Paul Bocuse was born above his parents' restaurant in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, just north of Lyon, in 1926 — and died in that same room in 2018, aged 91. Between those two dates, the man they called 'the pope of gastronomy' rewrote what it meant to be a chef: he held three Michelin stars for a record 55 years, picked up the Légion d'honneur, was named chef of the century by the Culinary Institute of America, and even inspired Auguste Gusteau in Ratatouille. Wounded fighting with the Free French Forces in Alsace in 1944 (he won the Croix de Guerre), he came home and turned the family auberge from struggling to stellar, earning his first star within two years of taking over in 1956 and the full trio by 1965.

His signature plates became legend: Bresse chicken cooked with truffles inside a pig's bladder, sea bass in puff pastry scaled like a fish, and the soupe VGE created for President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing at the Élysée in the 1970s. He also founded the Bocuse d'Or in 1987 — the closest thing cooking has to the Olympics — and opened the chef school now known as Institut Lyfe. Plenty of critics would say the whole celebrity-chef era starts with him.

Want to follow his trail? Start at the restaurant itself, now called Paul Bocuse, in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or. The menu still carries his classics — lobster quenelles, honey-roasted pigeon, the bladder-cooked Bresse chicken (now cow's bladder) — with set menus from €230 to €350. A bronze Bocuse sits on a bench in the courtyard watching diners eat.

Back in the city, Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse in the third arrondissement is the foodie pilgrimage: some 60 butchers, cheesemakers, pâtissiers and wine-sellers pulling in up to 10,000 visitors on a busy day, with photos and caricatures of 'Paulo' scattered about. Across the street at 103 Cours Lafayette, a 400m² mural shows him at work. He also appears on the famous Fresque des Lyonnais on rue de la Martinière, and there's a statue at the tourist office on Place Bellecour. His ashes were scattered in the Saône — 'the river of my life' — which flows right past the old auberge, so a riverside walk north of Lyon is a fitting final stop.

For anyone who plans trips around the table, Lyon delivers a rare thing: a chef's legacy you can actually taste, walk past and sit next to, all within a few kilometres.