Ask most people where Dexter's is and they will say Edina. It sits at 3717 West 50th Street, and that address is inside the city of Minneapolis, inside the 55410 zip code that also covers the rest of Fulton. Edina's side of the same intersection carries the 55424 zip. The confusion is understandable. The whole commercial strip markets itself under one name, 50th & France, and the storefronts on both sides of the avenue share sidewalks, parking lots and a single business association. But the block that has absorbed the biggest single run of restaurant investment over the past two years, the one behind Dexter's, sits squarely on Fulton's side of France Avenue.
That matters right now because the same restaurant group building on the Edina side of the intersection is also building on yours, at the same time, with real money and a real timeline. Here is what that looks like on the ground this year.
Where the Line Actually Runs
Fulton's own neighborhood association draws the boundary plainly: the neighborhood runs from France Avenue to Penn Avenue, between West 47th Street and West 54th Street, with Edina sitting directly to the west. France Avenue is the line. Everything on West 50th Street east of France, including the storefronts that get lumped into "the 50th & France district" in casual conversation, is Fulton. The name of the commercial node survives from an era before anyone worried about which city collected the property tax on a given storefront. The 2024 announcement of Dexter's itself named the location plainly: the restaurant took over a vacated storefront in Minneapolis's Fulton neighborhood, not Edina's.
The Food Hall Still Taking Shape Behind Dexter's
DDP Restaurant Group, the company behind Dexter's, is building a small food hall next door called Side Door at Dexter's. According to the Star Tribune's restaurant roll call, the space will hold three concepts under one roof: Daq Daq for Korean fried chicken, Lucia's for pizza and salads, and Rose Sushi for nigiri and rolls. An earlier April report from the same paper described the project as targeting a spring opening. As of the Star Tribune's most recent roll call, published in the first days of August, it is still listed as opening soon rather than already open. That gap between spring and August is worth sitting with. Food hall buildouts with multiple kitchens rarely land on their first projected date, and a resident checking in every few weeks will notice the timeline slip before anyone posts an official update.
Across France Avenue, the Same Group Is Building Too
Walk two blocks west and you land in the middle of DDP's other project. Thérèse, the company's French brasserie, opened in early November 2025 inside the former Lynhall space at 3945 Market Street, part of the Nolan Mains development on the Edina side. The brasserie's own announcement described a menu built around classic French dishes like steak frites and French onion soup. A few blocks from there, in the former Barrio space at 5036 France Avenue South, DDP and restaurateur Ryan Burnet are building Americana, a new American concept with a glass-enclosed rooftop patio designed by Christian Dean Architecture, targeted for a fall 2026 opening.
Put the two sides together and the pattern is hard to miss. One operator is investing on both sides of the same intersection at the same time, in two different cities, under two different sets of zoning and permitting rules. That is not how a restaurant group behaves when it is testing a market. It is how a group behaves when it already believes the corner works, regardless of which municipality's sign is on the storefront.
Everything Else New This Year
The rest of the district's activity has moved fast enough that a resident who checked in last spring would find a different lineup by late summer.
- Smith Coffee & Cafe is opening a second location in the former D'Amico & Sons space at 3948 West 50th Street on the Edina side, according to the Star Tribune's roll call.
- Smithson, a steak and seafood concept from the owners of Baldamar and 6Smith, is planned for Southdale Center with a fall 2026 target.
- The 59th annual Edina Art Fair closed France Avenue to traffic for its usual three-day run, June 5 through 7, with beer gardens and roughly 250 juried artists lining the street.
- Bastille Day weekend, held July 10 through 12, brought an inaugural Paris Flea Market and a fashion show brunch at Thérèse to the district.
- The Crazy Days sidewalk sale ran July 23 through 26, with participating shops discounting merchandise as much as 90 percent.
All three of those events have already come and gone by the time you're reading this. What is still ahead this year, based on the district's usual calendar, is the Fall Into the Arts Festival and the Edina Car Show, both typically held later in the season as the summer crowds thin out.
The Corner Doesn't Care Which City Signs the Permit
None of this changes what Fulton has always been. The neighborhood association still describes itself around a small-town feel and neighbors who shovel each other's front steps, and that has not shifted just because a food hall is going in two doors down from a French bulldog-themed sports bar. What has shifted is where the investment is landing. For a long stretch, the assumption around here was that anything worth opening at 50th & France opened on the Edina side, with the Minneapolis side playing a supporting role. The last two years argue against that. A restaurant group with real capital looked at both corners of the same intersection and decided both were worth building on, on the same timeline, with the same level of design investment. If you live in Fulton and have been treating the Edina side of France Avenue as the interesting half of the neighborhood, the block behind Dexter's is asking you to look again.
If you're weighing a move in Fulton, Edina, or anywhere else in Southwest Minneapolis and want a read on how a specific block is actually trending, not just what the listing photos suggest, Josh Zuehlke & Co has spent years watching these corners change one storefront at a time. Reach out through our contact page when you're ready to talk specifics.
