The words "We're almost to the finish line." were reported by Bring Me The News as remarks Christina Le made to the city council.
Christina Le, one of the developers behind Burnsville Center's international food hall, made those remarks to the city council in the summer of 2025. She has said some version of it, or the city has heard some version of it, more than once. The food hall is called Ate Ate Ate. It was first supposed to open around Lunar New Year in January 2023. As of the most recent restaurant roundup from the Star Tribune, published in the first week of September 2026, it is still listed among restaurants "slated to open," not among the ones that have.
If you live in Burnsville, you already know the broad strokes. What you might not have connected is what's actually happened in the three and a half years the food hall has been in development. The mall around it didn't wait. A handful of smaller tenants moved in, opened, and started serving customers while the food hall's opening timeline was revised. If you're trying to gauge whether Burnsville Center is actually turning a corner, the stuff that already opened is worth watching, too.
The Food Hall Timeline
Here's what the public record actually shows, pulled from city council coverage and local reporting over the life of the project:
| When it was said | What was promised | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 announcement | Grand opening timed to Lunar New Year, January 22, 2023 | Date passed while the project was still moving through the city's planning process |
| December 2023 | On track to open by the end of Q1 2024 | Missed |
| March 2024 press release | Opening "very soon," before summer | Missed; still under construction through spring |
| May 2024 council meeting | Developer told the council to expect August or September 2024; the grant extension set interior work due by that October and exterior work due the following June | Both deadlines passed with no public opening |
| June 2025 | Another extension pushed exterior work to a January 31, 2026 deadline; interior work was described as wrapping up "this month" | Reporting from that period described the project as still under construction with no opening date set |
| July 2026 council update | Le told the council the food hall and Enson Market were "almost done"; the council approved yet another extension on the completion timeline | As of the Star Tribune's early September 2026 roundup, Ate Ate Ate is still listed as slated to open, not open |
The timeline includes several revised opening estimates across multiple council meetings.
Mayor Elizabeth Kautz commented on the project's progress at one of those meetings, according to Sun Thisweek's coverage of the project. She noted that the same developer's projects in Eden Prairie and at Northtown Mall in Blaine had moved ahead of Burnsville's. Burnsville, she said, "seems to be the stepchild."
That's a quote from a sitting mayor about a project her own city put $1.1 million behind.
What Was Supposed to Anchor the Comeback
Enson Market and Ate Ate Ate occupy the old Gordmans space in the mall's north extension, a 15,000-square-foot food hall alongside a roughly 50,000-square-foot Asian supermarket. The food hall's current lineup, according to reporting from Bring Me The News, includes Soga Mochi Donuts (Minnesota's first mochi donut shop, originally out of St. Paul), Hang Sang Korean Cuisine, Amazing Momo, ODAY Creamery, Niko Niko Boba, and Mason's Famous Lobster Rolls, among others. It's a real, specific, largely-finalized vendor list.
What Actually Opened While Everyone Waited
Meanwhile, three restaurants and a cafe took over vacant storefronts around it and started serving people.
Mo' Bettahs Hawaiian Style Food opened its first Minnesota location at 410 County Road on July 13, 2026, near Burnsville Plaza and across from the mall. The Utah-based chain's founders, Kimo and Kalani Mack, showed up in person for a two-day preview event before the official opening, handing out free plates.
Chingu Korean Fried Chicken and Kyo Matcha both opened in the mall's former Applebee's space in October 2025, splitting a long-vacant storefront between crispy chicken and street food on one side and matcha desserts, including an ice cream parfait built with cornflakes, red beans, and rice mochi, on the other.
Asal Bee Cafe, a honey-focused concept named for the Arabic word for honey, opened Minnesota's first location at 14001 Grand Avenue in February 2026, timed to Ramadan, with extended hours through the holy month and a menu built around honey-based pastries, smoothies, and savory sandwiches.
These businesses have opened during the same period that the food hall's opening timeline was repeatedly revised.
The Mall Isn't the Only Thing Moving
Zoom out past the mall's doors and the same pattern holds across Burnsville more broadly. A Kwik Trip with 20 fueling stalls and a car wash has been approved for the long-vacant corner of Highway 13 and Diffley Road. Hounds Town, a dog daycare and kennel, is coming to 12255 Nicollet Avenue South. SkaterApolis, the mall's indoor skate park, has been approved to add an outdoor skatepark near the old JCPenney space. And the Interstate 35W corridor through town is in the middle of an $80 million overhaul.
Not everything on the drawing board is guaranteed. Big Hits at the Gateway, a proposed driving range, pickleball, and event complex off I-35W, cleared city approval in late 2025, but it sits on the former Freeway Dump Superfund site, and the state is currently suing over the cleanup. It can't break ground until that's resolved. The proposal illustrates that approval and opening are separate milestones.
What This Means If You Live Here
The honest read on Burnsville Center isn't that its comeback is stalled because the headline tenant hasn't opened. It's that the comeback has been happening in smaller pieces the whole time. If you've been holding off on visiting the mall because you're waiting for Ate Ate Ate's grand opening, you're missing Mo' Bettahs, Chingu, and Kyo Matcha, all of which are open right now.
A useful habit, if you want to track this yourself, is to watch the smaller openings alongside the marquee one. Storefronts that open and stay open are a useful signal of a commercial district's health. That's true of Burnsville Center, and it's generally true of any older shopping center trying to reinvent itself for a different kind of customer.
If you're curious about how these kinds of neighborhood shifts, new restaurants, retail turnover, redevelopment momentum, tend to show up in what a home is actually worth here, that's the kind of question we track closely at Huerkamp Home Group. You can browse more about the area on our Burnsville neighborhood page, or if you're just curious what your own place might be worth in the current market, Get Your Free Market Valuation and we'll walk you through it.
