"People already know us. Some customers are asking when we are coming back."
That's Rocio Soltero, talking about Mezcal Mexican Restaurant, the family-run spot she and her husband Valentin are opening by the end of this month on Boones Ferry Road. The Solteros aren't new to the neighborhood. For a decade they ran Corona Mexican Restaurant two blocks away, until it closed and Summit Orthopedics bought the site to expand its practice. Now they're rebuilding two blocks over, in a space that used to be Ivy's Pho & Grill.
Mezcal is one of at least six restaurants that have opened or are opening in Lake Oswego so far in 2026. What's worth noticing isn't the count. It's the map. None of these six are in Mercato Grove, the development built five years ago to be Lake Oswego's answer to a Portland-style food hall. If you've been watching that corner for the next big opening, you've been watching the wrong block.
The development that was supposed to be the answer
Mercato Grove opened in 2021 with six restaurants under the ChefStable umbrella, the same Portland restaurant group behind a handful of well-known city spots. The idea was straightforward: bring a curated, ready-made dining district to the suburbs in one stroke instead of waiting for it to grow storefront by storefront.
It didn't hold. Fills Donuts, Lardo, St. Jack and Tasty all closed. Oven and Shaker followed, shutting its doors in August 2025 and handing the space to Pizzeria Otto, a Neapolitan-style pizzeria run by Clark Hale, who left a career in software development to open his original location on Sandy Boulevard in 2014. Grassa is the only restaurant left from Mercato Grove's original 2021 lineup. The Whole Bowl and Sool K-Food & Bar have since moved in to fill other gaps.
That's five of six original tenants gone in under five years, in a development that was designed specifically to avoid this kind of turnover. Grassa's staying power says something too. It's counter-service, casual, family-friendly pasta, not the kind of concept that needs a special occasion to justify a visit. Hale said as much when he signed the Oven and Shaker space: he's betting his pizzeria works for the same reason Grassa does, because it doesn't ask Lake Oswego to behave like a Portland restaurant scene with lines out the door.
Where the actual openings landed instead
Here's what's opened, or is about to, somewhere other than Mercato Grove:
| Restaurant | Opened | Location | Previously |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neko Ramen | January 2026 | 3 Monroe Parkway, near New Seasons Market | — |
| OG Birrieria | April 22, 2026 | 15840 Boones Ferry Road | Giant Drive-In, closed 2023 |
| Sushi M | May 2026 | 440 5th Street | — |
| KIN (izakaya) | June 2026 | Downtown State Street corridor | Open Rice Sushi & Chinese Restaurant |
| Mr. Maple Donuts | Targeted early August 2026 | 363 S. State Street, Suite A | First location south of the Willamette for the chain |
| Mezcal Mexican Restaurant | End of August 2026 | 15630 SW Boones Ferry Road | Ivy's Pho & Grill |
Four different corridors, not one designed district: Monroe Parkway, Boones Ferry Road twice over, 5th Street, State Street. That's the actual shape of Lake Oswego's 2026 food scene, and it looks nothing like the tidy single-address version Mercato Grove was built to offer.
Who's actually behind these openings
The other pattern worth catching is who's doing the opening. Hiroyuki Makino, who owns Sushi M, ran a sushi restaurant in Marin County before moving his family to Oregon after the pandemic and choosing 5th Street for his next shop. Sirapob Chaiprathum, who opened Neko Ramen near New Seasons, has worked as a chef and owner for 25 years and learned to make ramen in Tokyo. Richard Hurtado's OG Birrieria started as a taco truck in Hillsboro before he spent two years converting the old Giant Drive-In into a sit-down restaurant. Thanaphorn "Fair" Khusawangsri closed her food cart near the South Waterfront to open KIN, saying she wanted to bring something the area was missing: "Around here we don't really see any izakaya, so we want to bring that vibe." And the Solteros are simply picking their business back up two blocks from where a medical practice now sits.
That's five independent, single-location owners making a direct bet on Lake Oswego specifically, not a restaurant group leasing into a pre-built district. Pizzeria Otto is the one exception on this list, and it's telling that even a Portland group expanding into the suburbs chose to slot into an existing vacancy at Mercato Grove rather than open something new elsewhere. The rest of this year's openings picked their own corners.
What else moved downtown this year
The restaurant map wasn't the only thing that shifted. A few other changes are worth having on your radar if you live here:
- The Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce relocated in May to 311 B Avenue, Suite E, next to the Ironlight event venue and across from the main fire station. Chamber CEO Liz Hartman said she expects the new spot to see plenty of foot traffic this summer.
- The Farmers' Market still runs every Saturday morning, 8:30 to 1:30, at Millennium Plaza Park through the summer.
- Two outdoor summer concerts got rained and smoked out this year, one to thunderstorms in July and one to wildfire smoke in early August. Both were rescheduled to a single two-band evening at Foothills Park on Wednesday, September 2, with Wild Boys and Band After Midnight splitting the bill.
- Lakewood Center for the Arts is staging "Hands on a Hard Body" this month, a musical built around a Texas endurance contest for a pickup truck.
None of this rewrites the story on its own, but it fills out the picture of a downtown that's still busy even while its restaurant roster keeps turning over underneath it.
Why the map matters more than the count
The easy version of this story is "Lake Oswego got some new restaurants this year." The more useful version is that the neighborhood's food scene has stopped concentrating in the place built to hold it. Mercato Grove was supposed to be the answer to where Lake Oswego eats. Instead, the real growth this year has been scattered across Boones Ferry Road, Monroe Parkway, 5th Street and State Street, run mostly by people opening their own name for the first time rather than restaurant groups filling a leasing plan.
If you live here and haven't updated your mental map since Mercato Grove opened in 2021, this year is the one to do it. The good sushi isn't necessarily where the food hall told you it would be. It might be on 5th Street, or three blocks over on Monroe Parkway, next to the grocery store you already shop at.
Tracy Brophy has spent two decades watching Lake Oswego change block by block, not just in the housing stock but in the storefronts that make a neighborhood feel like itself. If you're weighing a move here, or already live in Lake Oswego and are curious what your home is worth in today's market, reach out to Tracy Brophy for a market consultation or a free home valuation.
