The Restaurant Group Quietly Taking Over 50th & France
Walk from Nolan Mains to the four corners of 50th and France this month and count the new awnings. Then count how many of them trace back to the same restaurant group.
Over the past year, Edina's oldest commercial district has absorbed six new food and drink concepts within about two blocks of that intersection. Five of them share an owner: chef Daniel del Prado and his DDP Restaurant Group. That is not a neighborhood attracting six independent bets on its future. That is one operator betting on the same four blocks, again and again, faster than most residents have had time to notice.
Here is the timeline, in order:
That is six concepts opened or announced in roughly fifteen months, all inside walking distance of the same corner. If you have felt like 50th & France's dining scene changed shape overnight, that instinct is correct. It did not change through a wave of new entrants competing for the same customers. It changed because one group decided this particular stretch of Edina was worth owning several times over.
The Side Door is the more interesting bet of the two, because it is not another restaurant. It is a hedge. Instead of opening one more full-service dining room, DDP took the former SotaRol space and split it into three counter-service concepts under one roof: pizza, Korean fried chicken, sushi. Lower buildout, faster turnaround, and if one concept underperforms, the operator can swap it without shuttering the address.
Del Prado has been direct about why he keeps returning to this particular corner. On opening Thérèse, he said the 50th & France neighborhood is the perfect place for it, describing the kind of warm, walkable brasserie he had wanted to build for years.
The early execution has not been flawless. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine's review of Thérèse found real strengths in the wine program but also flagged dishes that reached the table before they were finished, including a Lyonnaise salad served with cold lardon and an onion soup where the onions had not been cooked down properly. That is a useful thing to know before you build an evening around any of the newer spots. A restaurant group can open five concepts in a year. It cannot guarantee that every kitchen is running at full speed on night one.
Not everyone opening a restaurant near 50th & France answers to del Prado. Smith Coffee & Cafe, which already runs a shop in Eden Prairie, is opening a second location at 3948 W. 50th St. in the former D'Amico & Sons space, with the same coffee, pastry, and breakfast menu that built the original.
Half a mile away at Southdale Center, restaurateurs Sharon and Randy Stanley, known locally for Baldamar and 6Smith, are building Smithson, a 200-seat steak and seafood restaurant slated for fall 2026. It will have both a connection into the mall and its own exterior entrance, a detail that suggests the Stanleys are betting on foot traffic from two directions at once.
Put those two projects next to the DDP timeline and the real pattern becomes clear. The consolidation is not an Edina-wide trend. It is concentrated almost entirely in the four corners of the historic 50th & France core. A few blocks out, in either direction, independent operators are still placing their own bets.
Whatever happens with the restaurant lineup, Centennial Lakes Park keeps running on its own schedule, and that schedule is worth knowing regardless of who owns the storefronts down the street.
Lighthouse Night and the Torchlight Concert took over the Maetzold Amphitheater on August 9, a deliberately old-fashioned evening built around the 45-person First John Philip Sousa Memorial Band, a fife and drum procession, and members of the Edina Model Yacht Club lighting up their remote-control boats on the park's ponds. Twenty-five cent ice cream cones and nickel balloons were part of the bit, a nod to the era the band's repertoire comes from. That evening has already come and gone for the year, but it is a reminder that some Edina traditions have nothing to do with which chef opened where.
The Thursday farmers market at Centennial Lakes Park is still running, from 3 to 7 p.m., through late September, if you have not walked through since spring.
The bigger date still ahead is September 12 and 13, when the 22nd annual Edina Fall Into the Arts Festival takes over Centennial Lakes Park. Around 245 artists are expected, working in photography, pottery, sculpture, glass, and more, with proceeds supporting the Edina First Responders Fund. It is the kind of weekend that pulls people from well outside the neighborhood into the park, which means the restaurants a few blocks away, new and old, will be feeling it too.
None of this changes what 50th & France is. It is still a walkable, tree-lined commercial strip anchored by a park that has hosted the same putting course and paddleboats for decades. What has changed is the ownership behind the newest storefronts, and that is worth knowing before you decide where to eat on a Friday.
If a friend asks what is new at 50th & France this fall, the honest answer is that it depends which of Daniel del Prado's restaurants they mean. That is not a complaint. It is just accurate, and accuracy is the whole point of paying attention to a neighborhood you actually live in.
These are the kinds of details Blake Halverson tracks closely, not because a restaurant group's expansion plans move home values on their own, but because they shape how a block feels to walk through, eat in, and come home to. If you are curious what else has shifted in Edina lately, the Edina neighborhood guide is a good place to keep tabs, and Blake is always glad to talk through what any of it means for your corner of the city.
Whether you are buying, selling or investing in real estate, Blake has a proven track record to be the versatile agent you need. Through strong, aggressive representation, Blake will help you achieve your desired outcomes.
7700 FRANCE AVE S STE 230 EDINA MN 55435