Walk the two blocks between Market Street and France Avenue this week and you will pass four restaurant projects that outside guides keep folding into a single story: a 2026 opening wave at 50th & France. That framing was already stale before most of those guides went to press. The four projects are not on the same clock. One has been serving weekend brunch since before Thanksgiving. One opened three weeks ago. One is stuck behind a kitchen that failed 1980s code. One needed the city to sign off on parking before a contractor could touch the building.
The district itself just had its moment in the sun. The eighth annual Edina Car Show closed West 50th Street to traffic on September 20, pairing collector Aston Martins with runway shows and live dance performances, the kind of afternoon that makes the whole intersection look finished. It isn't. Four separate builds are moving at four separate speeds, and knowing which is which matters more than knowing that "change is coming."
The One That's Already Old News
Daniel del Prado's Thérèse opened on November 21, 2025, in the former Lynhall space inside the Nolan Mains development at 3945 Market Street. It has been open long enough that the Minnesota Star Tribune already ran a full review, describing a dining room with lobster thermidor, chicken presse and butter-bathed escargot, and noting the restaurant shifts from a tartine-driven daytime menu to a richer brasserie after dark. Brunch runs Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dinner is nightly.
Del Prado named the restaurant after his mother and told the Star Tribune he chose the location because 50th & France is "one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the metro," the kind of place where an all-day spot for a midweek dinner or a casual meetup made sense to him. Thérèse is the first of two restaurants he is opening in the district and it has been open for close to a year. Several other guides to the neighborhood, including at least one still circulating on real estate blogs, describe it as "expected to open in early November." That expectation resolved itself in November of last year.
The One That Opened Three Weeks Ago
General Sports Bar took over the former Salut Bar Americain space at 5034 France Avenue and opened its doors on September 8, according to the Star Tribune's restaurant roll call. The concept comes from Marty Collins and Brett Johnson, the team behind NOLO's Kitchen, The Rooftop Bar and The Basement Bar in the North Loop, and both are Edina natives building their first project in the suburb where they grew up. It seats more than 25 televisions worth of sports viewing, a different kind of night out than the wine-list brasserie two blocks away.
The build got a boost from the city itself. Edina's Housing and Redevelopment Authority awarded General Sports Bar a $24,000 SPARC grant on August 13 to help cover permanent building improvements, part of a program that Economic Development Manager Bill Neuendorf noted was winding down at year's end, according to the Sun Current. The same grant round went to a second business at the same intersection, one that is still not open.
Here is where the four flagship projects actually stand, as of this week.
| Project | Address | Replaced | Status as of Sept. 27, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thérèse | 3945 Market St. | Lynhall | Open since Nov. 21, 2025 |
| General Sports Bar | 5034 France Ave. | Salut Bar Americain | Open since Sept. 8, 2026 |
| Smith Coffee & Cafe | 3948 W. 50th St. | D'Amico & Sons | Under construction, targeting October |
| Americana | 5036 France Ave. S. | Cocina del Barrio | Under construction, targeting late 2026 |
The One Still Waiting on a Kitchen
Smith Coffee & Cafe's own website still reads "coming fall 2026," and as of a Sun Current report from August 19, owner Ann Schuster and her son Alex, the cafe's general manager, were hoping for an October opening. The lease itself came together fast. Alex Schuster told Eden Prairie Local News in April that the deal went from "a total dream to an agreement in less than a month." The construction has not moved at that pace.
The Schusters have put roughly $400,000 into the build so far. The former D'Amico & Sons kitchen, built to pass inspection in the 1980s, no longer meets current code. Ceilings had to come out. Electrical and plumbing needed a full replacement before the space could reopen as anything, let alone a cafe planning a 90-seat dining room with patio seating. The same August 13 SPARC round that funded General Sports Bar gave Smith Coffee its own $24,000 grant, aimed specifically at the kitchen rebuild. Neuendorf's read, per the Sun Current, was that this kind of work is invisible to customers but impossible to open without.
The One That Needed the City's Signature First
Americana is chef Daniel del Prado's second restaurant in the district, this one a partnership with Ryan Burnet, who owned Cocina del Barrio for 15 years at 5036 France Avenue South before closing it on October 1, 2025. The concept borrows from post-World War II American culture, del Prado has described it as a mashup of Italian and Hawaiian tiki influences, styled like Mad Men. Christian Dean Architecture's redesign calls for a darker brick facade, a street-facing patio, and a glass-enclosed second-level conservatory dining room.
Before any of that could be built, the project needed a parking variance from the city. Edina ordinance requires one parking space for every 100 square feet of indoor floor area plus an additional space per employee on longer shifts, and the expanded building would push Americana's floor area ratio from 0.94 to 1.2, over the threshold that triggers the requirement, according to the Sun Current's coverage of the planning process. The Edina Planning Commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval, with commissioner Ryan Daye casting the lone no, saying he liked the project but couldn't approve a variance he didn't think met code. The variance went through. Americana is still under construction and targeted for late 2026, which means the restaurant now sits on the same intersection as three others, each finished on its own schedule, not the neighborhood's.
What Didn't Need to Change at All
Not every anchor at 50th & France is new, and it's worth separating the two categories. Mr. Paul's Supper Club, the New Orleans-inflected steakhouse and bar right at the corner, has been voted Best Restaurant in Edina four years running and was named the Twin Cities' top supper club by Mpls.St.Paul Magazine in 2025. It opened well before this current round of construction and its offshoots, Mothership Pizza Paradise and Carnival Bar, have added momentum without replacing anything. Red Cow's location a few blocks east just went through its own remodel and added a $34 steak frites, evidence that longtime tenants are reinvesting rather than waiting to be displaced. Coalition, serving breakfast through dinner, took over the space once occupied by Pearson's and later the 50th Street Cafe. Edina Grill closed this year after years on 50th Street. Across from Smith Coffee's future spot, Takumi Sushi is set to replace the recently closed Raku, according to Bring Me The News.
The honest picture of 50th & France this fall isn't a single wave cresting on schedule. It's two restaurants that are already part of the neighborhood's daily rhythm, one that's a few weeks from its kitchen passing inspection, and one still finishing construction it couldn't legally start until the city cleared its parking math. Anyone deciding where to eat on a given Friday needs to know which door is actually open. Anyone thinking about what the corridor will look like next year needs to know that the slowest projects are also the ones tied to code and permitting, not taste or demand.
If you're the kind of person who wants this same level of granular, current tracking applied to the neighborhood you're actually trying to buy, sell, or understand, that's the habit MN Living Real Estate brings to every Edina conversation. Let's connect.
