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Compass
660 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, #401, Washington, DC 20003
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Jeanne Phil Meg Team
Wheelhouse opened at 5714 Connecticut Avenue NW on June 10 with a press release, a launch week of friends-and-family service, and coverage in three separate outlets before the first public customer sat down. A few blocks south, at 5507 Connecticut, a Thai restaurant that opened with no fanfare at all spent the past year quietly becoming one of the 100 best restaurants in the region, according to Washingtonian's January 2026 ranking. Together, the two openings show different paths to recognition on this stretch of Connecticut Avenue.
That's worth sitting with if you live on this stretch of Chevy Chase: the corridor's character comes into focus when you look beyond any single opening.
Wheelhouse is hard to miss. Restaurateur Bo Blair, founder of Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, took over the old Wine & Organic Market space just south of Chevy Chase Circle and built a 4,500-square-foot, 211-seat restaurant around a 33-foot bar strung with sailing flags. The menu leans into the nautical theme without irony: the Topsail Caesar, a French dip called The Jib, a steak salad called The Boom, a raw bar rotating through oysters, littleneck clams, and daily seafood up and down the East Coast. There's a separate takeout window serving Gifford's ice cream a few doors from the Avalon marquee, and a parking lot behind the building, a rarity on this part of the avenue.
Blair's group also runs Millie's in Spring Valley, along with Due South, The Bullpen, Surfside, and the Jetties sandwich shops. Wheelhouse was designed to work the same way Millie's does in Spring Valley: as a room built for regulars rather than destination diners, big enough to seat a family dinner and a group watching a game on the same night without either one waiting.
Bethesda Today, Axios DC, and Washingtonian all covered the opening within days of each other. That's a lot of ink for one restaurant, and it's fair ink. A 211-seat room with a full raw bar changes what a Tuesday night looks like on this block.
BirdSong opened in 2025 in the space that used to be Blue 44, and it did not launch with a press event. Chef Kitima Boonmala built the restaurant out of noodle pop-ups, drawing on a family connection to Ayutthaya, where her family ran a noodle shop. The menu runs through boat-noodle traditions, khao soi, and Thai-influenced cocktails and desserts, the kind of specificity that doesn't happen by accident.
In January 2026, Washingtonian put BirdSong at No. 84 on its list of the region's 100 Very Best Restaurants, singling out the midnight fried rice, the khao soi, and the roasted cabbage. That's a citywide ranking earned by a restaurant that most of Chevy Chase found the same way most good neighborhood restaurants get found: word of mouth, a good meal, a friend's recommendation, repeated until it adds up.
The two restaurants sit about three blocks apart on the same stretch of Connecticut Avenue and have received attention in different ways: Wheelhouse was covered during its opening week, while BirdSong was included in Washingtonian's regional ranking.
Walk the block and you'll pass Skin Stories at 5506 Connecticut, tucked between Parthenon and Mamma Lucia Pizzeria. It's an appointment-only facial studio opened by Sydney Fernebok and Jessica Vural, two lifelong friends and master estheticians who built the space themselves. There was no launch event for Skin Stories, no coverage in a regional magazine, no press release. It just opened, the way most small service businesses on this corridor open: quietly, on the strength of the people running it.
That's three different openings within a few hundred feet of each other this year and last, adding restaurants and a neighborhood service studio to the corridor.
The Avalon Theatre at 5612 Connecticut has operated continuously since 1923 and remains Washington's only independent nonprofit movie theater. Its Senior Cinema Thursday program runs every third Thursday of the month, with $6 tickets and films shown with open captions. It partners directly with Chevy Chase Main Street, which is also behind the two community events coming up next month.
If you want a sense of how compact this stretch of the avenue actually is, here's the walk south from Wheelhouse:
Eight addresses, including restaurants, a theater, and other local businesses along the corridor.
The corridor's next two events belong to residents rather than restaurateurs, and they land back to back.
| Event | Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art All Night Chevy Chase | September 12, 2026 | 4 to 10 p.m. | Connecticut Avenue commercial strip |
| Chevy Chase DC Day | September 19, 2026 | 1 to 4 p.m. | The Commons, Chevy Chase Library and Community Center |
Chevy Chase DC Day is organized by the Chevy Chase Community Association and returns to the Commons around the library and community center, the kind of event that runs on volunteer hours rather than a marketing budget. Art All Night follows the same pattern the week before, a Main Street-organized evening that turns the same blocks you'd walk for dinner into something closer to a block party.
The two community-run events will fill the same sidewalks in September. They add to a corridor that includes a theater that's been running for a century, a Thai restaurant that earned a citywide ranking, and a two-person esthetics studio.
Wheelhouse is worth your patio reservation, and the raw bar is genuinely good. BirdSong earned a citywide ranking. Skin Stories opened this year. The Avalon has been part of the corridor since 1923.
That's the shape of Chevy Chase's commercial corridor this year: restaurants, a theater, and local businesses sharing the same stretch.
If you're already part of this stretch of Connecticut Avenue and want to talk about anything happening on your block, from a renovation you're weighing to a move you're not quite ready to make public yet, the team at Jeanne Phil Meg lives in these neighborhoods too. Contact us whenever you're ready.
Compass
660 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, #401, Washington, DC 20003
Jeanne Phil Meg Team