For years, the Chevy Chase stretch of Connecticut Avenue worked like a shelf of good books with no reading order. You could pick any Tuesday and eat well somewhere on the block, but "meet me on the strip" did not really mean a place. That changed the second week of June.
Wheelhouse, a Chesapeake Bay-inspired American restaurant from Bo Blair's Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, opened at 5714 Connecticut Ave. NW in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, D.C., just beyond the Montgomery County line. If you live north of Chevy Chase Circle and have not walked past that address yet, the shape of your weeknight dinner options has quietly reorganized around a new front door.
What Actually Opened at 5714 Connecticut
The space had been dark for a while. Wheelhouse is in the former Wine & Organic Market space next to Citibank. Anyone who drove past that storefront over the last few years wondering what would land there now has an answer.
The scale is the point. The 4,500-square-foot full-service eatery seats 211 across indoor and outdoor sections and has a 33-foot bar. That is unusually large for this block, and the outdoor half is unusual too. Most patios on the strip are tucked into back gardens; Wheelhouse's opens onto Connecticut itself.
The concept is more restrained than the room. Blair said he hopes the eatery becomes a "neighborhood family restaurant." That framing matters. This is not a destination bet. It is a bet that residents will walk over on a Wednesday and sit at the bar.
A few practical details worth knowing before you show up:
- Lunch and dinner service seven days
- Takeout service, ice cream, and a weekend brunch menu started June 20, run out of a separate counter next to the restaurant
- A raw bar built around Maryland seafood
- Parking lot in back
Why the Block Feels Different Now
Here is the argument. A 211-seat sit-down restaurant does three things at once that a cluster of small rooms cannot. It absorbs a crowd, so a Tuesday reservation everywhere else on the block gets easier. It runs a takeout window that services moviegoers without needing a table. And it puts a patio on Connecticut in a stretch that hides most of its outdoor seating.
The rest of the strip now orbits an anchor. The area around Wheelhouse is a commercial strip along Connecticut Avenue that includes Opal, BirdSong, Parthenon, and Little Beast, and Blair specifically flagged being a dining option for moviegoers at the Avalon Theatre. A block that used to be five equal-weight rooms competing for the same reservation is now four smaller rooms plus a big one, which is a completely different market.
Walking the Strip, South to North
If you are giving directions to a friend visiting from Bethesda or bringing family in from out of town, this is the short version of what the block holds:
| Spot | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Clyde's of Chevy Chase | A long lunch or a group dinner, a few blocks south on Wisconsin near the mall |
| Parthenon | Greek, sit-down, been there forever |
| Opal, BirdSong, Little Beast | Small rooms, better for two than for six |
| Wheelhouse (5714 Conn) | The anchor. Bar, patio, raw bar, takeout window |
| Avalon Theatre (5612 Conn) | The reason the block exists in its current form |
Clyde's earns its own note. Their coffee is roasted locally by Quartermaine Coffee Roasters in Rockville, which is the kind of detail that separates a place with a supply chain from a place that lives here. If you have not sat in the Race Bar recently, half-off bottles of wine start at 5 p.m., and happy hour runs Sunday through Thursday from 3 to 6 p.m. and again from 10 p.m. to midnight.
Movie Night, Actually Planned
The Avalon is the reason a restaurant of Wheelhouse's size makes sense on this block. The Avalon Theatre is Washington, DC's only nonprofit film center and the oldest operating movie house in the area, sitting a block south of Wheelhouse at 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. It closed in 2001 during a corporate bankruptcy and would have stayed closed. It was lovingly restored and re-opened in 2003 after residents organized to save it. If you have ever wondered why Chevy Chase people talk about the Avalon the way they do, that is the history behind it.
The summer schedule is worth planning around. A new Avalon Summer Film Series celebrates the great summer movies of the 1980s. The programming leans into the room. First-run studio films sit next to foreign titles, documentaries, and a weekly Wednesday night series. There is also Senior Cinema Thursday, which fills the house before dinnertime and pushes the after-movie crowd onto the strip right when Wheelhouse's bar opens up.
One practical thing that regulars know and everyone else discovers by accident: any items purchased in the café may be taken into the theater. Coffee, beer, wine, a sandwich. You do not have to eat before or after. That subtle policy is part of what makes the movie-and-strip combination work; you can compress the whole evening into two hours or stretch it across four.
A weeknight script that actually works: 6 p.m. patio seat at Wheelhouse, 7:30 show at the Avalon, walk home. Ninety minutes for dinner, two hours for the film, no car.
The Construction You Are Routing Around
None of this happens in a vacuum. The Purple Line is still being built through Chevy Chase Lake, and if you live west of Connecticut you have been rerouting around it for a while.
Where it stands as of summer 2026:
- Work continues in the area of the Connecticut Avenue Purple Line station, including utility installations, retaining wall construction, and other station elements, typically from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and weekends as needed.
- Remaining work along Chevy Chase Lake Drive, including curbs, sidewalks, final paving and grass seeding, is anticipated to be complete by the end of summer 2026.
- The sidewalk along northbound Connecticut Avenue between Chevy Chase Lake Drive and Manor Road remains closed, with pedestrians directed to use the crosswalks and the sidewalk on the southbound side.
- The opening window still sits at late 2027, consistent with MDOT MTA's current projections.
The practical version: if you are walking to the Avalon from the Chevy Chase Lake side, cross to the southbound sidewalk before Manor Road and stay there. If you are driving in from Bethesda on East-West Highway, the finish work on Chevy Chase Lake Drive will thin out over the next few weeks. And the station itself, when it opens, will put a light rail stop within a walk of the strip. That is a change residents have been anticipating for a decade.
A Few Scripts for August
The strip works better if you have a plan going in. Some suggestions built from the summer's calendar:
- Weeknight, no reservation. Walk to Wheelhouse at 5:30. Sit at the bar or the patio. Order from the raw bar. Home by 7.
- Movie and dinner, compressed. Grab the takeout window at Wheelhouse for a sandwich, walk it to the Avalon café, carry it in.
- Two-hour dinner with people you actually want to talk to. Opal or Little Beast. Small rooms. Wheelhouse absorbs the four-tops so the smaller kitchens can breathe.
- Long Sunday. Brunch at Wheelhouse after 10 a.m., a matinee from the Summer 1980s series at the Avalon, half-off bottles at Clyde's Race Bar starting at 5.
- Out-of-town guests. Parthenon for context, Avalon for the room itself, ice cream on Connecticut on the walk back.
For a fuller look at how the neighborhood fits together beyond the Connecticut Avenue commercial strip, our Chevy Chase neighborhood page collects listings and area notes in one place, and the blog tracks similar shifts across nearby markets like Bethesda and Kensington.
The strip has been here for a long time. What changed in June is not the address book. It is the way the block holds a crowd. If you have not walked it since Memorial Day, walk it this week. The room at 5714 will show you what the next few years on Connecticut Avenue are going to feel like.
If you are thinking through how a summer like this one fits into a longer decision about where to plant in the DMV, The Velvel Group is happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation and we will start with the block you already know.
