How many names can one address hold before the turnover itself becomes the story? At 5445 Eden Prairie Road, the answer is at least three. The building opened as Kazoku, a Japanese restaurant whose name the city once explained in a newsletter as translating to "family," and the second location of its kind in the metro. Kazoku didn't last. Copper Cow took the space next, and didn't last either. By the fall of 2024, chef Heather Asbury had opened her second restaurant there, Heather's Minnetonka.
That's three restaurants in one building in a few years, and it's only the warm-up. This year, the turnover reached Ridgedale Center itself. Redstone American Grill, the steakhouse chain that anchored a dining spot inside the mall's footprint for years, is gone, its online listing reduced to a farewell note pointing former regulars toward Maple Grove and Eden Prairie. A few minutes away on Ridgedale Drive, Dave's Hot Chicken opened its first Minnesota location in August. The changes span a short stretch of road and include different formats, from sit-down dining to quicker service.
The Address That Keeps Changing Its Name
Heather's Minnetonka didn't arrive as a blank slate. Chef Heather Asbury already ran a small, well-loved cafe on Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis, a spot she built after years working the line at the farm-to-table restaurant Lucia's. When she and her business partner and brother went looking for extra catering space, they found the former Kazoku and Copper Cow address instead, and decided the building was ready for a full second location rather than a satellite kitchen.
What she opened there runs on a wider schedule than either of its predecessors. Heather's serves breakfast through dinner and pours cocktails seven days a week, with a menu that moves from an acai bowl with housemade granola and lemon blueberry French toast in the morning to a French dip, a curried turkey burger, and a salad built around golden beets later in the day. Entrees run twelve to twenty two dollars. The bar program, developed with the Libation Project, includes a blended rye and bourbon old fashioned, a Trinidadian rum and cola, a strawberry gin martini, and a lavender sage version of a Negroni built without alcohol.
Kazoku ran on a single cuisine and a dinner-forward schedule. Heather's runs on three meals and a cocktail list that covers noon through night, seven days straight. The building has now held Heather's for two years running.
Redstone's Quiet Exit
Ridgedale Center's own restaurant directory still lists the address for Redstone American Grill alongside its neighbors, but the chain's own booking page tells a different story. In place of a menu or a reservation calendar, visitors now find a short message:
Thank you, Minnetonka, for the memories!
The note redirects diners to Redstone locations in Maple Grove and Eden Prairie. No new tenant has been announced for the space as of this writing, which means one of the center's longer-running sit-down anchors is currently sitting empty. Nearby, Dave's Hot Chicken opened this year.
Redstone wasn't a quick stop. It was a full steakhouse format, the kind of restaurant built around a dinner reservation and a longer visit. Its departure leaves a gap in that particular category at Ridgedale Center, not because the mall has less dining overall, but because the format that filled that gap for years hasn't been replaced by anything similar yet.
Why Dave's Hot Chicken Picked This Corridor
Dave's Hot Chicken soft opened on Ridgedale Drive on Thursday, August 6, 2026, according to a same-day review posted to the location's Yelp page. A City Lifestyle report identifies it as the chain's first Minnesota restaurant, run by a family franchise group: Alex Humphries, his parents Debra and William, and his brother, former NBA player Kris Humphries.
The report also quotes Alex Humphries describing the site choice in terms of the roads that meet near it, calling the location "a synaptic connection point for Minnesotans near and far" thanks to its closeness to I-494, I-394, and Highway 169. That's a different calculation than Kazoku or Redstone made. Neither of those concepts needed highway visibility to work. A hot chicken counter that depends on walk-in and drive-through traffic does.
What's Still There
Not every concept on this stretch has turned over. A few have simply kept running underneath all the churn:
- Fork'd, a comfort food restaurant in Minnetonka still taking online orders, unaffected by any of the moves above
- The Tavern Grill, the build-your-own pizza, burger, and salad concept still listed at Ridgedale Center's directory address
- Ichiddo Ramen and Sushi, still operating in the same footprint through all of the recent changes nearby
These three have remained in operation through the recent changes nearby.
Reading the Rotation
Line up what left against what arrived and the formats differ. Kazoku was a single-cuisine dinner restaurant. Copper Cow also occupied the address before Heather's. Redstone was a full steakhouse chain built around reservations and a longer meal. Heather's serves all day, and Dave's Hot Chicken is a fried chicken counter.
These changes involve a stretch of road near a shopping center bounded by three major highways. They don't, by themselves, tell us which restaurant format will last.
If you already treat Ridgedale as a regular stop, the useful takeaway is that the specific restaurant you used to count on there may no longer be open, and a new option nearby might run on a completely different clock than you're used to.
The Weinstock Group keeps an eye on these small shifts because we're in this same stretch of Minnetonka every week, not because we're trying to sell anyone on it. If you want to compare notes on what's opening next along Ridgedale, or anywhere else around Lake Minnetonka, The Weinstock Group is always up for that conversation.
