Uptown's Dining Scene Watches a Wave of New Twin Cities Openings

The headlines from Uptown have leaned toward closings, but a wave of 2026 openings across Minneapolis tells a more balanced story about where restaurant operators are putting their money, much of it in newly built or rebuilt mixed-use space near Lake Street.

Chef Sean Sherman's nonprofit, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, is opening Šhotá Indigenous BBQ in the former Seward Co-op Creamery building on East Franklin Avenue, a counter-service spin on the Indigenous cooking that made his restaurant Owamni a national name. The menu runs to smoked game and fish with sides like maple-baked beans, dirty wild rice and braised greens.

A few blocks south, Afro Deli founder Abdirahman Kahin plans to open Martiya, an upscale East African restaurant, in July at Opportunity Crossing — the mixed-use redevelopment of the former Kmart site at Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue, a corner reconnected after the city reopened Nicollet through the long-blocked intersection. Martiya, paired with a halal butcher, market and event space, will be Kahin's first full-service restaurant after 16 years running the fast-casual Afro Deli.

The pattern is the useful signal for Uptown. Both projects sit in rebuilt or redeveloped space with ground-floor frontage and rising foot traffic, the conditions that draw operators. Uptown's recent closings read less as a verdict on the corridor's appeal than as a shortage of those conditions, which the reopened South Hennepin Avenue and new apartment projects such as Seven Points aim to supply. The culinary energy landing on Franklin and Lake has every reason to migrate north if the storefronts are ready for it.