You park at 116 Lakeshore Drive expecting the casual, picnic-table version of Belle's you saw someone post about, the one with paper plates and a boat slip view. What you find instead is a sit-down dining room inside Old Port Cove, part of a private marina complex, with a different rhythm entirely. The place you were picturing is a mile up the water at a different address, under a different set of docks, run by the same name but built for a different kind of afternoon.
That mix-up happens because most people think of "the marina" in North Palm Beach as one place. It isn't. It's three separate properties that used to compete with each other and now answer to a single owner, and the way that consolidation played out is written directly into the menu split at Belle's.
The Merger That Explains the Confusion
For most of its history, Old Port Cove Marina, North Palm Beach Marina, and New Port Cove Marine Center were run as one company, Old Port Cove Holdings, which had operated marina properties in the Palm Beaches since the early 1970s. In 2018, that entire portfolio, all three marinas and the 48,000-square-foot retail and office complex known as Cove Plaza, sold to Safe Harbor Marinas, now the largest marina owner and operator in the world. Combined, the three properties can dock nearly 650 vessels ranging from small day boats to 200-foot yachts.
For a resident, that ownership history matters less than the practical result: three docks that used to have separate identities now share a management company, a booking system, and in at least one case, a restaurant brand that shows up twice with two different personalities.
The three properties, as they exist today:
- Old Port Cove Marina (116 Lakeshore Drive) — the original flagship, now home to Belle's Bar & Grill and Sandpiper's Cove Restaurant and Bar, both waterfront, both sit-down.
- North Palm Beach Marina (1037 Marina Drive) — the more casual satellite property, home to Belle's To-Go, a picnic-table setup that reads more like a standing food truck event than a restaurant.
- New Port Cove Marine Center — the third property in the portfolio, primarily dry storage and slips rather than dining.
What That Split Actually Means for Your Saturday
Belle's Bar & Grill, at Old Port Cove, keeps the feel of a members' waterfront club. Its dining room and cocktail menu are built around marina guests and neighborhood regulars rather than walk-up tourist traffic, and it doesn't run every day of the week. If you're not tied into the marina community, it can read as harder to access than it actually is.
Belle's To-Go, a mile away at the North Palm Beach Marina address, is the version built for everyone else. It's open Thursday through Monday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, with picnic tables set up dockside and a menu meant to be eaten with your hands while you watch boats come in. It's the same name, the same ownership group, and a completely different Saturday.
Richard Morgan, president of Old Port Cove Holdings at the time of the sale, said one of the appeals of the Safe Harbor deal was its commitment to "the highest standards of excellence, quality and legendary customer service." Whatever the corporate language, the on-the-ground effect for a North Palm Beach resident is a waterfront that now runs two versions of the same hospitality idea at two different price points and two different levels of formality, both a short drive apart.
The Rest of the Loop, Off the Docks
The marina isn't the only reason to leave the house. Anchorage Park, a public waterfront green space, gives residents the version of the water that doesn't require a boat or a dinner reservation, just a place to walk, sit, and watch the Intracoastal do its thing. A few minutes further is John D. MacArthur Beach State Park, the closest real stretch of protected coastline, where the crowd thins out compared to the beaches further south and the mangrove trail gives you a different kind of quiet than the marina docks.
Inland from the water, the food scene skews toward the kind of places that don't need a view to earn repeat customers. Divino Ristorante Italiano has built a following on the sort of unhurried, conversation-first dinner that doesn't rush you toward dessert. Venezia Pizza and Restaurant trades the white-tablecloth formality that shows up at some of the town's other Italian spots for a warmer, family-run room where the servers know regulars by name. Mornings belong to The Groves Coffee House, with sun-drenched outdoor tables, locally roasted coffee, and acai bowls that have become enough of a fixture that they're part of how residents describe their own weekend routine.
A Realistic Saturday
Put together, the loop looks less like a tourist itinerary and more like the actual order residents run it in:
- Coffee and an acai bowl at The Groves, outside if the tables are open.
- A walk through Anchorage Park or a longer stretch at MacArthur Beach State Park if you want sand instead of a seawall.
- Lunch or a drink at Belle's To-Go if you're not tied into the Old Port Cove membership scene, or Sandpiper's Cove if you are and want the sit-down version.
- Dinner at Divino or Venezia, depending on whether you want quiet or noise with your pasta.
None of this requires knowing which marina owns which dock. But knowing it means you stop driving to the wrong Belle's.
Why This Matters Beyond the Menu
The three-marina consolidation is a small, specific fact, but it says something larger about how North Palm Beach's waterfront actually functions. What looks from the outside like a single stretch of docks and restaurants is really a handful of separately built properties that got folded together under one national operator, and the character of each spot still carries the fingerprint of what it was before the sale. Old Port Cove still feels like the original flagship. North Palm Beach Marina still feels like the newer, looser sibling. That distinction shapes which nights you spend there and what you expect when you show up.
It's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a map, but it's exactly the sort of thing a longtime resident already knows and a new one figures out after one wrong turn.
If you're weighing whether North Palm Beach's waterfront rhythm fits how you actually want to spend your weekends, The Ana Vega Group works this corridor closely enough to walk you through it block by block. Schedule a VIP Consultation and we'll talk through what life along this stretch of the Intracoastal really looks like, docks, menus, and all.
