The French Restaurant That Keeps Almost Opening on Ingersoll Avenue

There's a building at 2701 Ingersoll Avenue that has spent two straight years being almost done. First it was almost open as an apartment building. Then its ground-floor restaurant space was almost about to reopen under a name Des Moines diners hadn't seen since 2016. Now it's almost open again, under a name nobody has announced yet. If you live anywhere near this stretch of Ingersoll, you've probably watched this play out in real time without quite knowing what to make of it. Here's what's actually happening, and why the building itself may matter more than whatever eventually goes inside it.

A Gas Station That Became Something Else Entirely

Before it was anything else, 2701 Ingersoll was a Star gas station. Developers Scott and Molly Cutler of Cutler Development bought the corner and, in partnership with Anawim Housing, spent nearly two years turning it into Star Lofts, a 20-unit income-restricted apartment building that opened with a ribbon-cutting in November 2024. It's built from mass timber, layered wood construction that Cutler said cut the building's carbon footprint by roughly 70 percent compared to standard steel and concrete. That achievement earned it certification as Iowa's first zero-carbon building under the International Living Future Institute, and it's only the second mass-timber apartment building ever built in the state.

The old gas station isn't entirely gone. A sign salvaged from the original Star station is mounted in the building's stairwell, a small nod to what the corner used to be before it became 20 apartments and 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail sitting on a stretch of Ingersoll that carries somewhere around 15,000 vehicles a day.

That retail space is the part of this story that keeps changing shape.

The Restaurant That Was, Then Wasn't, Then Might Be Again

If you've followed Des Moines dining news at all over the past year, you've probably seen the name Bistro Montage resurface. The original Bistro Montage ran for 16 years on Ingersoll Avenue, opened in 2003 by chef Enosh Kelley in the space where Harbinger now sits. It earned a James Beard Foundation Best Chef Midwest nomination in 2009 and built a reputation as one of the city's most acclaimed French dining rooms before closing on New Year's Eve, 2016.

In October 2025, word came that Kelley was teaming up with chef David Baruthio, whose own French restaurant Baru 66 had run a celebrated decade-long stretch in Windsor Heights before closing in 2019, to revive the Bistro Montage name at 2701 Ingersoll. Construction was underway. Baruthio described the concept as a blend of Bistro Montage and Baru 66 favorites, calling it, in his words, the first carbon-free emission restaurant built in Iowa, a nod to the building it would occupy. The target was a late spring or early summer 2026 opening.

That plan didn't hold. In November 2025, Baruthio announced he had ended the collaboration after developments involving Kelley became public, and that the Bistro Montage revival was permanently off. The space wasn't going anywhere, though. Baruthio confirmed the project would continue at the same address under a new French concept, with a new name still to be announced. As of dsm magazine's most recent restaurant tracker this spring, that name still hadn't been made public. Baruthio still operates Café Madeleine, a 16-seat, tasting-menu-only restaurant in downtown's Fleming Building that he opened in 2024, so his track record on Ingersoll's next chapter is worth watching even without a name attached yet.

Here's what makes that worth noticing if you live nearby: the building didn't wait around for the restaurant to figure itself out. It has kept functioning as a residential and retail address the entire time, with one of its retail neighbors already open and drawing its own regulars.

What's Actually Open Right Now

Refill Market, a sustainable grocery store built around grab-and-go snacks and package-free refills, opened in the same ground-floor retail space at 2701 Ingersoll in November 2025. Nearly a year later, it's popular enough that the Avenues of Ingersoll & Grand, the nonprofit that promotes the district, gave it a business spotlight feature this past July. A few blocks west, Canopy was on the same tracker as a casual breakfast and lunch spot slated for the corridor this year.

So the corner that couldn't quite settle on a restaurant concept has, in the meantime, become home to a grocery store people already treat as a regular stop. That's worth sitting with. The building's identity was never really dependent on the French restaurant showing up on schedule.

Here's a rough sense of how the corner has actually moved over the past two years, set against what was originally announced:

The Rest of the Corridor Isn't Waiting Either

Ingersoll Avenue spent four years, starting in 2020, under a six-phase road reconstruction meant to widen sidewalks, add raised bike lanes, and replace aging storm sewers. Businesses along the corridor, including longtime tenants like Cheese Bar, spent years dealing with detoured foot traffic. When phase four wrapped in October 2024, six weeks ahead of schedule, bartenders at Cheese Bar and Wellman's Pub both described the same thing: a noticeable, immediate uptick in people walking through the door once the road was actually clear again.

That timing matters here. Refill Market and the still-unnamed French concept both committed to storefronts on Ingersoll only after years of construction had already eased. Neither business is betting on a street that's mid-repair. They're betting on one that's already come out the other side.

The district itself has kept building on that momentum without waiting for any single restaurant to anchor it. The Avenues of Ingersoll & Grand announced its 2026 entertainment lineup for Ingersoll LIVE, the corridor's summer concert series, back in July, and a new mural blending Beatles imagery with local history went up on the district that same month. None of that depended on knowing what was going to open at 2701 Ingersoll. The street kept moving.

What This Actually Tells You About Ingersoll Avenue

For a long stretch, Ingersoll's reputation as a dining destination rode heavily on a handful of chef-driven institutions with long, specific runs: Bistro Montage's 16 years, Baru 66's decade in Windsor Heights. When those restaurants closed, they took a piece of the street's identity with them, and reopening under the same name became its own kind of local event, something people watched for and talked about before it even happened.

What's different this time is that the corner didn't need the restaurant to work out on schedule in order to function. Star Lofts filled its apartments. Refill Market opened, found its customers, and got written up by the district's own newsletter less than a year later. The road construction that had slowed everyone down finally ended. The restaurant concept changed names in the middle of all of it, and the corner kept going anyway.

That's a different kind of stability than one restaurant's comeback story, and it's arguably a more durable one. If you've lived near this stretch of Ingersoll through the construction years, the Refill Market opening, and now the restaurant's second act under a name that hasn't been announced yet, you've already seen the pattern. The building outlasts the concept. Whatever finally opens in that space will be worth trying. It just won't be the only reason the corner matters.

If you're curious what else is shifting along Ingersoll, in Beaverdale, or elsewhere in Des Moines this fall, and how any of it might connect to a move you're weighing, Steward Real Estate Group knows this stretch of the city well enough to talk through it plainly. Reach out to schedule a consultation whenever you're ready.