Walk the stretch from the Port Imperial ferry terminal down to Lincoln Harbor on any evening this month and you'll pass at least four restaurants that didn't exist in this form three years ago. Drift is spinning its dining platform toward a sunset skyline. Faubourg is setting up for dinner service in a space that used to be something else entirely. Beneci's is pouring wine on the Sheraton's patio like it always has. And if you time it right, there's still a free concert happening a few hundred feet away, run by an organization that was doing this before any of those restaurants signed a lease.
That last part is the piece most write-ups skip. The restaurant scene here turns over. The Hudson Riverfront Performing Arts Center does not. It has been staging free shows on this exact waterfront since 2003, which means it predates almost every dining room currently drawing a line for brunch.
What's actually new, and what it replaced
The two most talked-about openings on the waterfront right now didn't appear on empty lots. They took over spaces that had already failed once.
Drift Restaurant & Bar occupies 1200 Harbor Boulevard, a 17,000-square-foot building that sat vacant from 2019 until its recent rebirth. Before Drift, it was Houlihan's. Restaurateur Jeremy Casilli, who also runs Hudson & Co. in Jersey City, took the space and built a rotating dining platform, a 100-foot bar, and a menu led by Chef Bryan Noury that leans into seafood and raw bar plates.
A block over, Faubourg took the ground floor of River House 11 at 1100 Avenue at Port Imperial, a space previously occupied by Porter, the seafood-and-steak spot that closed after building a loyal following of its own. Faubourg opened there in late August 2024 as the second location of a French brasserie whose original outpost sits on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair. It now runs dinner seven nights a week plus weekend brunch, the same rhythm as its Essex County sibling.
| Address | Previous tenant | Current tenant | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 Harbor Boulevard | Houlihan's (vacant 2019 to 2024) | Drift Restaurant & Bar | 17,000 sq ft, rotating dining platform, 100-foot bar |
| 1100 Avenue at Port Imperial | Porter | Faubourg Weehawken | French brasserie, dinner nightly, weekend brunch |
Two high-profile restaurants failing and being replaced within a few years of each other is not a crisis. It's what happens on a waterfront corridor still figuring out its permanent lineup. If you moved here in the last two years, the assumption might be that this restaurant row is a finished product. It isn't. It's three or four years into becoming one.
The places that never had to reopen
Set those two openings against what's been running the whole time, and the corridor looks different.
NoHu Rooftop Bar and Restaurant is the one most locals credit with starting the current wave, the first spot to prove a rooftop with a Manhattan view could carry a business here on its own. The Highwood and Blu on the Hudson followed, both still operating on the same stretch. Beneci's Cucina D'Italia, tucked inside the Sheraton Lincoln Harbor Hotel at 500 Harbor Boulevard, has quietly kept its lobster pappardelle and skyline patio going the entire time Drift's building sat empty next door.
Then there's Hudson Blue Bar and View, inside the historic Weehawken Ferry Terminal, paired with Robongi restaurant. The business describes its own run as more than two decades old, which puts its opening well before any of the current wave of waterfront concepts. It's a sports bar with sushi, not a headline opening, and that's exactly the point. It didn't need a renovation cycle or a design story to stay in business.
The concert series that's older than the restaurants
Here's the part that doesn't show up in the restaurant roundups. A few hundred feet from Drift's rotating platform, Lincoln Harbor Park hosts free outdoor concerts through the Hudson Riverfront Performing Arts Center, a nonprofit that has been presenting live music on this waterfront since its first concert in 2003. HRPAC runs two separate series: Summer Concerts on the Hudson, the outdoor evening shows at Lincoln Harbor Park that most residents know, and the UBS Atrium Series, an indoor program that keeps going once the weather turns. A Cerus Quartet performance at the UBS Atrium in Lincoln Harbor this past April confirms the indoor series is still active well outside peak concert season.
That distinction matters for anyone assuming free live music on the waterfront wraps up over Labor Day. The outdoor series does. The atrium series doesn't, and it's supported by the Township of Weehawken and Hudson County alongside UBS, which is a different funding model than any restaurant on this list. A restaurant closes when the lease doesn't work. A sponsored nonprofit concert series answers to a different set of incentives entirely, which is part of why it has outlasted several restaurant concepts on the same three blocks.
How to actually use the corridor this fall
The waterfront rewards a specific kind of evening more than a single destination. A few ways residents are stringing it together right now:
- Start at Hamilton Park before sunset. The overlook near the Hamilton-Burr duel site gives the clearest skyline view on the whole waterfront, and it costs nothing.
- Walk the Weehawken Recreation Pier, which extends 450 feet into the river on its own set of pilings, before heading to dinner. It's a five-minute add-on to any Port Imperial evening.
- Check the HRPAC calendar before assuming free music season is over. The UBS Atrium Series keeps running once Summer Concerts on the Hudson wraps.
- If you want the newer rooms, book Drift or Faubourg. If you want the version of this waterfront that was here before the renovation wave, Beneci's, The Highwood, or Hudson Blue and Robongi inside the ferry terminal will feel more like Weehawken's baseline.
- Weehawken Waterfront Park and Recreation Center, further south along the water, still has the turf soccer field, two softball fields, a track, and three tennis courts running on their normal fall schedule for anyone using the corridor for more than dinner.
What this means if you already live here
None of this is a reason to expect the current restaurant lineup to look the same in five years. Two of the most-discussed spaces on this waterfront have already turned over once in the last several years, and there's no reason to assume Drift or Faubourg are permanent fixtures simply because they're the newest names. What is durable is the stuff that isn't chasing a lease renewal. HRPAC's free programming has run for over twenty years through multiple restaurant cycles on the same three blocks. Robongi and Hudson Blue have done the same from inside the ferry terminal. The waterfront's identity was never really about which restaurant currently holds the best view. It's about the handful of things here that didn't need one to survive.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth long term, that distinction is worth more than knowing which restaurant just opened. Hudson Realty Group works this waterfront block by block, and if you want a read on what's changing here beyond the dinner menu, reach out or take a look at what's currently available in Weehawken.
