For four decades, the only way into 422 East Sherman Avenue was through a side door on Fifth Street. Walk through it and you landed in the same dim, oyster-and-cocktail room that's anchored downtown Coeur d'Alene since 1985: Cricket's Restaurant & Oyster Bar. Regulars knew the room. New residents got pointed toward it within their first month in town, the way you get pointed toward a trailhead or a good hardware store.
This summer, a second door opened. It faces Sherman itself, and it had been locked and unmarked for years. Walk through that one now and you're somewhere else entirely: a remodeled dining room with craft cocktails, a menu that borrows from Spain, France and Italy, and a price point noticeably higher than the bar and grill sharing its roof. The new room is called River & Rye. Cricket's kept running out of the same kitchen, Thursday through Sunday from 11:30 a.m., unchanged. Same building. Same ownership. Two restaurants, each with its own front door and its own idea of who's walking through it.
That's not a story about a struggling restaurant reinventing itself to survive. Cricket's wasn't struggling. It's the story of an owner who looked at the same four walls and decided there was a second customer they weren't serving, someone who wanted a cocktail list and a tasting menu rather than a basket of oysters and a pitcher of beer, and built a second door instead of choosing between the two.
The rest of Sherman is turning over the normal way
Compare that to what's happening a few blocks down, where the churn looks like the version of downtown change most residents already recognize: a business closes, and something new moves in. La Condesa opened at 117 North Second Street last fall, an intentionally slower cocktail bar built around fresh-squeezed lime and house-made syrup, with a Central and South American menu that owner Alicia Main built specifically because, in her words, it was time to bring something new to that stretch of downtown. Down on Sherman, Coral Cafe opened by mid-June, run by Danny and Celine Griffin on a family breakfast recipe that traces back to Danny's grandparents' original Coral Cafe in Burbank, California, in 1957.
"We love that we're on a part of Sherman that's undergoing a lot of improvements," Danny Griffin told the Coeur d'Alene Press. "It's a nice way for us to be able to contribute to helping keep it a nice area."
That's ordinary turnover. A space empties, a new operator with a family story fills it, the street keeps its texture. It's the same mechanism playing out a mile away at 482 West Sunset Avenue, where Coyol Cocina & Tequila opened June 15 inside the old Chili's building next to Fred Meyer. Owner Luis Pelayo spent 23 years working his way from dishwasher to part owner, relocated to Rathdrum in 2024 when his wife's family drew them to the area, and named the restaurant after a Nahuatl word meaning queen of the full moon. A national chain's old real estate became a family-run tequila bar with a patio overlooking Highway 95. That's a story about a chain vacating and a local operator claiming the corner. It's a different mechanism than what happened at Cricket's, and the difference matters if you're trying to read what's actually going on in this town's food scene.
Downtown isn't choosing between Sherman and Riverstone either
The same logic is playing out at the scale of the whole city, not just one building. For years, Riverstone functioned as an overflow zone for downtown, somewhere you ended up if Sherman Avenue parking was full. That's no longer an accurate way to describe it. The 25-year-old development now runs its own Wednesday farmers market on Main Street and hosts Thursday evening concerts through the Arts & Culture Alliance. A 7,500-square-foot mixed-use commercial building near the entrance to Riverstone Park has a restaurant tenant already signed, even though the name hasn't been made public yet.
Sherman Avenue didn't shrink to make room for that. It just stopped being the only place in town with a dinner crowd. People's Waffle opened May 22 at 400 North Fourth Street, one block off the Sherman corridor, serving gluten-free waffles built from co-owner Alyssa Agee's grandmother's recipe. Habit Burger Grill opened May 14 at 212 West Appleway Avenue, the chain's first North Idaho location, in the former Pizza Hut space. Twigs Bistro & Martini Bar opened downtown in the Thomas George building near McEuen Park, with lake views from an indoor and outdoor dining room. None of these openings took business away from Sherman's oldest restaurants. They gave residents more reasons to eat on a Tuesday instead of waiting for a Saturday festival.
Two festivals, two weekends, no need to pick a side
That same pattern shows up on the September calendar, and it's worth knowing which event fits which night out before the month gets away from you.
| Riverstone Block Party & Brewfest | Downtown Oktoberfest | |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Saturday, September 12 | Friday–Saturday, September 18–19 |
| Hours | 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. | Friday evening tapping, Saturday full day |
| Location | Main Street in Riverstone | Sherman Avenue |
| Vibe | Family-friendly street fair, 50+ vendors, live music | Beer gardens, stein-holding and best-dressed contests |
| Drinks | Beer tasting tickets, day-of purchase $35 for six pours and a commemorative glass | 20-plus local craft beers, ciders and German-inspired brews |
| Who benefits | Proceeds go to the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation | Downtown restaurants run Oktoberfest food specials |
Riverstone's event is presented jointly with the North Idaho Centennial Trail Foundation and marks the development's 25th anniversary this year, which is part of why it reads more like a neighborhood block party than a bar crawl. Oktoberfest, by contrast, keeps its German-beer-hall format and its adult-leaning evening crowd once the bands pick up tempo after 5 p.m. If you've got kids and want an afternoon out, Riverstone is the pick. If you want the version of downtown that leans into lederhosen and stein-holding contests, that's Sherman's weekend a week later.
Neither event needed to cannibalize the other to get on the calendar. That's the same story as the two doors on Sherman Avenue and the two dining corridors a mile apart: growth here isn't happening by one place losing so another can win. It's happening by splitting an audience that got big enough to support both halves.
What this actually means if you live here
None of this requires you to pick a favorite. You can walk through Cricket's Fifth Street door on a Thursday for oysters and a pitcher, and through River & Rye's Sherman-facing door two nights later for a cocktail list that didn't exist eight months ago. You can catch the Riverstone Block Party on the 12th with the kids and still make it to Oktoberfest's stein-holding competition on the 19th. The town added a second gear this year. It didn't swap out the first one.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks what opens and what closes on Sherman, keep an eye on that 7,500-square-foot Riverstone building near Tilford Lane. The restaurant space is leased, the tenant isn't public yet, and whoever it turns out to be will tell you a lot about which direction that corridor keeps growing.
This is the kind of texture that doesn't show up in a listing description, and it's exactly what makes a neighborhood worth knowing before you need to know it. If you're weighing a move to Coeur d'Alene, or you already live here and want a local read on where the market and the lifestyle are actually heading, Inland Northwest Lifestyles can walk you through it block by block. Elevate Your Lifestyle.
