If you walked the stretch of 50th and France a year ago, you passed a shuttered Barrio, a dark Salut, a quiet D'Amico & Sons, the last months of Lynhall, and a SotaRol most people already thought had closed. Five storefronts, five holding patterns. That block was the neighborhood's polite embarrassment.
This fall it becomes the busiest ten minutes of sidewalk in Edina. The turnover is not gradual and it is not spread across a dozen operators. One hospitality group has quietly moved into most of it, and the practical consequence for anyone who lives within walking distance is that a Friday night now looks nothing like it did in 2025.
The Turnover, in One Table
Here is the block, then and now. Every address is inside a five-minute walk of the intersection.
| Former tenant | What is there now | Address |
|---|---|---|
| Lynhall | Thérèse, a French brasserie | 3945 Market St. (Nolan Mains) |
| SotaRol | Side Door at Dexter's food hall | 3717 W. 50th St. |
| Cocina del Barrio | Americana, new American with rooftop | 5036 France Ave. S. |
| Salut Bar Americain | General Sports Bar | 5034 France Ave. |
| D'Amico & Sons | Smith Coffee & Cafe | 3948 W. 50th St. |
| (new build inside Nolan Mains) | Noma Hi-Fi, listening bar | 3914 W. 50th St. |
Five of those six rooms belong, in whole or in part, to a single group: chef Daniel del Prado's DDP Restaurant Group, which already runs Dexter's on 50th Street.
Why One Group Now Anchors the District
Thérèse opens in early November in the former Lynhall space inside Nolan Mains, serving steak frites, croque monsieur, Lyonnaise salad, escargot, and French onion soup, with additional plates like uni custard, stuffed pig trotters, and langoustine ravioli. The wine and cocktail program comes from Megan Luedtke, who runs beverages across the DDP portfolio. It is the most conventional of the new rooms and probably the one your out-of-town relatives will ask you to book.
Two doors down, Noma Hi-Fi is already open at 3914 W. 50th St. with drinks, snacks, and music-focused programming featuring vinyl and live DJs. The name is a wink at Nolan Mains itself. If Thérèse is the anniversary dinner, Noma Hi-Fi is the after-dinner nightcap you did not previously have in Edina.
Around the corner, next to Dexter's, the Side Door food hall is finishing out the old SotaRol footprint. Three counters share the room: Daq Daq will offer Korean fried chicken, Lucia's will serve pizza and salad, and Rose Sushi will focus on nigiri and sushi rolls. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine notes Lucia's is serving pizzas and empanadas and is not affiliated with the founding Minneapolis restaurant of the same name by Lucia Watson. Together with Dexter's next door, this becomes the casual-dining spine of the block.
The fourth DDP-adjacent project is the largest and the slowest. By fall 2026, Americana will replace Cocina del Barrio at 5036 France Ave. S. and will feature a glass-enclosed rooftop patio and redesign by Christian Dean Architecture, with Barrio owner Ryan Burnet teaming with del Prado for their third project together. The bottleneck is not construction. It is parking. An ordinance requires Americana to add 14 off-street parking spaces to ensure there's enough room in the city's public parking ramps for all businesses at 50th & France. That single line explains more about the shape of 50th & France than any market study: the district's tight ramp inventory functions as a soft cap on how quickly restaurants can scale, and every new operator negotiates around it.
The concentration matters. When one group runs five rooms on one block, they cross-staff, cross-promote, and set the tone. If you have opinions about DDP's service model, you will now have five chances a week to weigh in.
The Everyday Layer Is Quietly Improving Too
Not everything on the block is DDP, and the non-DDP openings are arguably more useful for daily life.
Smith Coffee & Cafe is taking the D'Amico & Sons space at 3948 W. 50th. Owner Ann Schuster, who runs the original inside a historic Eden Prairie farmhouse, told the Star Tribune the Edina shop will open daily from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m., with pizza nights possibly added down the road and a grand opening anticipated sometime this fall. This is the room that will change your Tuesday morning, not your Saturday night.
General Sports Bar is moving into the former Salut Bar Americain space at 5034 France Ave. From the team behind Nolo's, it will have more than 25 televisions. It is the answer to the question Edina residents have been asking politely for four years: where do we watch the Vikings without driving to Bloomington.
Mad Hatter Bakery and Cafe opened this spring a few miles west at 7300 Metro Blvd. inside One Corporate Center. Owner Jules Hill has been a fixture at Twin Cities farmers markets for years, and the cafe serves U.K. comfort foods, British sausages, meat pies, scones, and other traditional dishes from across the pond. Weekday hours only, but the clotted-cream scones are worth the detour.
A Fall Weekend, Actually Planned
Here is where the newly-dense block starts to earn its keep. The two anchor calendar events for fall sit within a mile of it.
The 2026 Edina Fall into the Arts Festival lands September 12 and 13 at Centennial Lakes Park, running 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. It is the twenty-second year of the festival and brings roughly 250 artists, food vendors, and sponsors across photography, jewelry, pottery, sculpture, wearable art, glass, fiber, wood, and painting. Admission is free and proceeds benefit the Edina First Responders Fund.
A functional weekend itinerary if you already live here:
- Thursday, 3 to 7 p.m.: the Farmers Market at Centennial Lakes Park, then walk the Promenade north toward 50th & France for dinner.
- Friday: Thérèse at 6, Noma Hi-Fi at 9. Ten-minute total walk, zero moves of the car.
- Saturday of the festival weekend: park once near Centennial Lakes, spend the morning at Fall into the Arts, then take the 80-foot-wide Edina Promenade greenway that connects the greater Southdale area's retail, residential, and recreational amenities to the Side Door for lunch.
- Sunday: coffee at Smith, groceries at Lunds, home.
Free evening music tucks in around all of that. The Centennial Lakes outdoor concerts run at 7 p.m. Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays, with children's concerts at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus the Torchlight Concert typically held at sundown the second Sunday in August at Centennial Lakes Park as the seasonal cap.
Southdale Pulls the Other Direction
The dining story is not only at 50th & France. Southdale Center is getting its own headline opening. Restaurateurs Sharon and Randy Stanley, of Baldamar and 6Smith, plan to open Smithson at Southdale in fall 2026, a 200-seat steak and seafood restaurant with both mall connectivity and a separate exterior entrance, serving formal steakhouse fare alongside casual items like burgers and sandwiches.
Two competing gravity wells in one small city usually produces one winner and one afterthought. What is likely to happen here is different. Southdale is a driving destination for the region. 50th & France is a walking destination for its own residents. If you live north of 66th Street, the block belongs to you in a way the mall never will.
What Actually Changed
The block did not add a restaurant. It replaced five, added a listening bar, and consolidated control of the dining tenants under one operator that also owns the sports bar on the corner. The parking ordinance ensures the next wave will come slowly. The fall calendar at Centennial Lakes gives you two Saturdays where the walk from festival to dinner will feel like the plan the whole district was drawn for.
If you have been telling yourself for two years that 50th & France was coasting, this is the fall to walk it again.
When you are ready to talk about what this kind of neighborhood momentum means for a home you already own here, or one you are hoping to buy nearby, the team at McKevitt Perez Real Estate is glad to help you find the lifestyle you want.
