Vincent Francoual spent a long time making food for a relatively short roster of diners.
For nearly a decade and a half, the French chef ran the downtown Minneapolis fine dining favorite Vincent, A Restaurant. Before that, he’d cooked at several other acclaimed French spots in New York City, Minneapolis and France; after Vincent closed in 2015, he spent some years at the Minikhada Club before helping open another downtown Minneapolis spot, Chloe, in 2022.
Now, Francoual is done with cloth napkins and pricey menus. His two new restaurants in the United Village development near Allianz Field — the Midway Diner and Picco Pizza and Gelateria — are designed to serve everyone, he said.
The restaurants are located in a pair of adjacent pavilion buildings on the grounds of the St. Paul soccer stadium. Surrounding construction work on a hotel, parking ramp, office building and various community amenities, all spearheaded by Minnesota United team owner Bill McGuire, resumed earlier in September after regulatory snarls nearly derailed parts of the project.
The Midway Diner opened Monday, with classic American breakfast and lunch fare at all-day hours. The restaurant has 120 seats inside, including a long zinc bar, and 80 patio seats. Across a walkway, smaller Picco will likely debut within the next month or so, serving pies out of a Ferrari-red deck pizza oven brought in from Italy and gelato from Cossetta.
Yes, Francoual insists, the Midway Diner is indeed a diner — even if the stunning floor-to-ceiling windows, midcentury Norman Cherner-esque chairs and massive mural depicting four seasons on Lake Superior look like no greasy-spoon you’ve ever set foot in. The menu reads as a classic diner with homemade touches, including dishes like eggs benedict, country-fried steak and lunch sandwiches, at prices more or less consistent with other similar brunch cafes around town.
The way Francoual sees it, that’s the point: celebrating diner food, not churning out short-order meals but instead preparing comfortable favorites a little more thoughtfully.
“I think, whether you cook a lobster or a sunny-side-up egg, you’ve got to pay the same attention,” he said. “We’re not reinventing the wheel here; we’re bringing back what it’s supposed to be. … Yes, the place is beautiful, and why can’t we have diner food in an elegant place?”
‘Update a neighborhood’
Chef Vincent Francoual, center, is photographed with his creative team (from left) Anthony McNelly, Charles Stotts, Hassan Ziadi and Ash Wolf in front of Picco Pizza in United Park in St. Paul on Friday Sept. 17, 2026. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Shortly after arriving in Minnesota in the late 1990s, Francoual said, he was introduced by the maître d’ at the upscale D’Amico Cucina to a man who at the time was the CEO of UnitedHealth Group: Bill McGuire.
Over the years, Francoual said, McGuire hired him as a private chef on a few occasions and regularly dined at Vincent, A Restaurant. At one point shortly before the restaurant closed, he remembered, McGuire stopped in and gave Francoual a peek at blueprints for a new stadium for the soccer team McGuire had bought a couple years earlier. At the time, Francoual didn’t have the bandwidth to say yes to joining McGuire’s vision, he said.
“Then, years later, we got in touch, and he asked me again about this project, and I was really honored to tell him I’m ready,” Francoual said. “Even as I got into the project, I don’t think I realized the magnitude of the impact of (the United Village development). It’s not only restaurants; it’s trying to update a neighborhood.”
And it’s not a stadium amenity, either. The fact that Allianz Field anchors the development is nice, Francoual said — the restaurants will gladly serve soccer fans before and after matches — but what resonates for Francoual is how the development might function like the central plazas that attract civic life in many European cities, he said.
This opportunity to think big-picture is what excites Francoual about his changing role in the two new restaurants, he said. At the Midway Diner and Picco, Francoual is the “head of culinary,” not the executive chef. He’s able to be creative with menus and dining service but isn’t pretending to still be the one chopping carrots, he said.
“We live in a world where you see all these chefs dressed as a chef but they never cook anymore,” he said. “I’m not going to fake it. I’m going to be in the kitchen, I’m going to be in the front, I’m going to be everywhere. … I’ve been cooking since the age of 15, and I really always felt that I don’t want to just be a chef. I wanted to be also in hospitality.”
The Midway Diner: 445 Simpson St., St. Paul; 651-523-3677; thedinermidway.com
Dining and Cooking