What's New in Downtown Chaska: 2 Notable Restaurant Openings

Crooked Pint served its last Easter brunch buffet at 3 p.m. on April 5, then went dark for a remodel inside the Chaska Curling and Event Center. The plan, according to the city's own announcement, was to reopen before the Chaska Rocks Music Festival on June 20, giving Firemen's Park a freshly renovated restaurant to spill into during one of downtown's biggest fundraising nights of the summer.

The new restaurant, a Hightop Hospitality concept called The Copperfield, opened its doors on June 23, three days after Chaska Rocks, the festival it was supposed to precede, and two and a half weeks ahead of the Curling Center's biggest weekend of the year.

The Restaurant Space City Hall Owns

Most restaurant turnovers are a landlord story you never hear. This one isn't, because the landlord is the City of Chaska itself. The Chaska Economic Development Authority approved The Copperfield's lease on March 30, a 10-year term with two additional five-year renewal options, and the city keeps 100 percent of the room rental fees generated by the attached Event Center. Crooked Pint had run that same space for a decade before its lease came up this year, and Hightop Hospitality took over the restaurant space.

The remodel added tiered, stadium-style seating so diners can watch the action on the ice without leaving their table, plus new livestreaming screens inside the restaurant that zero in on matches across all six sheets. Hightop's regional manager, Zach Saueressig, told Carver County Local News that early customer reaction has centered on the physical space itself.

"People love the look of the space… how bright and fresh everything looks."

Saueressig also noted that curlers have taken to the new glass-side seating, which puts fans close enough to follow a match while eating. None of that seating existed under the old restaurant. It was in place before the Fire and Ice Festival.

Ten Years Of Fire And Ice, On A Freshly Renovated Floor

The Fire and Ice Festival hit its 10th anniversary on July 10 and 11, and it is the one weekend a year when the Curling Center's dual identity, part restaurant, part ice sheet, part civic gathering space, is on full display. The festival runs a bean bag tournament, a family fun run around Firemen's Park, live music both nights, and a fireworks show, while the Curling Center itself hosts an international bonspiel next door. A restaurant with stadium seating aimed at the ice didn't exist for the festival's first nine anniversaries. It existed for the tenth, finished with a little over two weeks to spare.

For visitors, the practical question is what that timing means for a visit.

If you're weighing when to actually go, the tradeoff is straightforward. Fire and Ice weekend gets you the full experience, fireworks across the park, a bonspiel through the glass, a restaurant built to watch both. Any other summer Thursday gets you the same menu and the same seating with a fraction of the wait.

Here's how the rest of downtown's summer calendar lined up around that same reopening:

The Chaska Rocks Music Festival, which shared the same park and drew from the same Rotary-city partnership as Fire and Ice, put its 2026 proceeds toward a specific goal: a Miracle League Field and Universal Playground designed to be fully accessible.

Three Blocks Over, A Different Kind Of Opening

A few blocks from Firemen's Park, at 232 Pioneer Trail, Bellows Bistro offers a different kind of downtown restaurant experience, sharing a wall with The Forge, a tabletop and role-playing game store. Both are owned by Robert Cormican, who opened The Forge first and then, when the Quiznos next door closed, converted the vacated space into a Dungeons & Dragons themed restaurant. There's no city lease here, no Economic Development Authority vote, no guaranteed cut of rental income flowing back to a municipal fund. It's one owner's private bet that Chaska had room for a place where dinner and a dice game happen in the same booth.

The bet worked well enough that Cormican wanted to go further, literally, by cutting a doorway straight through the shared wall so customers could move between the restaurant and the game store. He told KARE 11 and, in more detail, Carver County Local News exactly why that hasn't happened.

"It'll cost me $120,000 in Met Council sewer access charges."

He's said city staff have tried to help, but the fee itself hasn't moved. That unresolved charge sets up a broader contrast in how the two restaurants operate.

Two Restaurants, Two Different Economies

Put the two stories side by side and downtown Chaska stops looking like a single restaurant scene and starts looking like two of them, running on different rules. The Copperfield occupies a city-owned space, and the city retains the Event Center's room rental fees. Bellows Bistro is a privately run restaurant at 232 Pioneer Trail.

Neither model is better. They're just different answers to the same question: who decides what a downtown restaurant looks like and when it opens. For residents, that distinction helps explain why the two spaces offer such different experiences.

The Copperfield's stadium-style seating faces the ice. Bellows Bistro shares a wall with The Forge, and Cormican said a doorway between them would cost $120,000 in sewer access charges. Both are worth your Thursday night.

If you're the kind of Chaska resident who tracks these openings because you're also weighing whether historic downtown or one of the newer developments fits your next move, The Hancock Group has put together a closer look at what's actually different about Chaska's historic downtown blocks versus its newer neighborhoods. And if this is the year you finally want a professional read on what your own Chaska home could sell for in a market this active, request a free home evaluation anytime.