Walk past 14945 Marine Drive this month and you will see it before you register what you are looking at: a bright new sign for Spicy Pier, its patio already busy with plates of butter chicken poutine, sitting right beside the dark windows of the old Boathouse Restaurant. The Boathouse closed its White Rock location earlier this year, along with its Kitsilano and Port Moody spots, and as of the most recent reporting there is still no announced tenant for that space. Everyone else on the block, it seems, got tired of waiting.
That single image says more about what's happening here than any list of new openings could. White Rock hasn't filled the Boathouse gap. It has built around it, and in doing so it has quietly sorted itself into two different food streets with two different personalities. If you live here and haven't clocked the pattern yet, it changes how you should think about where to go for what.
Marine Drive picked international comfort food
The waterfront strip has always leaned toward seafood and patio views, the kind of place you take out-of-town guests for a sunset dinner. What's new is that the openings filling in around the Boathouse vacancy are almost all global comfort food, not more of the same.
Spicy Pier moved into the former Ambar Surrey space at 14945 Marine Drive earlier this year, serving what it calls bold Indian fusion, including a butter chicken poutine that's already drawn a following. A few doors down at 14989 Marine Drive, Dastaan took over the old Jan's on the Beach space, bringing modern Indian cuisine with the same ocean views that made the previous tenant a draw. The name means "story" in Urdu, and the menu leans on dishes like karahi paneer alongside contemporary tandoori plates.
Neither restaurant is trying to be the next Boathouse. Both picked a lane the strip didn't have before, and both did it within walking distance of the space that's still sitting empty.
Johnston Road picked expansion bets
A ten-minute drive inland, Johnston Road is telling a different story. Instead of new concepts testing an idea for the first time, this corridor is where operators who already have a proven concept somewhere else decided White Rock was ready for a second location.
This is not a new habit for the street. Bánh Mì Très Bon, the Vietnamese restaurant founder Lan Do opened in Richmond back in 2016, set the pattern when it added a second location at 1459 Johnston Road in spring 2023, running about 2,000 square feet with 70 combined indoor and patio seats. That location isn't a copy of the original menu. Caramelized fish sauce brussels sprouts and a duck confit bao are exclusive to the White Rock kitchen, alongside the house-made bánh mì bread and French pastry case that built the Richmond location's reputation.
What's new in 2026 is that other operators followed the same playbook. Big Way Hot Pot, the self-serve, pay-by-weight chain that has expanded aggressively through Burnaby and Richmond, opened its White Rock location at 1436 Johnston Road on August 29, 2026. Down the street at 15090 North Bluff Road, Goldie's Donuts and Bakery followed a similar path, having already opened locations in Vancouver, North Vancouver, Langley, and Port Coquitlam since its 2024 debut in West Vancouver. The brioche donuts are fermented for 24 hours before baking, a process the chain has kept consistent across every location it has added.
This is also the corridor that hosts the White Rock Farmers Market, which expanded to more than 170 vendors for its 2026 season and runs every Sunday through October 11 along Johnston Road between Russell and Thrift avenues. Put the market's growth next to the restaurant expansions and the picture gets clearer. Johnston Road isn't picking up whatever's left over. It's the address operators choose once they've already proven a concept elsewhere and are ready to bet on White Rock specifically, a pattern Bánh Mì Très Bon started three years before the rest of the street caught up.
The corridor split, by address
| Street | Arrival | What it replaced or added |
|---|---|---|
| Marine Drive | Spicy Pier (14945) | Former Ambar Surrey space, next to the vacant Boathouse, opened earlier in 2026 |
| Marine Drive | Dastaan (14989) | Former Jan's on the Beach space |
| Johnston Road | Bánh Mì Très Bon (1459) | Second location of a 2016 Richmond original, opened spring 2023 |
| Johnston Road | Big Way Hot Pot (1436) | New to White Rock, opened August 29, 2026 |
| North Bluff Road | Goldie's Donuts and Bakery (15090) | Fifth Metro Vancouver location, opened 2026 |
The small stuff filled in too
Not every new spot fits neatly into one street or the other. Bean and Berry spent seasons as a cart on the pier known for chocolate-covered strawberry cups before opening its first permanent home at 1122 Vidal Street, now serving coffee and matcha alongside the strawberries that built its following. And the team behind brunch favorite Wooden Spoon quietly launched White Rock Burger Co, a takeout-only smash burger window that runs Wednesday through Saturday evenings, filling a gap that had nothing to do with the Boathouse and everything to do with there being no late-evening burger option in town before it opened.
These smaller moves matter because they show the pattern isn't only about big chains finding a foothold. A pier cart graduating to a lease and a brunch spot spinning off an evening concept are both bets on the same thing: that White Rock's food traffic can support more than one identity per operator, on more than one street.
What this means if you're deciding where to eat tonight
If you're craving something with an ocean view and a menu Marine Drive didn't have before, Spicy Pier or Dastaan are the newer picks, both close enough to walk past the old Boathouse on your way. If you're headed uptown for a Sunday market run and want to make a night of it, Johnston Road now gives you hot pot alongside a Vietnamese menu with White Rock-only dishes, all within a few blocks of each other and the farmers market's Sunday footprint.
The Boathouse space itself remains the one open question. Nobody covering the local food scene has reported a tenant, and the longer it sits empty next to Spicy Pier's growing patio crowd, the more it looks like the corridor decided to move on without waiting for an answer. As one new arrival put it on social media the week it opened: "WHITE ROCK, WE'RE FINALLY HERE." The town, it turns out, had already made room.
Whether you're grabbing dinner on Marine Drive or hitting the Sunday market on Johnston Road, this is the kind of neighborhood texture that only shows up when you're paying attention block by block. If you're thinking about what it would mean to call one of these streets home, The Agency White Rock can walk you through what's actually for sale nearby. Discover your property's true worth. Book a market consultation.
