Amesbury's Riverfront Just Got Its Anchor: A Summer 2026 Field Guide

For years, the story locals told about the Amesbury waterfront was a story about potential. Marina slips, kayak launches, the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge arching overhead, and a stretch of Merrimack shoreline that felt like it was waiting for a reason to linger. This summer, that reason opened its doors.

Marker 34 began serving on June 19, and within a week the deck was doing the kind of Friday-night business that used to require a drive to Newburyport or Portsmouth. That single opening reframes a lot of what Amesbury residents already do along the water. The point of this post is not to review a new restaurant. It is to argue that the waterfront, plural, is now Amesbury's social center of gravity, and to lay out how the pieces connect if you already live here.

The opening that changed the map

Marker 34 is an elevated coastal restaurant overlooking the Merrimack River, and the Amesbury waterfront welcomed it this summer. The project is built on the Healey family's ties to Amesbury and blends maritime character with contemporary hospitality. The kitchen leans into seasonal New England cooking, with fresh seafood, handcrafted cocktails, and a room designed to feel casual but elevated, equally suited to sunset drinks and long summer lunches.

A few practical notes worth knowing before you walk down:

• Patio and bar seating is first come, first served and cannot be reserved. If you want the deck at golden hour, arrive early or plan around it.
• Only trained service animals are permitted, so leave the dog at home.
• The restaurant sits on the water with dock access. Early reviewers arriving by boat noted the dock hands help tie up.

The reason this matters beyond the food: Amesbury has had waterfront for four hundred years and a working marina for decades, but until now it did not have a destination room built explicitly around the view. As Amesbury continues to reconnect with its riverfront, Marker 34 arrives as one of the region's most anticipated openings.

"Where Amesbury's heritage meets modern riverside hospitality." — Marker 34's own framing of the project

That framing is worth pausing on. The heritage part is real. Amesbury and Newburyport share the Merrimack, but longtime locals know Amesbury pride runs deep, and the city's historic mills and scenic waterfront sit at the center of that identity. What is new is the hospitality layer on top of it.

The Powwow River side of the equation

Here is where a lot of first-time visitors get confused. Amesbury has two waterfronts, not one, and they behave differently.

The Merrimack side is broad, tidal, and boat-forward. The Powwow River side is narrower, quieter, and pedestrian. The two meet near downtown, which is why you can eat above one river and walk to the other in under ten minutes.

The anchor on the Powwow side is Blue Moon Kitchen & Bar. It is the only restaurant in Amesbury where you can eat on a deck built over the Pow Wow River. On a given evening you will see families at lunch by the waterfall and couples on date nights with a view of the Powwow. The menu is straightforward American, and the reason to go is entirely about the water underneath the deck.

If you are mapping a summer Saturday, the useful mental model is this:

The last row is the connective tissue, and it is where most of Amesbury's evening life actually happens.

Downtown as the walkable middle

Crave Food & Wine sits at 32 Elm Street in downtown Amesbury, takes reservations, and serves fresh food with craft cocktails. Owner Sean Toomey is a third-generation Amesbury business owner who purchased Crave in 2013 after seven years as a managing partner with Flatbread. General Manager Joanna Bichajian started as a bartender in 2015 and worked her way up. That continuity matters. It is the reason the room feels like a neighborhood restaurant rather than a project.

Crave is the natural pre or post stop for anyone using Marker 34 as the evening's centerpiece. Walk from Elm Street toward the water and you are inside a stretch of downtown that has been rebuilding around foot traffic for a decade. The brick blocks, the mill buildings, the short walk to either river, it all reads as a downtown that finally has enough gravity to hold you for a full evening.

A few other names worth knowing if you are filling in the map:

• Pizza Factory Amesbury. A classic neighborhood pizza joint with checkered tablecloths, flour-dusted peels near the open kitchen, and classic rock on the speakers. The kitchen turns out a Greek salad with crisp vegetables, a pepperoni with a crispy airy crust, and a cheese pizza with the right ratio of sauce to cheese.
• Route 110 Roast Beef & Seafood. One of Amesbury's most reliable spots on the main drag, family-friendly with ample parking. Locals go for the super beef sandwiches on grilled onion rolls, the steak and cheese, and the seafood platter.
• Grande Mexico and Casa Maria Tacos & Tequila. Two different arguments for the same category. Grande Mexico leans big-portion cantina, and Casa Maria sits in a smaller neighborhood spot with hearty, flavorful Mexican fare.

None of these are new. That is the point. What has changed is that they now have a marquee neighbor pulling weekend attention toward the water, which lifts the whole downtown.

The parts of the waterfront that are not restaurants

Food is the easiest way to tell the story, but if you actually live here, most of your waterfront hours have nothing to do with a menu. A short list of the fixed points that shape a summer week in Amesbury:

• Lowell's Boat Shop. The oldest continuously operating boat shop in the country and the reason Amesbury's waterfront identity is not marketing invention. Worth a walk-through with out-of-town guests who think you exaggerated the maritime pitch.
• Lake Gardner. The freshwater counterweight to the tidal Merrimack. Swimming, small-boat paddling, and the place where a lot of Amesbury summers actually happen for families.
• Deer Island. The wooded island between Amesbury and Newburyport, accessible on foot, with the Chain Bridge as its own small landmark.
• The John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge. Not a destination, but the visual signature of the Merrimack waterfront and the reason the view from Marker 34's deck reads the way it does.

A useful test for whether a summer evening plan is a real Amesbury evening: does it touch at least two of these? A Lake Gardner swim into a Powwow-side dinner, or a Lowell's tour into a Merrimack sunset drink, produces the version of the day that visitors think they invented and residents have been quietly running for years.

Why this summer is different

Every summer in Amesbury has had the ingredients. What is different in 2026 is that the ingredients now connect.

Before Marker 34, a resident's Merrimack waterfront routine involved a walk, a paddle, or a boat, and then a drive somewhere else for dinner. The waterfront was a place you visited on the way to your evening rather than the setting for the evening itself. That is not a small shift. It is the difference between a town with a waterfront and a town whose waterfront is central to how residents spend Saturday night.

The other change is more subtle. When a project of Marker 34's scale opens in a downtown the size of Amesbury's, it re-rates the walking radius around it. Crave feels closer to the water now. Elm Street feels closer to the marina. The Powwow deck at Blue Moon feels like part of the same evening rather than a separate trip. None of the geography moved. The perception did.

That is the argument. The Amesbury waterfront in summer 2026 is not a collection of nice pieces near each other. It is starting to behave like a single place.

Working it into a normal week

A few honest suggestions if you are already an Amesbury resident and want to actually use what is here this summer:

1. Go to Marker 34 on a Tuesday or Wednesday, not a Saturday. The room is quieter, the deck is easier, and the kitchen has room to breathe. Save the weekend visit for when out-of-town guests need to be impressed.
2. Build a Powwow lunch into a downtown errand day. Blue Moon's deck at midday is one of the more underused pleasures in town.
3. Stop treating Lowell's Boat Shop as a tourist item. It is the reason the rest of the story holds together, and a short visit reframes every subsequent walk along the Merrimack.
4. If you are hosting anyone this summer, run the two-water route. Powwow first, Merrimack second, downtown in between. It is a better tour of Amesbury than anything on the internet will suggest.

The waterfront has always been here. What is worth noticing this year is that it has finally become a place to end an evening rather than a place to walk past on the way to one.

If you or someone you know is thinking about what a summer like this looks like from the other side of a front door in Amesbury, Jamie Frontiero is glad to walk through the neighborhoods, the waterfront blocks, and the quieter streets in between. Let's Connect.