Cafe de France, just one of the oldest restaurants on Wintertime Park’s vaunted Park Avenue, has shut just after 37 years. Entrepreneurs Dominique and German Gutierrez created the announcement on the restaurant’s Facebook web site:
“After 37 many years, we are announcing the closing of our beloved Cafe de France. Considering the fact that 1985 we have attained lifelong good friends from our staff, our patrons, and our partners. Our hearts are complete of wonderful recollections, and we contemplate our tale a very thriving a single without a doubt!
Closing this chapter was not an easy decision to make. Like for a lot of of you, this cafe has been our 2nd house and our 2nd ‘child.’ A put of initially dates, engagements, and all variety of celebrations!
“We enjoy you all extra than you know for the ongoing aid and like which stored us running for 37 years – in spite of a couple of recessions and a pandemic to boot.”
The restaurant, also recognised as CdF, opened in July 1982 and experienced two house owners prior to the Gutierrezes purchased it in 1986. At that time, the proprietor of a restaurant following door termed Le Royal Continental had believed he was heading to invest in the CdF space so that he could develop and have adequate seats for a liquor license. But the Wintertime Park town fee did not approve the enlargement options, which, in accordance to an short article in the Orlando Sentinel, was a shock to the cafe’s operator, Marie-Madeleine Nebout, who instructed the reporter she experienced not agreed to offer to Le Royal’s owner. “In fact, she stated,” according to the write-up, “she is negotiating providing to anyone else.”
The Gutierrezes ended up the a person else.
German and Dominique Gutierrez, through FacebookIn an e mail Tuesday, Dominique Gutierrez reported, “We have mixed thoughts about closing this extensive chapter, but we are also pleased to eventually have some time for touring and spending time with spouse and children.” She also said, “We are bowing out at the ideal time, and are proud of what we attained for the duration of our 37 many years at the helm of Cafe de France.”
Gutierrez stated that an additional restaurant will be getting over the area in August but she was not at liberty to give any facts.
Above the decades, CdF has assisted start the occupations of many chefs, like Kenneth Stingone, Da Vinci, Flick, Sanford Vincent Gagliano, Vincent’s, Hannibal Square and Nathaniel Russell, Tennessee Truffle, Sanford.
In the mid ‘90s, I dubbed the establishing strip of Sand Lake Street in between International Generate and the Marketplace at Dr. Phillips Restaurant Row. But an argument could be designed that Park Avenue was the original proprietor of that title. In its heyday, the Avenue was house to many “special occasion” eating places, including Park Plaza Gardens, now household to BoVine Steakhouse La Belle Verriere, a cafe decorated with elaborate Tiffany windows in the place now occupied by Willams-Sonoma and Maison des Crepes, in the Concealed Gardens off the avenue, in which Garp & Fuss now resides.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the fortunes of Park Avenue dining places began to modify. Quite a few improved fingers, some generally, and other individuals shut. But immediately after the flip of the century, the avenue and its bordering spot, including Hannibal Sq., once again grew to become a eating spot.
Couple of eating places have been there all together.
Briarpatch, the breakfast and lunch cafe, opened two several years just before CdF, and the Electrical power Household Cafe statements 1970 as its founding day as a smoothie and health foodstuff eatery but also states on its internet site that modified its concept with a new operator in 1998.
