Same Chef, Three New Doors: What's Actually Changing at 50th & France This Fall

Walk the two blocks of Market Street and France Avenue that make up Edina's most-talked-about dining strip this month and you'll notice something that a simple restaurant roundup would miss: the names on the permits keep repeating. Three of the district's most significant projects this year, in three different storefronts that used to house three unrelated businesses, trace back to the same person. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's a bet, made by one operator, on how much of this district he can hold at once.

The obvious story about 50th & France in 2026 is that it's having a moment. The truer story is that one restaurant group is having most of it.

Three doors, one name

Start with Thérèse, which opened in early November 2025 in the former Lynhall space on the Edina side of the district. It's a French brasserie from chef Daniel del Prado, named for his mother, serving classic French fare that includes a French onion soup on the menu.

Move a few doors down to 5036 France Avenue South, where Cocina del Barrio used to be. That space is becoming Americana, a new American concept from del Prado in partnership with Barrio's former owner, Ryan Burnet. The Edina City Council approved a parking variance for the project in October 2025, clearing the way for a second-floor gabled glass conservatory designed by Christian Dean Architecture. The plan is a fall 2026 opening, and as of this writing the restaurant has not yet opened.

Then there's 5005 Ewing Avenue South, the former home of SotaRol, now becoming The Side Door at Dexter's, a small food hall from del Prado's restaurant group. It opened in stages rather than all at once. Lucia's, serving New York City-style sourdough pizza alongside salads and chicken parm, opened its doors on August 6, 2026. Two more concepts, Daq Daq for Korean fried chicken and Rose Sushi for nigiri, are slated to follow later this year.

Three storefronts. Three different building histories. One name behind all of them. At Americana, del Prado's partner is Ryan Burnet, the same collaborator behind Porzana in the North Loop and Minari in Northeast Minneapolis, restaurants the two built together before turning their attention back to 50th & France.

Why one operator can fill this much space at once

This kind of concentrated buildout isn't accidental. The same partnership that produced Porzana and Minari is now producing Americana, and a food hall format like The Side Door makes replication even easier: instead of building out a full kitchen, dining room, and bar for each new concept, several small operations can share infrastructure under one roof and one lease. That's part of why a group can stand up three separate projects across three separate addresses in under a year without the capital outlay each would require on its own.

It also means the district's turnover looks less like a dozen independent entrepreneurs discovering Edina at the same time and more like a single group deciding this stretch of France Avenue is worth a concentrated bet.

What isn't part of the pattern

The district's growth doesn't reduce entirely to one name, and treating it that way would miss real texture. Smithson, a steak and seafood concept from Sharon and Randy Stanley, the team behind Baldamar and 6Smith, is planned for Southdale Center this fall. That's a different address and a different operator, up France Avenue at Southdale rather than in the 50th & France storefronts, and it's worth remembering Southdale and 50th & France are related but distinct retail identities even though both get lumped into "Edina dining" coverage.

Closer to the corridor itself, General Sports Bar took over the former Salut Bar Americain space at 5034 France Avenue, backed by the team behind Nolo's, with more than 25 televisions and a summer 2026 opening timeline. And Smith Coffee & Cafe, an Eden Prairie shop, is opening a second location in the former D'Amico & Sons space at 3948 West 50th Street.

So the district is genuinely diversifying its ownership at the same time one group is genuinely concentrating its footprint. Both things are true. The second one just doesn't show up in a straight list of openings.

The parking fight the growth actually forced

Growth this fast doesn't happen without friction, and the friction here has been public. When the Americana project came before the Edina Planning Commission, it needed a parking variance to accommodate the expansion, since city code required 14 additional stalls the project didn't have room for on site. The commission voted 5 to 1 to recommend approval, despite city staff recommending denial, and the restaurateurs arranged a parking agreement with the neighboring BMO Harris Bank to help cover the gap.

That approval became a bigger conversation at the council level. Councilmember Julie Risser cast what she called "a very reluctant nay," pointing out that a separate 2023 project in the district, a $225,000 Housing and Redevelopment Authority grant to convert a vacant lower-level space into a live music venue, hadn't triggered the same parking scrutiny, and questioned whether the code was being applied consistently. City staff clarified that the music venue didn't expand the building's floor area, which is why it didn't trigger the same review. Other councilmembers used the moment to call for a broader look at parking rules in the district. Councilmember Kate Agnew talked about "evolving this parking policy at 50th and France to make it as equitable and progressive with the changing kind of dynamics within parking today."

That's a city government responding, in real time, to the fact that one commercial strip is absorbing more redevelopment pressure than its 20th-century parking framework was built for. It's a detail that never shows up in a restaurant list, but it's the clearest sign that this isn't cosmetic change. It's dense enough to be rewriting local policy.

Timing a visit this fall

If you're planning to actually eat your way through this, the district's Fall Restaurant Week runs September 27 through October 1, with participating spots including Thérèse, Mr. Paul's Supper Club, Coalition, Pajarito, Red Cow, and more offering deals across six days. It's the easiest single window to sample the corridor's older anchors and its newest arrivals side by side, since the participant list already includes Thérèse, which only opened last November.

Beyond that week, expect The Side Door's remaining concepts, Daq Daq and Rose Sushi, to fill in later this year, and expect Americana to open sometime this fall, following the parking variance and design approvals that cleared this past October. General Sports Bar should already be open or close to it by the time you're reading this, given its summer 2026 target.

None of this needs a real estate reason to matter to you. It's useful simply because it's your neighborhood, and the version of it you'll be walking through by winter is meaningfully different from the one you walked through last spring. The pattern worth remembering isn't just that 50th & France is busy again. It's that a good part of that busyness has one architect, working three storefronts at once, while a second, more scattered wave of independent openings fills in around him.

If you're a longtime Edina resident weighing what all this activity means for your own property, or simply curious how a corridor's commercial momentum tends to show up in home values nearby, the team at Ewing Real Estate Group tracks these shifts as part of daily work in this market. Request a complimentary market valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.