Blaine and Birch Bay's Food Scene Just Turned Over. The Waterslides Didn't.

Drive down Peace Portal Drive in downtown Blaine this month and count the storefronts that used to be something else. The old Peace Arch City Café is a sushi counter now. Big Al's Diner serves masalas and naan. The Pizza Factory sign came down years ago, and a family-run pizza shop with a different name sits in its place. None of this happened at once, and none of it made a headline outside the local paper. But add it up and something has quietly shifted along this stretch of Whatcom County shoreline: the people cooking dinner in Blaine, Birch Bay, and Semiahmoo are, in large part, new to owning a restaurant, and they arrived in the last two to three years.

At the same time, one of the area's longest-running summer fixtures went dark. Birch Bay Waterslides closed for the 2026 season and is now listed for sale at $6 million. That split, more small kitchens opening while one big attraction closes, tells you something about where daily life here is actually heading. It isn't toward a single destination anymore. It's toward a scattered set of small, owner-run rooms you have to already know about to find.

A street that keeps changing hands

The turnover on Peace Portal Drive isn't cosmetic. Ttowa Sushi opened on June 7, 2025 at 658 Peace Portal Drive, in the building that had housed Peace Arch City Café until that restaurant closed on March 30 of that year. Owner Justin Kim bought the building for $850,000 and brought in sushi chefs with three decades of combined experience. He told The Northern Light his read on where his new restaurant fit into the local scene:

"Besides the Birch Bay Tokyo Monster Sushi, I think we're the second largest Asian restaurant in this area."

A few blocks over, the building that used to hold Big Al's Diner is now Namaste The Royal Taste of India, which soft-opened on December 17, 2023 at 234 D Street under owner Chirag Prajapati. He's since opened a second restaurant in the area, following the same pattern Kim's family has used for two decades: find a location closing, and turn it into something new. Kim's parents, Yong Kim and Hyun Kang, have done exactly that across Whatcom County, founding Oyiso Teriyaki in Ferndale, running a restaurant in Lynden that's since become On Rice Thai Cuisine, and opening a spot in Sumas that later turned into Nori Sushi & Teriyaki.

Border Town Pizza followed the same script, with owner Laura Massaro converting a former Pizza Factory chain location into what's become a family-friendly staple of downtown Blaine.

Who's actually behind the counter

What ties these openings together isn't cuisine. It's who's running the register. Most of the newest names in Blaine and Birch Bay dining had never owned a restaurant before this one.

SKAI Sushi is run by co-owners Shinae Kim and Doune Inthavong, who had never made sushi before moving to Birch Bay and are now known around Whatcom County for their rolls. Baywood Coffee belongs to Antonie Inthavong, who grew up in Birch Bay and came back to open it. L&L Bakery is a mother-daughter operation, run by Laura Potter and Lili Adie, serving pastries and quiches out of downtown Blaine. Aloha Cafe, a Pacific Islander-themed restaurant, is owned by Drisana Horton.

None of these are chains testing a market. They're locals and near-locals betting on a specific storefront, on a specific block, because they already know the area well enough to guess what it needs.

The kitchens that don't look like kitchens

A few of the newer spots aren't even easy to spot from the street. SKAI Sushi operates out of the back of Beachwood General, the grocery store in Birch Bay, so the sushi counter is inside a place most people walk past thinking it's just where they buy milk and a lottery ticket. The Railway Cafe has served coffee and food out of a caboose parked at 795 Peace Portal Drive since the 1980s, long enough that it's easy to forget it's a converted train car until you're standing inside it.

Gateway1890 Taphouse & Grill, run by Gary and Kristen Slavin at 428 Peace Portal Drive, took the idea further. The building's 1910 bank vault got converted into an escape room with rotating themes, prohibition, gold rush, bank robbery, and the taphouse donates 10 percent of Tuesday profits to local Borderite sports. It's less a place to grab dinner than a place to spend an evening.

The bay has its own clock

Not every part of this scene runs on a restaurant's hours. Semiahmoo Resort has been running its Summer BBQ Series since Memorial Day, with live music and open-flame grilling on the lawn every couple of weeks through September. The 2026 lineup ran Alex Britton on May 23, JD Falcon Band on June 20, The Shakedown on July 4, Charlie Partin on July 18, Uncle Doug Cooper on August 1, Joe and Kelly on August 25, and Saltwater Cowboy tonight, August 29, likely the final night of the season.

Packers Kitchen + Bar, perched above Semiahmoo Bay at the resort, runs on the same seasonal logic in reverse. It serves fresh seafood and handcrafted pizza through the warmer months, then closes for the winter and becomes an event space instead, large windows and all. If you've been meaning to eat there, the window is closing along with the BBQ Series.

What went quiet

Set all of that against Birch Bay Waterslides. For decades it was one of the few things in this stretch of the county that functioned as a single, unmissable destination, the kind of place you'd default to on a hot Saturday without checking a calendar first. It closed for the 2026 season, and it's now on the market for $6 million.

That's the trade this area has been quietly making. A big, singular attraction that everyone already knew how to find is off the table for now, while more than half a dozen small, owner-run kitchens have opened in its place, each one requiring you to already know it's there. Blaine and Birch Bay didn't lose their sense of a shared summer. They just relocated it into a dozen smaller rooms instead of one big one.

If you live here, that's worth knowing the next time a friend visiting from out of town asks where to eat. The honest answer isn't a single recommendation anymore. It's a short list, and most of the names on it weren't open three years ago.

If you're weighing a move to this stretch of Whatcom County, or thinking about what a home here actually costs to own day to day, Christine Rasmussen has spent years watching this area change from the inside. Let's Connect.