Ask a Chevy Chase resident what opened this year and the answer splits almost perfectly along one street. Someone south of Western Avenue will tell you about Wheelhouse, the yacht-club-themed restaurant that's been keeping its 33-foot bar full since June. Someone north of that line, up around the Town of Chevy Chase and Chevy Chase Lake, will tell you about ice cream, sushi bowls, and an Italian restaurant that's supposedly still on the way.
Same neighborhood in most people's minds. Two very different summers, depending on which side of Western Avenue you sleep on.
The DC Side Got Its Anchor in June
Wheelhouse opened to the public on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, at 5714 Connecticut Ave NW, in the space that spent years as the Wine & Organic Market next to the Citibank branch. Chef David Scribner runs the kitchen. Owner Bo Blair, who already built a following with Millie's over in Spring Valley, put a raw bar, that 33-foot bar, and a patio into a 4,500-square-foot room that seats 211 people. He's said plainly he wants the place to work as a neighborhood dining room, not a destination that just borrows the address.
It landed inside a stretch that already had the ingredients for a real weeknight routine. Opal, BirdSong, Parthenon, and Little Beast all sit within about a quarter mile, and the Avalon Theatre anchors the same stretch, having shown movies on Connecticut Avenue since 1923 and still standing as Washington's oldest continuously operating neighborhood movie house. Wheelhouse even runs a separate takeout counter that serves ice cream, built for people walking out of a 7pm show who don't want to commit to a full sit-down meal on the way home.
Put a historic theater, five restaurants, and a takeout window inside a quarter-mile stretch of one avenue and you've built something that used to mean a drive to Bethesda Row or downtown.
The Maryland Side Is Still Waiting on Its Equivalent
A mile or so north, across the county line, the story reads differently. Chevy Chase Lake, the mixed-use development anchored by an Amazon Fresh grocery store, has spent the past few years filling in its own restaurant row. Elena James, from the founders of DC's Nina May, along with Ro Sushi Co. and Playa Bowls, all already have doors open. Sarah's Handmade Ice Cream joined them this spring, taking over the former Charmery space at 8551 Connecticut Ave as the local chain's fourth Montgomery County location, with a soft opening planned for late February and a grand opening the owners expected in early April.
What's still missing is the restaurant equivalent of Wheelhouse: something bigger than a bowl shop or a scoop counter. Osteria Divina, an Italian concept from the team behind Carpaccio Tuscan Kitchen in Annapolis, was first announced in a February 2025 press release from developer Bozzuto. As of the most recent local reporting this January, its storefront still only had "coming soon" signage, with no confirmed date attached since.
That gap is worth sitting with. Wheelhouse went from a public announcement in late February 2026 to opening night on June 10, a matter of months, because it was a single storefront changing hands. Osteria Divina has been waiting since a press release a year and a half ago, because it sits inside a much bigger structure. Chevy Chase Lake is executing a master plan that spans more than 1.5 million square feet across multiple phases, developed jointly by the Chevy Chase Land Company and Bozzuto. A restaurant inside a project that size moves on the project's schedule, not its own.
What's Actually Confirmed Right Now
If you're deciding where to eat this fall, the useful move is to plan around what's open, not what's promised.
| Side of the line | What's open now | What's still pending |
|---|---|---|
| DC, Connecticut Ave near the Avalon | Wheelhouse, Opal, BirdSong, Parthenon, Little Beast | Nothing currently pending |
| Maryland, Chevy Chase Lake | Elena James, Ro Sushi Co., Playa Bowls, Sarah's Handmade Ice Cream | Osteria Divina |
| Straddling both | Clyde's of Chevy Chase, a few blocks south on Wisconsin Avenue near the Chevy Chase Pavilion | Nothing pending |
Clyde's deserves its own mention here. It isn't new and it isn't trying to be. It's run its dining room and raw bar for decades, and it functions as the one place residents on either side of Western Avenue already agree on without having to think about it.
The Two Rituals That Never Cared About the Line
None of this restaurant math touches the habits that have held the neighborhood together for years regardless of which side of the boundary you live on.
The first is Saturday morning. The Chevy Chase Farmers' Market has run for more than a decade in the Lafayette Elementary School parking lot at the corner of Broad Branch Road and Northampton Street NW, every Saturday from 9am to 1pm, year round. It's a producer-only market, so the people selling fresh fish, fresh pasta, baked goods, and Belgian waffles are the same people who grew or made what's on the table. Nobody checks which side of Western Avenue you drove in from before selling you a dozen eggs.
The second is the park. Rock Creek Park runs along Chevy Chase's eastern edge, and on weekends and holidays, long stretches of Beach Drive close to cars, turning the road itself into the widest, smoothest stretch of pavement most residents will walk or bike all week. That closure doesn't check your address either.
Layer the Avalon's own September calendar on top of those two rituals and you get a genuine weekend shape. Saturday starts at the farmers market. Sunday morning belongs to a car-free Beach Drive. The evenings get anchored by whatever's actually playing at the Avalon, a short walk from Wheelhouse's front door: the Weekend Family Matinee "Cookie Queens" screens Saturday, September 5 at 10:30am, the theater's Summer 1980s series closes with "The Princess Bride" on Sunday, September 6, also at 10:30am, and in between, Avalon Docs presents a one-night screening of "Remake" from documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee.
The Actual Takeaway
Chevy Chase reads, from the outside, like a single neighborhood with one restaurant scene. It isn't. It's two dining economies running on two different development timelines, tied together by a farmers market and a stretch of car-free road that neither side had to build. Live south of Western Avenue and your new restaurant already opened in June. Live north of it and you're one Italian restaurant away from the same thing, with nobody offering a date yet.
That's a useful distinction to carry into a fall calendar. It's also the kind of detail that only surfaces once you've paid real attention to how a neighborhood actually runs, rather than what a map says is nearby.
If you're weighing a move within Chevy Chase, or into it from somewhere else in the DMV, Emily Sower puts together neighborhood guides that go past the restaurant list. Call or text anytime, or start with a complimentary home valuation or neighborhood guide.
