Things to Do in Coeur d'Alene This August, Weekend by Weekend

Walk down Sherman Avenue on a weekday morning right now and you'll pass at least four storefronts that didn't exist last winter. That's not an exaggeration dressed up as a hook. Between March and May of this year, Coeur d'Alene absorbed a small wave of restaurant openings, and the interesting part isn't that they opened. It's where they landed, and what happens to them across the three weekends starting this Saturday, when the whole town is suddenly outside at the same handful of places.

Here's the thing locals haven't quite put together yet: this spring's restaurant openings split into two entirely different bets about what Coeur d'Alene wants to eat, and the next three weekends, Aug. 15 through Aug. 30, are when both bets get tested by the exact same crowds who are already downtown for something else.

Two Restaurant Booms, One Summer

Downtown proper, along Sherman Avenue and Fourth Street, got quieter additions with more ambition behind them. Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar has anchored the corner of Fifth and Sherman since 1985, and rather than open a second location somewhere new, the ownership carved its own building into two identities. Cricket's stays put in the back with its entrance off Fifth Street, while a new front-of-house concept called River & Rye took over the Sherman Avenue door this spring with a menu pulling from Spain, France, and Italy alongside craft cocktails. A few blocks over on Fourth Street, People's Waffle opened May 22 with a gluten-free menu of sweet and savory waffles, run by co-owner Jacy Janson, whose business partner Alyssa Agee started the concept as a Spokane food truck built on her grandmother's recipe before it grew into a full restaurant.

Meanwhile, out along the Neider Avenue and Appleway corridor, a very different kind of opening happened. Raising Cane's opened March 17 at 163 W. Neider Ave, the first location in North Idaho, after hiring more than 100 people to staff it before doors opened. And in May, Habit Burger and Grill took over a former Pizza Hut on West Appleway, timed almost perfectly with USA Today naming the chain's Double Char the best fast food burger in the country.

Same spring, same city, two different answers to what people want to eat here. One corridor is getting a slower, more deliberate upgrade from operators who've been in the building for decades. The other is absorbing national chains that picked Coeur d'Alene specifically because of cross-border demand from Spokane.

What that means for the next three weekends is simple. Both corridors are about to get tested at once, because the events calendar is about to push most of the city into exactly those two areas.

The Saturday That Splits Downtown In Two

This Saturday, Aug. 15, downtown Coeur d'Alene runs two events that couldn't feel more different, a few blocks and a few hours apart.

There's a real overlap window there, from about 2 to 4 p.m., which means a resident who wants both doesn't have to choose between them so much as sequence them. Morning coffee, a walk along the boardwalk to look at the wooden hulls, then a short walk to City Park as the beer festival opens. Ales for the Trail exists to fund the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation, which maintains the 23-mile paved trail running from Higgins Point on the lake's eastern end out to the Washington state line. The foundation's president, Tim Keaty, has put the stakes plainly:

Donating to the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation makes a huge impact and a visible difference.

The trail already has its own house beer downtown, incidentally. Vantage Point Brewing Company brews a Centennial Trail Pale Ale, which tells you something about how embedded that 23-mile stretch is in the town's daily habits, festival or not.

Ten Days At The Fairgrounds

Five days after the boat festival wraps, the North Idaho State Fair opens for its 104th year, running Aug. 21 through Aug. 30 at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds on Government Way. It started in 1922 as a 4-H showcase and still leans on that identity, with youth livestock competitions and an open horse show as part of the schedule. But the entertainment lineup is what pulls the rest of the town in: Lee Brice plays the grandstand Aug. 24, Walker Hayes follows Aug. 25, and the Gem State Stampede PRCA Rodeo and a demolition derby round out the schedule.

As of this August, admission runs $11 for adults online versus $14 at the gate, with kids 6 to 12 at $9 online or $10 at the gate, and parking a flat $7 a day. Buying ahead isn't a huge discount, but across a ten-day run, a family that goes more than once will notice it.

One scheduling detail worth knowing if you're a regular at both: the CDA Flea Market, which runs the second and last Sunday of the month from May through September at the Museum of North Idaho on Young Avenue, lands its final date of the season on Aug. 30, the same day the fair closes. If you're the type who does both, that Sunday is effectively the last day of summer's full weekend rotation before things thin out into September.

Where This Leaves The New Places

Here's the actual point. Downtown restaurants live and die on foot traffic they don't control, and this specific stretch, mid-August through the fair's close, hands them more of it than almost any other few weeks of the year. People's Waffle is a short walk from the docks where the boat festival crowd disperses on Saturday morning. River & Rye sits inside a building that's already trained four decades of regulars to walk through its door, just a different one now. Neither has had a stretch like this to prove itself yet, since both opened before the town's summer calendar really got going.

The chains on the Appleway corridor don't need this test in the same way. Raising Cane's and Habit Burger are part of larger companies with plenty of other locations proving the model works. But the two downtown originals are still finding out whether Coeur d'Alene wants what they're selling, and the next three weekends are the loudest possible answer they're going to get this year.

If you live here, that's the actual news. Not that four restaurants opened. It's that the town's own calendar just handed two very different bets the exact audience they need, at the exact same time, and by Labor Day you'll be able to tell which one Coeur d'Alene picked.

Whether it's a new place on Fourth Street or a boat you noticed at the docks and can't stop thinking about owning yourself, Corcoran-Hall & Co. knows this town well enough to talk through either. Request a private consultation when you're ready.