed,” she recounts. “‘Where?’ he asked. ‘On the corner of the square.’ ‘It was YOU!’ ” he exploded—and explained that he had tried to buy the old bistrot himself. Together for almost 18 years, they won their first star in 1973, the second in 1979. Although the rustic decor didn’t change, the stars inevitably led to lobster and caviar, china and crystal.

Cortembert died suddenly in 1989. Chagny continued through difficult times, but gradually she realized that many of her foreign clients were bypassing the two-star luxury dishes and going for her coq au vin. Eventually she chose “to go back to what we used to do, but with even better quality”—snails, frogs’ legs, crawfish, fowl from Bresse, Charolais beef, black currants from her own village, Cercié. Now her goal is “to give people the best of the gastronomic culture of my region”. In 2006, New York Times writer R.W. Apple listed Le Cep among 10 international restaurants “worth boarding a plane to visit,” inspiring widespread jealousy. The mischievous Chagny is quick to correct any misunderstanding. “He named his favorites. He didn’t say the ten best.” Le Cep still has one Michelin star, and possibly more customers than ever.

Place de L’Eglise, Fleurie, 04.74.04.10.77. Approximately €60 per person without wine

Originally published in the November 2009 issue of France Today

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