Bruce LeFavour, an eclectic, self-taught American cook who, on nothing more than three years in Europe and an innate appreciation of perfect ingredients, helped created the early California cuisine movement, died on Oct. 4 at his home in Port Townsend, Wash. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Cree LeFavour, who said his health had been declining since he had a stroke in 2015.

Mr. LeFavour (pronounced Le-FAVE-er), whose education in French food began in the late 1950s when he left Dartmouth for the Army and was stationed in France, would go on to open three restaurants across the United States. His first, in 1965, was in Aspen, where he developed a version of nouvelle cuisine before either the cooking style or the ski town had caught on among the nation’s elite.

He opened his last in Northern California in 1981 during a decade in which Wolfgang Puck, Mark Peel and a host of other chefs refined the notion of a thoughtful but casual culinary approach based on California’s pristine ingredients. It was a movement that Alice Waters began when she opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971.