Dine & Cook | Alternative food journalism

The body of one of France's top chefs was discovered wrapped in a freezer in Lyon Tuesday.

Chef Jean-Francois Poinard, 71, has been missing for two years, police have arrested his 51-year-old girlfriend after receiving a tip.

On CNN, Lyon police said the body of the retired chef was found in an apartment he had shared with his girlfriend.

"An initial examination suggests the body could have been there for up to two years," Sky News quoted a police spokesman as saying. "A full post-mortem examination will be carried out to discover the precise cause of death."

According to several French newspapers, the autopsy can’t be performed for 48 hours or until the body thaws.

In the 1970s and '80s, Poinard was considered a top chef in a city known for its fine cuisine.

Between the 1960s and the early 1990s, Poinard ran the Restaurant de Paris and the Panier à Salade in Lyon.

At the time, both were considered the city's top restaurants.

A Lyon newspaper described Poinard as one of the city’s “great names” in gastronomy and said he represented the fourth generation of one of France’s “great cooking dynasties.”

“He was passionate and exacting chef, but also a true ‘bon viveur’ who was as well liked out of the kitchen as he was respected inside it,” the newspaper Le Progrès reported.  The newspaper went on to say Poinard owned several excellent restaurants in Lyon over the years.

A bon viveur is a person who enjoys the good things of life, especially food.

His son Jean-Stephane Poinard now owns the acclaimed Bistro de Leon restaurant in St Augustine, Florida.

On the restaurant's website there is a simple tribute posted the late chef.  Under a caricature of Poinard are the words "Goodbye daddy."