Alexa's Cafe was supposed to open on Restaurant Row. The Bothell brunch spot, run by founder Leigh Henderson since 1995, signed on early, catered a Port of Everett staffer's wedding, and even showed up in the Port's own groundbreaking coverage as one of the future tenants. Then, sometime in 2025, the deal quietly fell apart. Alexa's decided not to move forward, and the space sat there through the winter while its neighbors filled in one by one.
If you've walked the marina esplanade in the last eight months, you've watched this happen in real time without necessarily connecting the dots. Rustic Cork Wine Bar opened its doors in December. The Net Shed Fresh Fish Market followed two weeks later. Tapped Public House cut the ribbon in March. Menchie's showed up not long after. Marina Azul Cocina & Cantina finished the run in late June. Five new restaurants, five separate ribbon cuttings, five separate news stories that each treated the opening as its own event. What none of them told you is that this was one long buildout finishing in stages, and that the last empty storefront on the row isn't just waiting for a replacement tenant. It's waiting for something bigger than what was originally planned.
Two buildings, two years, one finish line
The current version of Restaurant Row traces back to a groundbreaking in July 2024, when the Port of Everett broke ground on two new buildings at Fisherman's Harbor at a combined cost of $15.2 million, designed by BCRA and built by Faber Construction. One building, 12,000 square feet, was slated for four tenants: Rustic Cork, Menchie's, Tapped Public House, and Alexa's Cafe. The other, 6,000 square feet, was built for two: The Net Shed and, eventually, Marina Azul.
That construction sat next to the district's original anchors, Fisherman Jack's and South Fork Baking Co., which opened back in 2023 along Seiner Drive and have been the reliable regulars ever since. Everything that's opened since is additive, not a replacement. The waterfront didn't get a new restaurant scene this year. It got the second half of one that's been under construction for two years.
The tenants landed roughly in this order:
- Rustic Cork Wine Bar opened December 2, 2025, its third location after Lake Stevens and Mill Creek, with wine flights from the Columbia and Yakima valleys and a rooftop bar over the marina.
- The Net Shed Fresh Fish Market & Kitchen opened December 16, 2025, with a working fish market alongside its dining room.
- Tapped Public House opened March 2, 2026, its fourth location after Camano Island, Mill Creek, and Mukilteo, with what the Port describes as the largest open-air rooftop deck on the Snohomish County waterfront.
- Menchie's at the Marina opened in March 2026, filling out the casual end of the row with a self-serve frozen yogurt shop.
- Marina Azul Cocina & Cantina opened June 25, 2026, bringing tequila flights and made-to-order tacos to the last filled slot in the second building.
Before this wave even started, the Port was already counting roughly 14 restaurants, cafes, and breweries across the whole Waterfront Place development, a tally from November 2025 that included Fisherman's Harbor along with The Muse Whiskey & Coffee in the historic Weyerhaeuser Building and the nearby Everett Marina Village cluster, home to Sound 2 Summit Brewing Co. and Woods Coffee. The five openings since then didn't start the district. They finished a phase of it.
What's actually open right now
If you're deciding where to eat on a Friday, here's the practical shorthand. Burgers, sandwiches, and pizza cluster around Anthony's Woodfire Grill, Scuttlebutt Family Pub, and Tapped Public House. Date night options run through Bluewater Distilling, Rustic Cork, and the newer Fisherman Jack's, an Asian-fusion spot known for its dim sum and seafood-forward menu. If you want something after 9 p.m. that isn't a bar, The Muse Whiskey & Coffee turns from daytime coffeehouse into a speakeasy-style whiskey bar inside the century-old Weyerhaeuser Building. And if you're just fueling up before a walk, South Fork Baking Co. and Menchie's cover the sweet end without much competition.
None of that existed in this combination two years ago. The mix now spans wine, tequila, whiskey, dim sum, wood-fired pizza, fresh fish, and frozen yogurt inside a few hundred yards of shoreline, which is a genuinely different night out than what the waterfront offered when Fisherman Jack's was still the new thing on the block.
The one address the Port is treating differently
Here's the part that doesn't show up in any single press release. The Alexa's Cafe spot in the first building is still open, and as of Tapped's March opening, the Port was still describing it as a hunt for "a breakfast place to break up the dinner options." That's a modest ask for a modest storefront.
But there's a second, separate vacancy that tells a different story. In November 2025, the Port put out a call for a tenant on what it called the final Restaurant Row building site, a still-undeveloped pad overlooking the marina and Puget Sound. The pitch wasn't for another casual concept. It was for what the Port's own materials describe as an experiential dining tenant, the kind of language usually reserved for a signature restaurant rather than a fill-in.
Port CEO Lisa Lefeber connected the two openings in the same breath when Tapped opened in March, telling a Herald reporter the Port was searching for a breakfast spot for the small storefront and, separately, "a steakhouse or experiential dining option" for the larger pad still to be built.
That distinction matters if you live nearby. It means the district isn't winding down its ambitions as it finishes filling in. It's escalating for the finale. The Port's own numbers help explain why: it's projecting $5.6 million in retail and restaurant revenue from Waterfront Place in 2026, up from $4.1 million in 2025. A district that's pulling in more money each year has more room to hold out for a flagship tenant instead of taking the first offer, and that's exactly what's happening with the last major address on the row.
The waterfront in the meantime
None of this waiting has slowed down what's actually happening on the water this summer. Music at the Marina runs free Thursday concerts at Port Gardner Landing through August 27, part of a lineup organized by Everett Music Initiative that expanded to nine shows this year, one more than in past seasons. Puget Sound Steel Drums, now in its fourth year, sets up Fridays through August 28 near Hotel Indigo at Pacific Rim Plaza, with Robert De Freitas of Panessence playing steel pan covers of Bob Marley and Jimmy Buffett from 5 to 7 p.m. Float Find Shoreside, a free scavenger hunt for hidden floats around the waterfront, runs Fridays through the same date.
Jetty Island Days continues through September 6, with a passenger ferry running Wednesday through Sunday from the dock at 522 10th Street for a few dollars a ticket, landing on two miles of sandy beach with views toward the Olympic Mountains. The Everett Farmers Market is in its 33rd season, open Sundays on Wetmore Avenue through October 25. And just this past weekend, Downtown Everett Association's Summer in the City festival took over Wetmore Plaza on August 14 and 15, with the Saturday session running noon to 8 p.m. timed to overlap with Schack Art Center's Fresh Paint, the summer's biggest arts showcase, which brought more than 100 artist booths to Hoyt Avenue the same afternoon.
None of these events are new inventions built around the restaurant news. They're the backdrop the row now sits in front of, which is a different waterfront than the one that existed when the whole project broke ground.
What this means if you're already here
If you've been treating Restaurant Row as a work in progress, that framing is mostly out of date. Five new tenants have opened in the last eight months, the original anchors are still running, and the district is functionally complete except for two addresses, one small and one that's being held out for something more ambitious than a cafe. Whatever fills that last building pad will likely set the tone for the row for years, since it's the one space the Port didn't rush to fill on the first offer.
For now, the practical move is simple. Pick a Thursday or Friday this month, catch Music at the Marina or the steel drums, and work your way down the row while there's still a rotating cast of specials and grand-opening energy in the air. The last storefront will fill eventually. Watching what the Port decides to put there is one of the more interesting things happening in this corner of Snohomish County right now.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of waterfront is actually worth, or wondering how a growing restaurant district tends to move property values in the surrounding blocks, Pete Keating has spent years tracking exactly these shifts across Everett and the rest of Snohomish County. Call or text Pete for a local market consultation.
