If you've walked the marina esplanade at Waterfront Place any weekend since June, it looks like the Port of Everett finished what it started. Marina Azul Cocina & Cantina cut the ribbon on June 25, joining Tapped Public House, Menchie's at the Marina, Rustic Cork Wine Bar and The Net Shed Fish Market & Kitchen, all of which opened in the ten months before it. Six new restaurants, one stretch of waterfront, less than a year. That's the version of the story that's been told in every ribbon-cutting press release since December.
It's not the whole story. Two pieces of Restaurant Row that the Port has been actively shopping for over a year, one of them for longer than that, are still unclaimed as of this September. And they're not minor gaps. One is the kind of place you'd actually use on a random Tuesday morning. The other is the anchor tenant the Port has said, repeatedly, it wants to define the whole district.
What Actually Opened, in Order
The pace has been real. Rustic Cork Wine Bar opened December 2, 2025, with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting that drew close to 75 people. The Net Shed followed two weeks later, on December 16, pulling in another 65 for its own grand opening. Tapped Public House came next, opening March 2, 2026, with a ribbon-cutting crowd of more than 100 and a rooftop deck the Port and multiple outlets describe as the largest open-air waterfront deck in Snohomish County. Menchie's at the Marina opened later that same month. Marina Azul, the family-owned Mexican concept from the team behind Casa Azul in Woodinville, was last to land, opening June 25 instead of the "early spring" timeline the Port had floated back in March.
| Restaurant | Opened |
|---|---|
| Rustic Cork Wine Bar | Dec. 2, 2025 |
| The Net Shed Fish Market & Kitchen | Dec. 16, 2025 |
| Tapped Public House | March 2, 2026 |
| Menchie's at the Marina | March 2026 |
| Marina Azul Cocina & Cantina | June 25, 2026 |
That table is the version of the story most coverage stopped at. Herald reporting on the March opening quoted Port CEO Lisa Lefeber saying the two new buildings represented roughly $20 million in port investment, part of an effort to give people something to do at the waterfront beyond owning a boat. The port itself has projected $5.6 million in 2026 revenue from waterfront retail and restaurant businesses, up from $4.1 million in 2025. That's real growth in a single year, and it's the number the Port has been using to justify the next phase.
The Corner That's Still Empty
Here's what the press releases gloss over. The building that houses Rustic Cork, Tapped Public House and Menchie's has one more suite. It was supposed to go to Alexa's Cafe, a Bothell operator that had committed to a breakfast and lunch concept and even said, at the building's 2024 groundbreaking, that it was thrilled to bring "the same fresh and exciting dining experience" it had offered in Bothell for 30 years. By August 2025, Alexa's had backed out. The Port has been searching for a replacement breakfast and brunch tenant since, and as of the most recent Port updates, that suite is still open.
This is the gap a local notices before a visitor does. Every other addition to Restaurant Row skews toward dinner, happy hour or dessert: a wine bar, a public house, a frozen yogurt shop, a cantina. If you live nearby and want a weekday coffee-and-eggs run before work, your options are still the ones that predate this whole wave: South Fork Baking Co., Woods Coffee, Seas the Day Café. The six-restaurant wave that's been celebrated all year hasn't actually changed your morning options at all.
The Site Everyone Keeps Rendering
The bigger miss is Parcel A7, a corner lot on the marina promenade that the Port has been trying to fill since at least November 2025. This isn't a suite in an existing building. It's a ground lease for a tenant willing to design and build its own restaurant, up to two stories and 8,000 square feet, with a required rooftop deck, valet parking and boat-in access at the Port's adjacent guest dock. The Port has been specific about what it wants there: a high-end steakhouse or similarly upscale experiential dining concept, something meant to be the capstone of the whole district rather than another casual add-on.
A rendering of what that corner could look like has circulated since the initial announcement. What hasn't circulated is a tenant. The Port's own materials describe the site as sitting at "one of the best seats in the house," with the Grand Avenue Park footbridge connecting it straight to downtown Everett. As of the most recent reporting this spring, the search was still open, and nothing found since suggests it's closed. If you've been waiting for Restaurant Row to feel finished, this is the piece that would actually do it, and it's the one still sitting empty.
How You Actually Get There Now
The one thing that has genuinely changed the experience of Restaurant Row this year isn't a restaurant at all. It's the shuttle. The Port has run a free waterfront shuttle for three summers now, and this year one of the vehicles got upgraded to a trolley-style bus nicknamed the Trawley, after fishing trawlers. It's headed toward year-round service, with stops at restaurants, parks, plazas and events across the roughly 100-acre waterfront.
That matters more than it sounds like, because Restaurant Row doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of the calendar. Everett Music Initiative's Music at the Marina series has drawn crowds as large as 10,000 people over a single four-hour concert this summer, according to founder Ryan Crowther, and that kind of crowd makes parking near the restaurants genuinely difficult on show nights. The Trawley lets you park once, at the edges of the district, and get dropped closer to wherever you're actually headed, whether that's Tapped's rooftop deck or a table at Marina Azul. If you've avoided the waterfront on concert nights because of parking, that's the piece of infrastructure that's supposed to fix it.
What This Means If You Live Near the Waterfront
Restaurant Row in September 2026 is a waterfront district still taking shape. Six restaurants opening in ten months is a real accomplishment for the Port of Everett and its tenants, and the revenue growth the Port is reporting reflects it. Two pieces remain, and both are ones a nearby resident would feel. A breakfast and brunch spot would give the row a weekday morning presence it doesn't have yet. The flagship restaurant on Parcel A7 is the anchor the Port has said it wants for the district. The Port is still recruiting for both, so the next ribbon-cutting is worth watching for.
If you're already stopping by the marina for dinner or a Thursday movie night at The Muse, worth keeping an eye on which suite fills next and who eventually takes the A7 corner. Both will change what a night at the waterfront actually looks like, and neither has a firm date yet.
If watching this stretch of Everett's waterfront fill in has you wondering what that kind of growth does to home values nearby, that's a conversation worth having before the next ribbon-cutting. Anthony Prado and AMP Properties Group NW track what's actually happening along the Everett waterfront, not just what the press releases say.
