Following in the footsteps of his family, who owned and operated Restaurant de La Gare, a Hotel-Restaurant in Faoug (Canton de Vaud, a town in the French-influenced part of Switzerland) Bernard says that his desire to become a chef came the day he was born; "I was born in one of the rooms above the family restaurant. My first smell was that of food. It has been in my blood to become a chef since the day I was born."
Born and raised west of the Alps, Althaus brings an earnest French/Swiss sensibility to his cuisine.