For most of the last few years, 5714 Connecticut Avenue was a dark storefront. The old Wine & Organic Market had closed, the space sat empty just south of Chevy Chase Circle, and anyone walking north from the Avalon Theatre on a Friday night simply walked past it. This summer that changed, and the change says less about one restaurant than about what this stretch of Connecticut Avenue had been missing for years.
Chevy Chase's commercial strip has never lacked good food. What it lacked was a room big enough to hold the neighborhood in one place.
A Strip With Plenty Of Restaurants But No Room
Walk the block between Livingston and Northampton streets and you pass Opal, BirdSong, Parthenon, and Little Beast in the span of a few storefronts. A block south on Wisconsin, Clyde's of Chevy Chase has been running its dining rooms and raw bar for decades, still the reliable choice for a long lunch or a group that doesn't want to wait. Any one of these could get you a good meal on a given night. None of them was built to be the place where you run into your neighbors.
That's a different job than serving good food, and it's the job Chevy Chase's Connecticut Avenue strip hadn't had filled. Spring Valley has Millie's, the kind of breezy, oversized neighborhood restaurant that becomes the default answer to "where should we go." Chevy Chase didn't have an equivalent. It had scattered quality instead of a gathering point.
What Actually Landed At 5714 Connecticut
Wheelhouse opened to the public on Wednesday, June 10, in the former Wine & Organic Market space, just beyond the Montgomery County line on the D.C. side of Connecticut Avenue. It's the newest concept from Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, the team behind Millie's, Due South, The Bullpen, Surfside, and the Jetties sandwich shops, including the location in downtown Bethesda. Founder Bo Blair built the space with a vintage yacht club theme, chef David Scribner runs a Chesapeake Bay-leaning New American menu, and the room itself is what makes it different from everything else on the block: 4,500 square feet, seating for 211 across an indoor dining room and an outdoor patio, and a 33-foot bar strung with sailing flags.
That patio matters more than it sounds like it should. Most of the outdoor seating on this stretch of Connecticut Avenue hides in back gardens. Wheelhouse put its patio on the avenue itself, in a spot where moviegoers leaving the Avalon Theatre can see it from the sidewalk. Blair specifically flagged that proximity as part of the pitch, positioning Wheelhouse as a dining option for the Avalon crowd rather than something you'd need to drive to.
"You don't feel like you're in DC. You feel like you're somewhere else. And that's exactly what we love to do."
That's Blair describing the intent behind the room, and it's consistent with what he's built before. The restaurant added a separate takeout counter next to the main dining room that also serves ice cream from Maine-based Gifford's, the same supplier used at Jetties, and rolled out weekend brunch and full takeout service on June 20, ten days after the main opening.
Here's how the block actually breaks down for anyone deciding where to walk on a given night:
| Spot | What it's known for | Why it fits the loop |
|---|---|---|
| Wheelhouse | Raw bar, 33-foot bar, patio on the avenue | Large enough to seat a group without a reservation weeks out |
| Clyde's of Chevy Chase | Long-running raw bar, reliable lunch crowd | The quieter Sunday brunch option, a few blocks south on Wisconsin |
| Opal, BirdSong, Little Beast | The original cluster on the Avalon block | Coffee and casual stops before or after a movie |
| Avalon Theatre | Independent cinema anchoring the block | The reason foot traffic exists on this stretch at all |
The Sidewalk Under Construction Is Part Of The Story
None of this is happening in a finished neighborhood. The Purple Line's Connecticut Avenue station sits a short walk from Wheelhouse's front door, and as of an April 2026 progress update from Purple Line NOW, the project overall is nearing 90 percent completion, with catenary wire installation actively underway in Chevy Chase and test trains already running on completed segments elsewhere along the line.
That progress comes with the ordinary friction of a major transit project finishing up in your backyard. The Purple Line's own construction updates page currently lists the sidewalk along northbound Connecticut Avenue between Chevy Chase Lake Drive and Manor Road as closed, with pedestrians directed to cross and use the southbound side instead. Utility work and retaining wall construction continue at the Connecticut Avenue station itself, and remaining work along Chevy Chase Lake Drive, including curbs, sidewalks, and final paving, is expected to wrap by the end of summer 2026.
The Capital Crescent Trail is being rebuilt alongside the rail line in the same stretch, which is why the walk between Chevy Chase Lake's plaza and the Avalon block currently means detours rather than a clean straight line. That's temporary. The Purple Line itself is projected to open in late 2027, at which point the same walk that requires a sidewalk crossing today becomes a continuous, car-free connection between the Lake plaza and Wheelhouse's front door.
The Weekend Loop That Didn't Exist Before
Put the restaurant and the construction timeline together and you get a version of Chevy Chase that didn't quite work as a loop a year ago. It does now, even with a few sidewalk detours along the way.
A Saturday here can look like this: coffee walk down Connecticut past BirdSong and Little Beast in the late morning, checking which patios are open for later. Late afternoon, ice cream from the Wheelhouse takeout window, with a bench near the Avalon to eat it. Sunday brunch is a choice between Wheelhouse, newer and louder, or Clyde's, quieter and built around raw bar service that Chevy Chase regulars already know. None of that requires touching a highway or driving past the parking lot behind Wheelhouse.
The neighborhood's calendar backs up the same pattern. Chevy Chase Lake's plaza has hosted a spring oyster event with eight participating restaurants and rotating pop-ups through the season, and for residents on the Town of Chevy Chase side of the line, the date to know isn't a large civic event downtown. It's the Town's own Independence Day Picnic and Parade on July 4, a hyperlocal tradition that has nothing to do with the restaurant strip and everything to do with what makes Chevy Chase feel like a town rather than a stretch of avenue.
What Changed, And What's Still Changing
The thing to understand about this summer in Chevy Chase isn't that a good restaurant opened. Good restaurants open in this area regularly. What changed is that a big enough room, with a patio on the street instead of hidden behind it and a takeout window built for a theater crowd, gave the neighborhood a single anchor point for the first time in years. That's a different kind of change than a new menu, and it's the reason a Tuesday night at Wheelhouse can mean a 25-minute wait at the bar while every other room on the block still has tables open.
Layer in a transit project that's most of the way finished and a trail that's being rebuilt in parallel, and the shape of this neighborhood over the next 18 months starts to look different from the shape it's had for the last several years. The detours are real right now. So is the direction they're heading.
If you're watching Chevy Chase for reasons that go beyond dinner plans, whether that's a move within the neighborhood or a first look at what life here actually involves day to day, the Sarro Georgatsos Group knows this stretch of Connecticut Avenue block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next.
