The Seacoast Drive Weekend, Rewritten: What's Actually Open in Imperial Beach Right Now

Walk south on Seacoast Drive on a Saturday morning and the storefronts look the same as they did two summers ago. The paint on the pier hasn't changed. The Bayshore Bikeway still empties riders onto Palm Avenue at the same corner. Yet the muscle memory a lot of us built for weekend eating and errand-running around here doesn't quite fit anymore. Three of the anchor spots on this stretch have changed hands, changed hours, or opened brand new inside the last eighteen months, and if you haven't been paying close attention, you're probably still driving past a couple of them on autopilot.

This post is the update. Not a "best of" list, not a guide for visitors. A working map of the corridor between Palm Avenue and the pier as it stands in August 2026, aimed at the people who live along it and want to plan a weekend that actually accounts for who's serving what, and when.

The end of the pier is no longer The Tin Fish

For roughly twenty-five years, the little building at 910 Seacoast Drive at the far end of the pier was The Tin Fish. If you grew up walking out there for fish and chips, that association is hard to shake. But the space changed hands in the fall of 2025 and reopened as Imperial Beach Kitchen, an Asian-inspired restaurant with a variety of dishes. The owner, David Gwak, is a Korea-trained chef who ran three restaurants on Convoy Street before he bought the pier space. "Last December I came to check it out and decided I wanted to buy it," he told the Imperial Beach News last November.

What matters for a weekend plan is the menu and the hours. Fish and chips are still on the board, which is the piece most longtime pier walkers ask about first. Around it, Gwak added four varieties of Korean Ramen, including the Buldak Cheese. The Rolls side of the menu includes lobster, bulgogi, spicy pork, and chicken teriyaki. Customers can choose from a variety of rice bowls, such as Soy Salmon, Bulgogi Beef, and Spicy Pork. Shrimp and fish tacos are new. Hours are every day, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., which is the detail that catches people out. If your habit was an early breakfast walk to the end of the pier, that's not the trip anymore. It's a lunch trip, or a sunset dinner before the kitchen closes.

One practical note that only shows up if you actually go: Gwak told the paper he plans to change dishes based on the season, so the menu you see in August is not the menu you'll see in January. The soups skew heavier in winter. Worth knowing.

Pier South is no longer just the hotel restaurant

Two blocks north, the Pier South Resort building has always had a restaurant, and for most locals it registered as a place you took visiting family once and then forgot about. That changed in the spring of last year. Two new dining concepts opened in Imperial Beach at Pier South Resort on May 23, 2025, replacing what was there before.

The first is Sammy's, from the group that started with a La Jolla location back in 1989. Sammy's Woodfired Pizza, founded by enterprising hospitality specialist Sami Ladeki in 1989 with the first location opening in La Jolla, serves family-friendly dishes including a grilled balsamic chicken salad, an array of pizzas and their signature messy sundae. The second is Roppongi Asian Bistro, a dinner-only Pacific Rim spot from the same operator as the Roppongi in La Jolla.

The hours are the part that actually reshapes a weekend:

Roppongi at Pier South will serve dinner daily from 5 to 10 p.m., and Sammy's at Pier South will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Read those side by side and the corridor now has a real breakfast option that isn't a drive up Palm, and a late dinner option that runs past when the pier restaurant closes. That's the practical difference.

Millport is a weekend place now, and only a weekend place

The other change, and the one that catches people out most often, is at 13th and Donax. Millport used to be a full-week breakfast spot. It isn't anymore. In the owners' own words, after 3 years of grinding all week, we realized we needed to find a more sustainable and less traditional business model. We decided to pivot Millport Cafe to be a weekend hotspot to allow us more flexibility for our private events and gluten free bakery. Millport Cafe is now open Saturday & Sunday, 9am-2pm or until sold out.

Two things worth flagging. First, the "until sold out" is not a marketing line. We prepare a limited amount of food daily to reduce food wasted. If you show up at 1:45 on a Sunday expecting the veggie bowl, you may be looking at a picked-over pastry case. Second, the whole pastry counter is gluten-free. When we opened Millport we never imagined becoming a go-to spot for gluten free pastries, but here we are, the owners write. If that's a dietary constraint in your household, you now have a walkable weekend option a few blocks from the beach that didn't exist as a specialty a few years ago.

The coffee is Visitor Coffee, a small local business, which the Millport team notes is roasted fresh beans in National City by the owners, our good pals, Will & Seth. Both Imperial Beach natives. The beans are for sale by the bag at the counter, which is a small thing that solves an ongoing problem for people who don't want to drive up to a bigger roaster on a Saturday.

What Portwood Pier Plaza carries the rest of the year

The corridor's public living room is Portwood Pier Plaza at 900–914 Seacoast Drive. It's where the July 4th fireworks program runs, and it's where the Sun & Sea Festival came back this summer after a year off. On Saturday, July 18, 2026, the sandcastle carvers were back on the sand, along with the Sandcastle Showdown for kids and the street festival. The kickoff Friday night, the Back to the 70s Sun & Sea Ball at Mike Hess Brewing, 805 Ocean Ln, is worth remembering for next year if you missed it.

If you're mentally cataloging what the Plaza gives you between festival dates, the answer is a low-key gathering point that plugs directly into the pier and, from there, into the Bayshore Bikeway. That connection is the reason the eating changes above matter more than they would in a less pedestrian neighborhood. You aren't picking one restaurant. You're picking a walking loop, and the loop has new stops on it.

A Saturday that accounts for the shifts

Here's how the corridor actually strings together now, if you're planning a full day and want to hit the new pieces without doubling back:

1. 9:00 a.m. Walk or bike to Millport at 13th and Donax. Order early. Grab a bag of Visitor beans on the way out.
2. 10:30 a.m. South on Seacoast to the pier. Walk the length of it.
3. 11:15 a.m. Lunch at Imperial Beach Kitchen at the end of the pier. The rice bowls travel well if you want to eat on a bench.
4. 1:00 p.m. Bayshore Bikeway loop, or an afternoon at the sand near Portwood Pier Plaza.
5. 5:30 p.m. Dinner at Roppongi at Pier South, or pizza at Sammy's if the group skews younger.

None of these stops existed in this form two summers ago. That's the point.

The takeaway for people who live here

The neighborhood didn't get louder in the last eighteen months. It got denser in a specific way. Three of the five places above are either brand new, under new ownership, or on new hours, and none of them advertise that fact loudly enough to reach a resident who isn't scrolling the Imperial Beach News each week. If you've been feeling like your weekend routine has gone a little stale, it's probably not the routine. It's that the corridor moved and you didn't get the memo.

If you're thinking beyond the weekend and considering what changes like these mean for the character of your block, or for a home you already own here, Real Estate by Donna Seals has been working this stretch of the coast for more than forty years and is glad to talk it through. Get Your Free Home Valuation when you're ready to see where the market puts your property today.