A Chevy Chase Summer Along Connecticut Avenue: What's New, What's Reopening, and Where to Land on a Saturday

Photo courtesy: wheelhousedc.com

For a long time, the stretch of Connecticut Avenue that stitches the DC side of Chevy Chase to Chevy Chase Lake was a corridor you drove through on the way to Bethesda. The Avalon was the anchor. Everything else was errands. That has quietly changed in the last twelve months, and the change is finally legible on foot. Two full-service restaurants opened at opposite ends of the same avenue, the Avalon is running a summer program that gives you a reason to plan around it, and the trail that has been closed behind half the neighborhood since September 2017 is, finally, on a reopening calendar residents can trust.

The thesis is small but worth saying out loud: this summer is the first one in a decade where a Chevy Chase Saturday does not require a car trip to Bethesda to feel complete. Below is what actually opened, what is on the schedule, and what to check before you plan around it.

The Restaurant That Filled a Corner Everyone Used to Drive Past

The former Wine & Organic Market space at 5714 Connecticut Ave NW, tucked next to Citibank a few doors from the Avalon, sat dark for a long stretch. It reopened on June 10 as Wheelhouse, a Chesapeake Bay-inspired American restaurant from Bo Blair's Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, the same operator behind Millie's in Spring Valley, Due South, The Bullpen, Surfside, and the Jetties sandwich counters.

The physical footprint matters here more than the menu. The 4,500-square-foot full-service eatery can seat 211 with indoor and outdoor seating and boasts a 33-foot bar, plus a separate takeout service counter next to the restaurant that also will serve ice cream. That is a lot of chairs for a block that, for years, could seat perhaps a third of that number across all its sit-down options combined. The restaurant offers lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch service.

Blair was explicit about the Avalon adjacency as part of the calculus. The area around the eatery is a commercial strip along Connecticut Avenue that's home to other restaurants, including Opal, BirdSong, Parthenon, and Little Beast. Blair noted that he was particularly excited about the restaurant's proximity to the Avalon Theatre and its role as a dining option for moviegoers. For residents, the practical read is that the pre-movie and post-movie hours on Connecticut Avenue now have real capacity for the first time.

The Other Anchor, One Mile North

Walk or drive north on Connecticut Avenue past the DC line, and you land at Chevy Chase Lake, where Elena James has now had eighteen months to settle into the rhythm of the neighborhood. It is the first Maryland concept from chef Colin McClimans and Danilo Simic, the team behind Nina May and Opal, and it sits inside the Ritz-Carlton Residences at 8551 Connecticut Ave.

McClimans is not a transplant testing a market. When a broker mentioned the Chevy Chase Lake mixed-use development being built to the partners in 2019, McClimans, a born and raised Chevy Chase, D.C., resident, laughed at the idea. The change of heart came from the operator math. "Opening a place with multiple revenue streams—breakfast, grab-and-go, coffee, a cafe, a restaurant—made sense. Also, the area between Chevy Chase and Kensington is underserved, and we are glad to be part of the retail revival here," McClimans says.

The menu positions it as a neighborhood room rather than a destination. Worth knowing before you go:

• The wedge stack, two thick disks of iceberg lettuce layered with house-smoked bacon bits, fried onion crunchies, and cherry tomatoes, held together with a steak knife through the center.
• The Gabagool chopped Italian salad, five fresh pastas including bucatini cacio e pepe, and a braised short rib bolognese lasagna.
• A kids menu with crowd-pleasers like dino nuggets, mac and cheese, or a patty melt comes with fruits, veggies, and a drink—all for $9. Useful context for anyone planning a family-friendly hour that does not turn into a production.

Between Wheelhouse at the DC end and Elena James at Chevy Chase Lake, the avenue now has two full-service anchors roughly a mile apart. Everything in between reads differently as a result.

What the Avalon Is Actually Showing This Summer

The Avalon Theatre was originally named the Chevy Chase Theatre when it opened in 1923, and after a 2001 closure and a grassroots restoration, it reopened to great excitement on April 23, 2003. That backstory is well trodden. The programming right now is the part worth planning around.

Three summer series to know:

Summer 1980s. A dedicated run of eighties films built for repeat visits over the season rather than a one-off screening.

Wednesday Signature Series. Held only at the Avalon, the Wednesday Signature Series is a group of six rotating programs that showcase unique films from around the world. Screenings are held on Wednesday evenings at 8:00 pm in our historic downstairs theater.

Senior Cinema Thursday. A third-Thursday morning slot at 10:30 am with a $6 group ticket and open captions.

One easily overlooked detail for anyone planning a slower evening: You may purchase your movie tickets at the Café and take any of your beverages and food into the movie—including alcoholic beverages. The café opens thirty minutes before the first show and closes thirty minutes after the last one starts.

Saturday Morning, Three Markets, Three Different Reasons

The Chevy Chase Saturday-morning market question is not really a question of which market is best. It is a question of what you are shopping for and where you want to end up by 10:30. Three producer markets sit inside a short arc, and each has a distinct character.

The Trail Behind Your Block Is Coming Back

The Capital Crescent Trail closure has been the defining piece of infrastructure friction for residents on the east side of Connecticut Avenue for nearly nine years. The trail was a mix of gravel and dirt from Bethesda to Lyttonsville in western Silver Spring; however, that was closed in September 2017 for Purple Line light rail construction on the Georgetown Branch right-of-way. When trail construction as part of the Purple Line project is completed, tentatively in fall 2026, a 12-foot-wide paved trail will run alongside it, almost entirely grade-separated between Bethesda and downtown Silver Spring.

A Practical Saturday, Start to Finish

If the argument above is right, a Chevy Chase Saturday no longer needs to end at the Bethesda line. One version of the day, written for a resident who wants to test the claim:

1. 9:15 a.m. Coffee and a pastry at the café side of Elena James at Chevy Chase Lake before the room fills up.
2. 9:45 a.m. Walk or short drive to the Broad Branch market at Lafayette Elementary for bread, cheese, and the waffle stand.
3. 11:00 a.m. Optional second stop at the Section 3 market behind La Ferme if you need produce the Broad Branch vendors did not have.
4. 12:30 p.m. Lunch at Wheelhouse. Raw bar at the 33-foot counter is the fastest option; the ice cream window is a summer-only reason to walk back.
5. 2:00 p.m. Matinee at the Avalon. Bring coffee from the café in with you.
6. 4:30 p.m. If the trail work window is behind you, an early-evening walk on the open western section of the Capital Crescent to close out the afternoon.

None of these stops existed in this configuration a year ago. That is the news, and they are exciting reasons why the corridor is worth revisiting even for residents who feel they already know it.

If you are thinking about what the retail revival along this stretch means for values on the blocks that back up to it, or you own on the DC or MD side and are curious how the CCT reopening tends to move buyer interest once a paved connection is finally in the ground, the team at Corcoran McEnearney tracks this corridor closely. Request a Local Market Consultation, and we will walk you through what has moved, what has not, and what is likely to next.