What Opened in Blaine MN: New Restaurants for 2026

For most of the last few years, the parking lot outside the old Becker Furniture Outlet at Northtown Mall sat mostly empty. Hobby Lobby and Best Buy had already pulled out as anchors, and the building that used to hold a Titanic movie prop ship back in the mall's 1972 heyday was doing nothing more than collecting weeds along the curb. Then, over one weekend at the end of May, that lot filled up. Cars circled for spots. A line of more than a hundred people stretched down the block before the doors even opened.

That was Asia Village, and if you live in Blaine, you've probably already heard about it. What you may not have connected yet is that it's only half the story. Clear across town, next to the National Sports Center, a completely separate development quietly opened a two-story steakhouse and pizza concept more than a year earlier. Two anchors, two ends of Blaine, less than two years apart. Because one just made headlines and the other has already blended into the everyday scenery, most residents have fully registered one and forgotten the other exists.

What actually opened at Northtown Mall

Asia Village had a soft opening on May 29 and its official grand opening on June 13, and it did not arrive quietly. The 130,000-square-foot space, developed by longtime Twin Cities restaurateur Michael Bui alongside the team behind Eden Prairie's Asia Mall, packs in more than a dozen food vendors along with a 40,000-square-foot Asian grocery store and an 11,000-square-foot indoor playground.

The names worth knowing if you haven't been yet: 85°C Bakery Cafe, a Taiwanese chain making its Upper Midwest debut with sugar-crusted milk pudding buns that reportedly sold out nightly during the soft opening. Hokkaido Ramen House. OneZo, Minnesota's first location of a Taiwanese boba chain that makes its tapioca fresh daily. Oday Creamery, a local outfit doing Asian-inspired ice cream flavors. Pho Mai Express, a counter-service spinoff of Bui's own sit-down restaurant. Sot House, a sister location to St. Paul's Mirror of Korea. Chingu Fried Chicken, opening its second Minnesota outpost after its original at Burnsville Center. And on the second floor, a full-service restaurant called Spice and Smoke Korean BBQ and Hot Pot.

Bui has said Eden Prairie's Asia Mall is running around 90 percent occupied, and that success is part of why he picked Blaine for a second location rather than a market closer to the Twin Cities core. He's also been candid that this isn't finished growing. Northtown's owner has early plans in the works for a second food center at the mall, tentatively called Halal Square, which means the building that sat half-empty for years is angling for a second act before the first one has even had a full summer to settle in.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city

Here's the part that gets missed if you only pay attention to what's happening at Northtown. Out by the National Sports Center, as part of a newer development called National Sports Village, a two-story dual concept called Pizza Pub and Prime opened back in December 2024, well over a year before Asia Village existed, with a very different pitch.

Downstairs is Pizza Pub, a family-friendly sports bar and the tenth location of a chain with roots in Forest Lake. Upstairs is Prime, an 88-seat steak and seafood room with leather banquettes, a rooftop patio, and a wine list curated by one of the developer's partners. Longtime Blaine resident Mike Breese, who helped bring the concept to the city, put the gap plainly: before this opened, if you wanted a real steakhouse, you drove to Roseville, Minneapolis, or Maple Grove. Prime is currently the only restaurant in Minnesota holding a specific dry-aged beef certification shared by just 32 restaurants nationwide, with the next closest location in Chicago.

That detail matters because it shows the two new food clusters aren't competing with each other. Asia Village is built around volume and variety at a food-hall price point. Prime is built around a certification that took the developer's business partner years to source. They're solving two completely different absences in the same city, about eighteen months apart, without either one being built in response to the other.

Here's how the two anchors actually compare:

The smaller openings filling in around both

Neither anchor opened into a vacuum. A handful of smaller spots have landed around them this year, and most of them cluster near one of the two hubs rather than sitting between them.

Near the National Sports Center corridor, ProteinHouse opened its first Minnesota location this spring, a fast-casual spot built around high-protein bowls and wraps, planted in the same retail complex as Pizza Pub and Prime. Over toward County Highway 10, Cairo Café brought Egyptian coffee and kunafa cups to Blaine, along with Vimto, the fruity English soft drink popular across the Gulf states, in a location that opened in April. Hibachi Grill & Sushi opened the same month on Aberdeen Street, a family-owned fast-casual spot doing grilled hibachi plates and handcrafted sushi rolls. And Stella's Neighborhood Grill, a Forest Lake favorite known for burgers, wings, and pasta, opened its second location in June at the Village of Blaine Shopping Center.

None of these are within easy walking distance of each other, which is really the point. Blaine's new food map isn't a single strip you can stroll. It's scattered across a city that's still built for driving between destinations, which means knowing where things are matters more here than it would in a denser suburb.

What's still coming

The map isn't done being redrawn. Cava, the Mediterranean fast-casual chain, has announced its first two Minnesota locations, one near the University of Minnesota and one in Blaine, both expected later this year. Pair that with the Halal Square plans already brewing at Northtown, and neither side of the city looks finished adding new addresses.

That second act matters more in Blaine than it might elsewhere, because the city's own development office has been candid that big projects here tend to move slowly. Scheels announced its Blaine store in 2025 with an opening date pushed out to 2028, and city officials have had to publicly explain why a three-year wait is normal rather than a sign something stalled. Asia Village ran long too. When the project was first announced in 2024, renovations were expected to take 12 to 16 months. It ended up taking closer to two years from construction start to grand opening. Even a project that outruns its own estimate can still beat the neighbors, and two years is a shorter wait than what Blaine residents are being asked to have patience for elsewhere in the city right now.

The part that isn't guaranteed

Blaine's mayor has called Asia Village the first domino in reviving the whole Northtown corridor, and it's easy to see why he'd hope that. But the mall's own owner has been upfront that he doesn't control most of the land around it, and redevelopment beyond his own parcel is, in his words, financially out of reach for him to drive alone. A packed food hall on a Thursday night doesn't automatically rebuild the strip malls around it. It's a real anchor, but it's one property owner's anchor, not a citywide plan.

That's the piece worth carrying into how you think about the rest of Blaine's commercial corridors this year. The excitement at Northtown is real and it's earned. Whether it spreads to the empty storefronts nearby depends on people who don't own that building deciding to invest next to it, and nobody has promised that part yet.

If you're weighing what a specific pocket of Blaine actually offers day to day, whether that's proximity to the new food scene at Northtown, the National Sports Village side of town, or somewhere quieter in between, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground detail Paulette Carroll and her team build into every buyer consultation. Get your free home valuation or schedule a consultation today to talk through what's actually changing in the neighborhood you're considering.