If you have lived in Yakima for a while, you already know the downtown map by muscle memory. Crafted at 22 N. First. Cowiche Canyon Kitchen a few blocks over. Purrr and Bill's Place on East Yakima Avenue. That map got redrawn this year, and the redraw is not evenly distributed. Almost every notable 2026 opening has landed in a two-block rectangle bounded by North Front Street, North 1st Street, and Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way — the stretch officially designated the Old North Yakima Historic District.
That concentration is the story. The names are new, but the more interesting thing is who is opening them and where they chose to land.
Who Is Actually Behind The New Signs
The 2026 wave is not chain expansion. It is a small cluster of independent operators, and the biographies matter because they explain the aesthetic and the price point of what you are walking into.
Once or Twice Bar at 31 N. Front St. opened this summer with a grand opening party on Saturday, July 11. The ownership group is worth knowing by name if you plan to spend an evening there. The bar is owned by Will Kostas, Lauren Bailey, Nathaniel Seeger and Garrett Remy, who bring more than 40 years of combined hospitality experience to the business. Seeger and Remy moved to Yakima from Long Beach, California, more than six years ago, while Kostas and Bailey relocated from New York City in 2019. The room itself was designed and largely built by the owners, with a custom walnut bar top and 10-foot arched back bar, crafted with help from local fabricator Nate Monick of Atlas and Cedar. If you have been wondering why the interior reads like a design magazine rather than a converted storefront, that is why. Menu leans house and classic cocktails, draft and packaged beer, wine, nonalcoholic beverages and an extensive selection of whiskey and mezcal. It is 21 and up, and the hours run 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. Local review notes flag the Evening Redness cocktail and the black-bean smash burger as the items regulars are ordering twice.
Rooted Yakima Valley at 26 N. 1st St., a block east, opened in 2025 but hit its stride in early 2026 and belongs in this conversation because it functions unlike anything else downtown. Rooted began as a blog sharing stories from Yakima Valley farms and has evolved into a casual farm-to-table restaurant and event venue in downtown Yakima. It serves beer, wine, and seasonal mocktails crafted with ingredients from the valley. Woman-owned and connected to a multi-generational family farm, Rooted is a welcoming space where you can eat, drink, and gather. The kitchen is run in partnership with chef Jeff Stainthorp of Soil to Sky, a farmer during the growing season who brings knowledge of produce and seasonality into the kitchen. Preserved ingredients allow summer harvests to reappear on winter menus. The layout is intentionally social:
Communal tables are built from orchard wood. Milk crates from local dairies are repurposed as décor. Even the layout is intentional. There are few private tables, encouraging guests to share space and, sometimes, strike up conversations with strangers.
Programming is what makes it a rotation stop rather than a one-time visit. Vinyl nights, karaoke, jam-making classes, craft nights and women's monthly meetups land on the calendar throughout the month.
O'Noodles, the third piece of the wave, is not open yet as of this writing but is close. O'Noodles, a new Asian restaurant in downtown Yakima, is coming to the former Mama Corie's Kitchen location at 114 Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way. Renovations were well underway earlier this year, and the restaurant's website indicates a Thai menu featuring noodle soup, rice plates, desserts and beverages coming soon. That address sits about a block from Once or Twice, which is the point of this post.
Crafted, the James Beard-nominated anchor that has held down 22 N. First St. since 2017, is expanding upward inside its existing footprint. A City of Yakima building permit was issued Nov. 13 for Crafted. The restaurant applied for new seating on the second level, new staff restrooms and a rebuild of the interior stairs. If you have been trying to get a Friday reservation there and losing, that is the fix on the way.
Why The Old North Yakima Historic District Is Doing The Heavy Lifting
Look at the addresses again. 31 N. Front. 26 N. 1st. 114 Staff Sgt. Pendleton. 22 N. First. You can walk the whole rectangle in about seven minutes. That was not true two years ago, and it changes how a night out is planned.
The practical version of the shift: an evening in downtown Yakima used to require a decision at the front end about which anchor you were building the night around. You picked Crafted or Cowiche Canyon Kitchen, and everything else followed. The new density lets you defer that decision. Start with a cocktail at Once or Twice, walk over to Rooted for a sandwich and a communal table conversation, catch a set of live music if the calendar aligns, and end back on Front Street. None of those legs are more than three blocks.
The other reason the density matters is what it says about follow-on investment. The Downtown Association of Yakima announced the opening of the 2026 Facade grants, which are the direct descendant of the program that funded a lot of the storefront work you see on that block now. Add the ongoing Downtown Summer Nights Concert Series on Historic North Front Street, and the block has both foot traffic and money moving through it on a predictable weekly cadence.
A Route That Actually Uses The New Map
For a Friday night with out-of-town guests or a date that needs to feel intentional without feeling rehearsed, the sequence below uses the new geography:
Start at Once or Twice between 4 and 6 p.m. That is happy hour, which local reporting confirms runs 4 to 6 p.m. on Mondays thru Fridays. The Western saloon aesthetic reads better in raking afternoon light than it does after dark, and you get the bar staff before they are slammed. Order something to eat here rather than saving your appetite. The kitchen is limited by design, but the smash burger is why people come back.
Walk one block east to Rooted for dinner proper. The sandwich menu, the seasonal food from the Soil to Sky partnership, and the beer list from valley brewers give you the meal Once or Twice is not trying to serve. If you are with a group and want to sit at a communal table without giving up conversation, this is the room built for it.
If O'Noodles has opened by the time you read this, swap it in for one of the two stops depending on the mood. Thai noodle soup at 114 Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way is a different night out than a wine bar with karaoke, and both are now within a block of each other.
End with a nightcap back at Once or Twice, which runs to midnight on Friday and Saturday. That is the whole loop. No car. No parking recalculation. No compromise on where you actually wanted to eat.
What Is Still Coming, And What Just Landed Nearby
The wave is not only inside the historic district. A few things worth knowing about while you plan the fall:
A restaurant featuring Cuban coffee, pastries and a lunch/dinner menu is scheduled to open in a few weeks in Yakima's Chalet Place shopping area, which gives West Valley a genuinely new option rather than another chain slot. Downtown proper is also getting Dragon Sushi & Teriyaki, a Spanish-themed self-pour taproom called Los Nopales, and Muchas Gracias Mexican Food, a casual chain expanding into Yakima. On the retail side, El Mister Deals opened in West Valley on Nob Hill Blvd, and Olive Branch Thrift Shop opened on Yakima Ave in downtown Yakima. A Better Future Finders Thrift Store recently opened at 601 W. as well. The thrift cluster is a smaller signal than the restaurant cluster, but it is the same pattern: independent operators leasing storefronts that had been sitting empty.
Why Any Of This Matters If You Own A Home Here
You have probably watched neighbors post about downtown for years without walking down there yourself on a weeknight. That is a habit worth revisiting in 2026. The distance between "I heard there is a new bar" and "I have a Friday routine" is smaller than it used to be, because the pieces are close enough together to string into one evening.
For homeowners in the surrounding neighborhoods, the practical read is that the retail and hospitality density along N. Front and N. 1st is now dense enough to matter when out-of-town family visits, when you are hosting a birthday, or when a friend from the west side asks what there is to do here. The answer has changed. It is worth updating your default recommendation.
If you are thinking further ahead about what a walkable downtown means for the neighborhoods that surround it, we write about that regularly on the Jeremy and Lindsay Sinnes blog, and we are always happy to talk through what is happening in a specific pocket of Yakima or in nearby communities like Selah and Moxee.
Ready to see how your part of town connects to what is happening downtown? Schedule a consultation with Jeremy and Lindsay Sinnes and we will give you the local read that does not show up on the portals.
