Ile de France undergoes reinvention and director comments on changes

More unsuspecting pedestrians may not realize it, but Praça 19 de Novembro, in downtown Curitiba, has suffered a great loss: the traditional Ile de France has left its old address. Now located in Batel, Ile underwent a complete reinvention, but Márcia Oliveira, managing partner of the restaurant, guarantees that the spirit of the house is still the same. The businesswoman is the guest of Na Mesa Com Dani, a videocast by the columnist of Good Gourmet Dani Machado.

Márcia is part of a group of ten partners, who started a movement to acquire the establishment in 2018, when the house was facing financial difficulties and was threatened with closure. The new team ended up taking over only in 2021 and conducted a series of changes to modernize the classic restaurant.

“The Ile de France was built based on a very strong concept, and for me, a gastronomy establishment needs to have a concept. One day, they called me saying that Ile was going to close, and I said no. I went there for dinner to understand what was going on, and the taste was the same, the food was perfect. What I understood is that Ile needed management, because the food was strong and the concept was strong”, comments Márcia.

Assuming management, the new director comments that the first step was to leave the square. The deterioration of the building did not allow for many reforms, so the search for a new address began. On a random walk, Márcia found the current address – at Avenida Batel, 1550 – and knew right away that this was where Ile would be installed. “I left the house to go for a walk, I passed by that address, all burgundy, and I said ‘what’s up guys! Is here!”.

For Márcia, Ile is not the type of restaurant that will invent a new dish, but it is the one that will serve the traditional with quality. As she says, Ile is not a chef’s restaurant, but a restaurant of well-coordinated good cooks. Even so, innovations do not scare the team, which has just added a vegetarian stroganoff option to the menu, as requested by customers.

Another novelty is the adoption of lactose-free cream as standard, but without losing tradition: “when we introduced the switch from conventional cream to lactose-free cream, it was a battle, because we couldn’t change the taste. We did several tests until we arrived at a formula that didn’t change anything”, he explained.

“Now, there are people who are returning to Ile, who no longer went there. Young people didn’t go, they thought ‘I have to go to that old restaurant, just because it’s my dad’s birthday’, and now we have a table for young people. One day I looked and there was no white head in the restaurant!”, says Márcia.

The Na Mesa Com Dani videocast is available on Bom Gourmet’s YouTube and will soon be available on the main audio platforms. Every fortnight, content creator and columnist Dani Machado brings people from Curitiba to her table for an informal and tasty chat about ever-current and relevant topics related to the world of gastronomy. Follow!