The cuisine of Lyons has been famous since ancient times. The city was a center of the wine trade for specialty wines made in the south of France and the regions of Burgundy and Champagne to the north. Roman settlers, discovering this tradition, added their own luxurious tastes to the region's palate: Italian and Greek wines, Mediterranean oils and brines, and spices from the East. From an appreciation of fine wine inevitably came high cuisine.

With this history, it was inevitable that the growing city would be organized around cuisine. By the Rennaisance, entire neighborhoods had come to specialize in certain commodities: the cheese district, the sausage quarter, and so on. Lyons, less troubled by the political ferment of Revolution than Paris or Marseilles, instead cultivated the bourgeois outlook—including a healthy enjoyment of health and fine eating—that carried France into the modern day.

Perhaps because of its revolutionary origins, cuisine in Lyons was dominated by female chefs—known as the "Mothers of Lyons"—until the middle of the twentieth century. These legendary "mothers" still inspire chefs today. Today, there are still a number of world-class chefs working in the city. It is inevitable that a city with so rich a culinary history would develop a cookery worthy of the tradition, and Delaubrac rises to the challenge.