Surf City's Newest Restaurants Are Betting the Off-Season Won't Be So Off This Year

"I think we're gonna be a big enough attraction that, even as Holly Ridge explodes and the population grows, we will have locals coming to us year-round." That's Joe Lyons, talking about the restaurant he and his partners opened this year on the Intracoastal Waterway. It's a strange thing to hear about a town that has spent decades running on a six-month clock. But walk the water side of Surf City this fall and you'll find the evidence backing him up, sitting right there on Roland Avenue and North New River Drive.

Three kitchens changed hands or opened for the first time in 2026. None of them are built like the seasonal seafood shacks that have defined this stretch of coast for generations. All three are planning to keep their lights on through the months when the bridge traffic thins out. If you live here, that's worth paying attention to, because it says something about where the town thinks it's headed that a farmers market flyer never will.

Three New Kitchens on the Water in One Year

Lyons and his partners, Justin and Becca Smith along with brothers Clay and Scott Darren, opened Marina Joe's at 209 N. New River Drive this year, right on the Intracoastal. It's a two-story building with room for around 170 people, 30 of those seats on outdoor decks angled toward the bridge. Lyons called it their attempt at becoming "the flagship restaurant in Surf City," and he's not a stranger making a guess about the market. He bought a beach home on Topsail five years ago and has been watching the corridor fill in ever since.

Justin Smith brings a different kind of credibility. He and Becca have spent three decades in the Wilmington restaurant business, building or co-owning YoSake, Dram + Morsel, Little Dipper, The Husk, and Mixto, and they still run Proust, Anne Bonny's, and The Rift, along with a partial stake in downtown Wilmington's K-Town. When Smith came back to Surf City after time away, his reaction was blunt: "Both sides of the bridge were unrecognizable." He also said the town had grown without losing its "small town identity," calling it "very charming." That's a person who has opened restaurants across a genuinely urban market choosing to place his next bet in a beach town of a few thousand year-round residents.

A few blocks down Roland Avenue, Coconut Cove opened at 418 Roland Avenue, close enough to Soundside Park that you could walk the farmers market and the restaurant in the same afternoon. It's smaller than Marina Joe's, with a bar area, a covered annex, and an outdoor deck, and it's open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day of the week, kitchen until 9. Early reviews describe a restaurant still working out its service rhythm, the kind of growing pains you'd expect from a new kitchen, but the food, especially the seafood, is already drawing repeat visits. Dock seating is listed as coming soon, which means the water view is about to get better, not worse.

Then there's Surf City Line Restaurant & Bar at 2112 N. New River Drive, which closed for renovations ahead of its five-year anniversary and reopened in mid-March for the 2026 season. A restaurant investing in itself for a milestone anniversary is a different signal than a new concept testing the market. It says the owners expect to still be here for the tenth anniversary too.

What a Winter Commitment Actually Looks Like

Here's the way to tell a seasonal operation apart from one betting on the whole calendar: hours. Marina Joe's is running 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week, and Lyons has said explicitly that the restaurant isn't planning to close altogether once the summer crowds thin, even if hours get trimmed. That's a meaningfully different posture from a shack that boards up after Labor Day. Coconut Cove's daily hours read the same way, seven days, no seasonal caveat printed anywhere.

The math behind that confidence traces back to growth on the mainland side of the bridge. Lyons pointed to Holly Ridge specifically as the reason he expects year-round traffic, not just tourists. A restaurant that needs a beach crowd to survive plans its staffing around Memorial Day and Labor Day. A restaurant that expects locals from Holly Ridge, Hampstead, and inland Surf City to keep showing up in January plans differently, and that's the bet these three places just made in the same twelve months.

The Path That Finally Left the Planning Stage

Restaurants aren't the only thing in Surf City behaving like the town expects to be a year-round place. Back in the summer of 2024, local coverage described a plan for a multi-use path connecting the mainland to the island as being in its early planning stages, with no budget number attached yet. Two years later, the town is out soliciting sealed construction bids for Segment 5 of that same path, the stretch running along JH Batts Road from the NC 50 intersection to Community Center Drive. The town negotiated a cost-share arrangement with the developer of the Waterside Community to get this piece built, which tells you the project has moved from a talking point at council meetings to a line item with contractors bidding on it.

That corridor sits along the same JH Batts Road address as the Earl G. & Inez Batts Recreation Complex, the 45-acre park that opened its first phase in October 2024 with a skatepark and pump track, an inclusive playground, sand volleyball courts, and its own network of walking trails. The complex was a roughly $1 million project funded through the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, and Surf City residents themselves. Segment 5 extends the town's ability to reach that park on foot or by bike rather than only by car, which matters more once you notice the town is simultaneously requesting engineering proposals for parking improvements at the Goldsboro Avenue public lot. Put those two projects next to each other and the pattern is a town building for people who need somewhere to park in December, not just somewhere to unload a cooler in July.

What's Actually on the Fall Calendar

None of this requires waiting for next summer to see for yourself. Soundside Park, at 517 Roland Avenue, has its usual fall lineup running now:

• Shop the Sound Craft & Farmers Market, a free waterfront market with local produce, artisans, and small businesses, with the next confirmed date on September 25 from 8 to 11 a.m.
• Movie in the Park Fridays, free admission, food trucks starting at 7 p.m., movie at dusk. This fall's lineup includes a showing of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the series wraps the season with Elf on November 20.

Both events sit close enough to Coconut Cove and the new farmers market corridor that a Friday night in Surf City this fall can now run market, dinner, and movie without moving your car once.

The Takeaway

None of these individual facts is dramatic on its own. A restaurant opening. A construction bid. A recurring farmers market. But stack them and the pattern is hard to miss: the businesses investing real capital on the water and the town investing real capital on the ground between neighborhoods are both making the same bet, that Surf City in December looks more like Surf City in July than it used to. If you've lived here through a few off-seasons, you already know that used to be a stretch. This year it's a little less of one.

If you're watching this corridor evolve and want a local read on what it means for property values, rental demand, or timing a move, Coastal Living with Ariana Blevins knows this stretch of Topsail Island block by block. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.