Where New Restaurants on Sherman Avenue Are Opening

Ask most people where Coeur d'Alene's new restaurant openings have landed this year and they will point toward the lake. That is a reasonable guess. It is also wrong for about half of what actually opened.

The real story of 2026 is that Sherman Avenue has split into two different downtowns that happen to share a street name and a set of city block numbers. One is the polished few blocks locals already know by heart, close enough to McEuen Park to smell the lake. The other runs further east, well past the tourist stretch, and has spent the year quietly filling in with the kind of neighborhood spots that don't need a water view to work.

If your mental map of "eating downtown" still ends a few blocks from the lake, it's out of date.

The Stretch You Already Know

The near-lake blocks of Sherman have been Coeur d'Alene's dining anchor for decades, and this year they added rather than replaced. Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar has run the corner at 422-424 E. Sherman since 1985, and instead of opening a second location across town, its owners carved a new concept called River & Rye directly into the building, giving Cricket's regulars an entrance off Fifth Street while River & Rye takes the Sherman-facing door with a separate menu built around Spanish, French and Italian flavors with Pacific Northwest touches. It is an unusual bet from a restaurant that has been a fixture for four decades: rather than expand, it split itself in two to compete at a higher price point in a market that has gotten more crowded in recent years.

A few doors down, Giuseppe's Pasta Posto Osteria took over the former Collective Kitchen space at 501 Sherman Ave., serving dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Nearby, Twigs Bistro, a Spokane-based bistro brand, opened its first North Idaho location near McEuen Park, with both indoor and outdoor seating close enough to catch a view of the lake.

None of this is a surprise. This stretch has been the safe answer to "where should we eat downtown" for years, and it still is.

Further East, a Different Sherman Avenue

The more interesting openings happened where nobody was necessarily expecting them: past the tourist core, on the working, more residential stretch of Sherman that locals drive through more than they dine on.

Coral Cafe opened at 1524 E. Sherman Ave. in mid-June, in the space that spent twelve years as Schmidty's Burgers before it closed earlier this year. Owner Danny Griffin, who spent two decades working his way up from dishwasher to management at Cedars Floating Restaurant before six years managing Belle's Brunch House in Hayden, chose the spot deliberately. He told the Coeur d'Alene Press why:

"We love that we're on a part of Sherman that's undergoing a lot of improvements. It's a nice way for us to be able to contribute to helping keep it a nice area. It's also nice being in the residential area too."

That is a local business owner describing this stretch of Sherman as something distinct from the lakefront strip, and worth watching in its own right. His head chef Andy Coleman spent 27 years at Cedars before joining Coral Cafe, which means two of the people most responsible for Sherman Avenue's most established restaurant are now anchoring its least polished stretch.

A few blocks further out, Post Falls Brewing opened a second taproom, Post Falls Brewing – CDA, at 1327 E. Sherman Ave., posting hours of Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. as of this year. It is a brewery outpost, not a destination restaurant, but it fits the same pattern: real investment happening well past the block where every visitor's guide tells you to eat.

Where the New Names Actually Sit

The Side Streets Are Filling In Too

Not everything new is even on Sherman. People's Waffle opened May 22 at 400 N. Fourth St., a block off Sherman, serving a fully gluten-free menu of sweet and savory waffles built from co-owner Alyssa Agee's grandmother's recipe. Co-owner Jacy Janson told the Coeur d'Alene Press the most popular items are the Sweet Flight, a sampler of every sweet waffle on the menu, and the Benny, their take on Eggs Benedict served over a waffle.

Put together, the growth isn't radiating out from one corner. It is filling in a much wider footprint than a single busy block, which means the practical question for anyone who already lives here isn't "what's new downtown" anymore. It's "which downtown are you asking about."

Why the Next Three Weeks Compress All of It

This split matters right now because of how the calendar lines up. Three separate weeknight concert series have been running in parallel all summer: Music @ McEuen on Wednesdays runs through September 2, Riverstone Concerts on Thursdays wraps August 20, and the Sunday series at City Park closes out August 30. All three wind down within about two weeks of each other, starting later this month.

Layered on top of that, the North Idaho State Fair runs August 21 through 30 at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, pulling a chunk of the town's evening traffic away from downtown entirely for over a week. Then, once the fair packs up, downtown pulls everyone back for Oktoberfest on September 18 and 19, when participating downtown businesses pour Oktoberfest-style beers and ciders across the district.

That is a lot of foot traffic moving in different directions inside a single month. For a downtown with one dining strip, that would mean crowded sidewalks and long waits on the same three or four blocks every night the concerts, the fair, or Oktoberfest are running. For a downtown that has quietly grown a second stretch of real options further east on Sherman, it means there's actual slack in the system. If the Sherman-and-Front corner is full on a Wednesday night before a Music @ McEuen show, Coral Cafe or Post Falls Brewing's new taproom are real alternatives now, not afterthoughts.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

The lake-facing blocks of Sherman aren't going anywhere, and Cricket's, River & Rye, Giuseppe's and Twigs Bistro will keep drawing the crowd that wants a view with dinner. But if your rotation has stayed fixed on that same handful of addresses for years, this summer is a good excuse to widen it. The stretch of Sherman further east has real momentum behind it now, driven by people like Danny Griffin who chose it on purpose, not as a fallback.

Coeur d'Alene keeps adding texture in places that don't show up on a postcard. That is worth knowing whether you are heading out tonight or just keeping track of a neighborhood you already call home. If you want a closer look at what's happening across Coeur d'Alene beyond the restaurant scene, the Coeur d'Alene neighborhood guide is a good place to start, and if you ever want to talk through what any of this means for your own address in town, Stephen Vachon is always glad to help you make sense of it.