On the last weekend of June, about 1,200 people walked through the old car wash tunnel at 8121 Market St. That's the opening-weekend count owner Jamie Alfalla gave Port City Daily for the second Concorde Espresso Bar. Alfalla Hospitality Group bought the property for $1.8 million and turned the wash conveyor into a tube-shaped "cabin" with oblong window screens. Video of trees and a lake at takeoff, and later clouds against a pink-and-orange sky, moves slowly across those screens as if the room were in flight.
The tunnel is the novelty. The more lasting news is why the owners picked Porters Neck. In the Port City Daily feature, Alfalla said the group first looked at the Wrightsville Beach area for its second location. They switched once this site, between the Walmart shopping center and nearby medical offices, came up. She explained the choice plainly:
"They also don't have to drive downtown to enjoy a night out."
That sentence describes more than one business. Up and down this piece of Market Street, owners are making the same bet and pricing their plans around it. One evening venue has opened, one has been running a weekly calendar for a while, one steakhouse is close to opening, and a grocery lease just north of the neighborhood was announced two days ago.
Why the old car wash worked
Downtown Concorde sits inside the Front Street Inn and shares parking with the bed and breakfast. Most customers park on the street. Alfalla called the big lot at the Porters Neck site "exactly what we needed," and she named the arches of the old tunnel as part of the draw. In north Wilmington, the parking lot is what makes this kind of evening work at all.
Here's what the 2,500-square-foot building holds now:
- The private jet cabin seats 40 by reservation only. Port City Daily reported that reservation times fill quickly.
- An upstairs lounge, plus a fenced courtyard with couches and four-top tables. Most of the tables have fire pits for s'mores.
- Weekend "flights" that take the menu to a different destination each weekend, with themed specials. Tokyo, Paris and London were early stops.
- Call-ahead coffee orders for pickup starting at 7:30 a.m. There's no drive-through.
The menu moves from morning to night in one list. The coffee side includes the Latte Olivia, Latte Fleur, Vietnamese coffee, Café Bombón and Thai iced tea. The bar side includes a three-martini flight, a Passion Fruit Martini and a lineup of espresso martinis. At opening, Port City Daily reported the bar closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. The official site now lists hours seven days a week: 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday, 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. After 4 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, it's 21 and up.
The stretch is shorter than it looks
Set the addresses next to each other and the pattern shows. Nearly all of it falls between 7954 and 8260 Market St., which you can drive in a couple of minutes.
| Address | Business | Status in early October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 7954 Market St. | ALDI | Open |
| 7968 Market St. | Brasato Chophouse | Announced, not yet confirmed open |
| 7976 Market St. | Outer Dunes Brewing | Open, with a weekly event calendar |
| 8035 Market St. | Walmart Supercenter | Open |
| 8121 Market St. | Concorde Espresso Bar | Open since June 26 |
| 8207 Market St. | Food Lion, Porters Neck Center | Open |
| 8260 Market St. | Harris Teeter, Oak Landing | Open |
The grocery stores have anchored this strip for a long time. What's new is the evening layer forming between them. If the steakhouse opens on schedule, 7968 and 7976 will sit side by side, a sit-down dinner next to a brewery taproom, with a grocery run at ALDI just down the road.
The calendar that was already running
Outer Dunes Brewing at 7976 Market St. was running a weeknight schedule before the tunnel opened, and it keeps a set pattern. Here's the first full week of October from the brewery's own posted calendar:
- Tuesday, Oct. 6: Walk & Run Club at 6 p.m., with $1 off cans.
- Wednesday, Oct. 7: Music Bingo at 7:30 p.m., with Wheelz Pizza from 5:30 to 7:30.
- Thursday, Oct. 8: Harry Potter + Magic trivia at 7:30 p.m., with Gustu Peruano serving from 5:30 to 7:30.
- Friday, Oct. 9: Cape Fear Riders play from 5 to 8 p.m., followed by a ticketed comedy show at 8 in the Beach House.
- Saturday, Oct. 10: A DJ BCally night themed around jorts, solo cups and beer pong.
The week before followed the same shape. Run club on Tuesday, bingo on Wednesday, trivia on Thursday, plus a book swap from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Beach House on Oct. 1. The Caroline Keller Band played on Friday, Oct. 2. Saturday, Oct. 3 was closed for a wedding, so check the schedule before you plan a Saturday around it. Today, Sunday, Oct. 4, the posted specials are $4 mimosas and $4 Intracoastal Blondes.
A weekly schedule like this makes the strip predictable. Concorde gives you a place to linger at the far end of the block, and Outer Dunes gives you a known event every weeknight.
The steakhouse that's running late
Brasato Chophouse is the next piece. Gianni Cinelli has four decades in restaurants. Locally he runs Driftwood in Hampstead and Spiaggia Ristobar in Sneads Ferry, and before that he opened or worked on Triangle restaurants including Rocco's, Osteria G. and Vivo. Brasato will be his first restaurant in Wilmington. Port City Daily reported in August that it will seat 100 at 7968 Market St., near Marsh Oaks. Plans call for lunch and dinner seven days a week starting at 11:30 a.m., with lunch at $12 to $20 and dinner at $20 to $60. The menu centers on prime steaks, homemade pasta and family recipes.
Cinelli was aiming for Sept. 15. That date has passed. A hiring post dated Oct. 2 still described the restaurant as opening, and we found no replacement date in local coverage. As of this weekend, call ahead before planning a dinner there.
A daily lunch service matters here. A 21-and-up Friday night bar and a brewery calendar are evening businesses. A 100-seat room open at 11:30 every day would carry the strip through the middle of the day too.
The daytime half arrives at Blake Farm
Daytime errands are shifting just north, past Porters Neck Road. On Oct. 2, WECT reported that Publix signed a lease for a 50,325-square-foot supermarket at the Shoppes at Blake Farms, at the southeast corner of US-17 and Scotts Hill Loop Road. Publix expects about 140 jobs at the store and hasn't announced an opening timeframe. For now, Publix's locator still lists the Ogden Market Place store at 7144 Market St.
The grocery store is one piece of a bigger plan. In May, WilmingtonBiz reported a commercial area of up to 100,000 square feet for Blake Farm. It covers about 17 acres on both sides of Blake Farm Boulevard. Leasing is led by Trask Land Co. and Cameron Management. Madison Robideau of Trask said the target tenants include "quick-serve and sit-down restaurants, coffee, fitness, financial, medical, retail and service tenants." The project's release puts traffic past the site at about 45,000 vehicles a day. It counts about 3,000 existing and planned residential units in the immediate trade area, which includes the Oak Grove Active Adult apartments, the Reserve at Blake Farm, the Townes at Blake Farm and The Grove at Blake Farm, a planned DR Horton neighborhood.
Robideau said construction will be phased around tenant needs. Treat the Publix lease as the first confirmed tenant of a longer buildout. Don't take it as a sign of a near-term grand opening.
Up the road, a finished opening
Further north, one more opening is done. Seoul Sushi opened its Hampstead location at Oyster Creek Landing on Sept. 8. Owners Sang and Adam Woo brought the Wilmington favorite up US-17. Port City Daily's preview lists sushi rolls, wings, rice bowls, bibimbap and loaded fries, with 25 seats inside and 22 outside in a 1,700-square-foot space.
So Porters Neck now has new dining options on both sides. The ALDI-to-Harris Teeter strip is filling in its evenings, Hampstead is adding sit-down restaurants to the north, and Blake Farm is lined up to handle daytime errands in between. The coffee you order for 7:30 a.m. pickup and the martini flight at 10 p.m. now come from the same converted tunnel at 8121 Market St.
If the changes along north Market Street have you rethinking what you want close to home, whether you're settling into Porters Neck or comparing it with neighborhoods closer to downtown, Stephanie Vogel would be glad to walk that stretch with you, from the old car wash to the corner at Scotts Hill Loop Road, and talk through what's coming next. Let's Connect.
