If you have driven past the corner in the last year, the story looks like decline. Cocina del Barrio's windows are papered over. Salut is winding down. Edina Grill is preparing to close. The corner reads like a district losing its anchors.
Count the other direction and the picture inverts. In the twelve months between fall 2025 and fall 2026, 50th & France will have absorbed at least six new dining rooms, three of them from a single operator, plus a rebooted bakery from one of the market's most recognized chefs. The corner is not emptying. It is being reassembled around a smaller number of larger bets.
One operator, three addresses, one thesis
The single most important fact about the corner right now is that Americana is one of three restaurants del Prado is planning to open in the 50th and France neighborhood, and two of the three are already serving.
Thérèse opened in early November 2025 in the former Lynhall space inside the Nolan Mains development at 3945 Market Street. It is an upscale French brasserie built around classic French fare, including steak frites, croque monsieur, Lyonnaise salad, escargot, and French onion soup, with a beverage program from DDP Restaurant Group's Megan Luedtke. A few doors away, Noma Hi-Fi opened as a much smaller room. Noma Hi-Fi, the new drinking den from the Daniel del Prado's restaurant group, is now open Thursdays through Saturdays at 3914 W. 50th St., Edina. Located near the middle of the 50th and France retail mecca, Noma's vibes are dimly lit with a little Japanese influence.
The third is the one still under construction. Americana will take the 5036 France Ave. S. building that housed Cocina del Barrio for fifteen years, in partnership with Ryan Burnet, who owns the building. The redesign by Minneapolis-based Christian Dean Architecture will transform the restaurant's exterior with a darker brick façade, climbing greenery, a street-facing patio, and a glass-enclosed second level. The updates are designed to refresh the building while creating a stronger street presence along France Avenue.
Read together, those three addresses are the mechanism. A district that used to distribute its dining risk across a dozen independent operators is now anchored, in large part, by one restaurant group with the leverage to open, staff, and market three rooms at once.
The 2025 to 2026 turnover, on one page
| Status | Concept | Address | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open | Thérèse (French brasserie) | 3945 Market St | Opened Nov 2025 |
| Open | Noma Hi-Fi (cocktail bar) | 3914 W. 50th St | Open Thu–Sat |
| Open | Bellecour (bakery and café) | 3934 Market St | Reopened late 2025 |
| Open | Dexter's (refined sports bar) | 3717 W. 50th St | Opened Aug 2024 |
| Coming | General Sports Bar | Former Salut space | Late summer 2026 |
| Coming | Americana (new American) | 5036 France Ave S | Late/fall 2026 |
| Closed | Cocina del Barrio | 5036 France Ave S | Closed Oct 1, 2025 |
| Closing | Salut Bar Americain | 5000 France Ave S | Preparing to close |
| Closing | Edina Grill | 50th & France | Preparing to close |
The right way to read this table is not as a scoreboard. It is a timing chart. The closures cluster in late 2025 and early 2026. The openings, with the exception of Thérèse and Noma, cluster in the back half of 2026. Residents living through the middle of that curve, which is exactly where July puts you, see more empty windows than open doors. By December the ratio flips.
What Bellecour's return signals
Gavin Kaysen closing the original Bellecour in Wayzata was one of the more painful losses in recent Twin Cities dining memory. Its return in Edina is not a full reopening, but it is closer than most residents expected. The pastries are the same as what you saw in the former Cooks | Bellecour, but the hot food menu is different. The French onion soup that I loved so much at the original Bellecour in Wayzata is on the menu, as is a smoked salmon tartine that I tried for a light breakfast/lunch. The address, 3934 Market Street, sits inside the same Nolan Mains block as Thérèse.
The industry read on why chefs of that stature are choosing 50th & France in 2026 is unusually blunt. In a letter of support submitted to the city during the Americana variance hearing, D'Amico's Paul Smith described del Prado as "arguably the hottest restaurateur in the Twin Cities" and framed the project as a way to "restore luster to the trading area and act as a magnet for new tenants". That is a competitor talking about a competitor. It is also the clearest available signal about how insiders read the district's next twelve months.
The Americana variance, and why residents should care
Americana is the one item on the table above with a real question mark, and the question is about parking, not food. Community Development Coordinator Addison Lewis explained that restaurants must provide at least one parking space for each 100 square feet of indoor floor area, plus one space for each employee working a longer shift. Businesses in the 50th and France commercial node (which Americana would be in) may rely on the city's free parking ramps. However, a parking policy established in 1978 states when a property exceeds a floor area ratio (FAR) of 1.0, it must provide additional off-street parking spaces. The expansion to the Cocina Del Barrio would bump its floor area ratio from 0.94 to 1.2.
The Edina Planning Commission ultimately sent along a positive recommendation for the project in a 5-1 vote. The practical effect for residents is that Americana's second-story conservatory, the design element that most changes the France Avenue streetscape, is a 1,500-square-foot addition riding on a 1978 ordinance that most diners will never read. If you enjoy the view from the sidewalk in 2027, it is because a variance conversation went one way rather than the other in 2025.
A resident's read on the next six months
If you already live inside the trade area and want a practical order of operations for the second half of 2026, here is a reasonable one.
- Treat Thérèse as the reservation. It is the room with the highest ceiling of ambition on the corner right now, and demand will not soften. Book it two to three weeks out for weekend dinner or use the daily happy hour as a lower-friction way in.
- Use Noma as the aperitif or the after. Thursday through Saturday only, and the room is small. If Thérèse is your dinner, Noma is your walkable pre or post.
- Rebuild your Bellecour habit. The pastries are the same as the Wayzata original, which means the coffee-and-morning-pastry routine that used to require a drive west now sits inside your walk radius.
- Watch the former Salut windows. General Sports Bar is targeting late summer 2026 from the NOLO's Kitchen ownership group. "Growing up, I used to go to General Sports, and I have great memories of going downstairs to get my skates sharpened," says Marty Collins, who, along with Brett Johnson, is a co-owner of the soon-to-open bar. That is a locally rooted concept, not a chain, and worth walking past every few weeks in July and August.
- Save the Americana visit for winter. Late 2026 is the current window. A soft opening in November or December is realistic; a January or February 2027 grand opening is more realistic still.
What the summer calendar still does well
While the buildings turn over, the district's programmed weekends have not changed much, and that is a feature. The Edina Art Fair remains the anchor early-summer draw. The Edina Art Fair is hosted by the 50th & France Business and Professional Association. With more than 175 distinct shops and boutiques, over 20 restaurants, casual cafes and coffee shops, the quaint streets of 50th and France are the perfect site for a summertime stroll.
The late-July window belongs to Crazy Days, the sidewalk sale that quietly does more foot traffic than most of the restaurant openings. In 2025 the sale ran July 24 to 27 with deep, in-store discounts — up to 90% off — on fashion, gifts, home goods and more, and the participating list included Billy Reid, Bluebird, Bumbershute, Faherty, Grethen House, Harriet and Alice, June, Lululemon, and Pacifier. The 2026 edition typically lands the same week. If you have not walked the corner in a while, Crazy Days is the least expensive way to reintroduce yourself and quietly audit which of your old habits still have a storefront.
The corner is not what you last saw
The residents who will get the most out of 50th & France over the next year are the ones who stop reading it as a static place. The dining lineup you knew in 2023 is not the lineup that will exist in early 2027. Somewhere in the middle of that transition, right about now, is the least representative version of the corner you could pick. It is worth walking through anyway, because the map is rewriting itself in real time and the residents who pay attention early are the ones who end up with the reservations.
If you are thinking through what all of this means for your own block, your own home, or a move within Edina in the next twelve months, Sartor Homes is happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.
