Why Three Restaurant Groups Are Making Chevy Chase Their First Maryland Address

By early September, the storefronts on either side of the entrance at 5471 Wisconsin Avenue sat dark within the same few weeks of each other. Junction Bistro, Bar & Bakery served its last plates on August 28. The Hunter's Hound, the Irish pub that had drawn a brunch crowd to its window seats overlooking Wisconsin Avenue, closed around the same stretch of days. Two tenants leaving a shopping center within weeks of each other is not unusual on its own. What is unusual is how fast the vacancy got filled on paper. CCLC, the firm that owns The Collection at Chevy Chase and traces back to the original Chevy Chase Land Company, announced replacements for both spaces within about two weeks of the second closing.

That speed is the detail worth sitting with, because of who showed up to fill the gap.

What Actually Left

Junction Bistro and The Hunter's Hound occupied two of the more visible storefronts inside The Collection, the open-air retail and dining block CCLC operates along Wisconsin Avenue in Friendship Heights. Neither closure touched the properties that have anchored that stretch for years. Clyde's, Sushiko, and Potomac Pizza are still there, still operating, still part of the same complex. What changed is specifically the space those two tenants held, and specifically who CCLC lined up to take it.

Two First-Time Maryland Bets

According to a press release CCLC issued on September 9, both vacated spaces are going to Metropolitan Hospitality Group, a Falls Church-based operator that has spent two decades building a portfolio almost entirely inside D.C. and Northern Virginia. Its roster includes CIRCA at Dupont, which opened in 2007, along with Él Bebe, Trio Grill, SALT, Heirloom, and Open Road Distilling Co. None of those addresses are in Maryland. The two concepts landing at 5471 Wisconsin Avenue in the fourth quarter of 2026, an American gathering-place restaurant called Open Road with a nautical twist and an entirely new all-day café and wine bar called Cove, mark the group's first move across the district line.

Matthew Carlin, MHG's president, framed the choice this way in the CCLC release:

"It is an established community with a strong sense of place, excellent connectivity and residents who value quality dining and genuine hospitality."

Bethesda Magazine's follow-up coverage on September 10 added one more name to the mix: Kneads Bakeshop, a Baltimore-based bakery and café, is reportedly also on its way into Chevy Chase soon, though no address or timeline has been confirmed yet.

An operator with a decade-plus track record and zero prior Maryland locations chose this specific block for its debut. That is not the same story as a landlord scrambling to fill empty square footage.

The Corridor Has Already Run This Play Twice

Widen the lens by a few blocks and the pattern holds. In June, Wheelhouse opened at 5714 Connecticut Avenue NW, just over the county line into the D.C. side of Chevy Chase. The Chesapeake Bay-themed restaurant, seating 211 across a 4,500-square-foot space with a 33-foot bar, comes from Georgetown Events Hospitality Group, the team behind Millie's, Due South, The Bullpen, Surfside, and the Jetties sandwich shops. Founder Bo Blair told Bethesda Today his group had wanted a Chevy Chase location for a while, describing the goal as recreating what Millie's does in Spring Valley on a site the company had been hunting for.

A few miles up the corridor, Char'd opened its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in North Bethesda in March, at 11881 Grand Park Avenue. Before that, the smash-burger concept operated out of a food truck based in Gaithersburg. North Bethesda was its first storefront, period.

Three operators with no relationship to each other, one making its first Maryland move, one finally landing a location it had wanted for a while, one converting a food truck into its first fixed address, all planted flags along the same stretch of Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues inside roughly a nine-month span. That is a stronger signal than any single opening, because none of these groups needed the others to succeed for their own bet to make sense.

The Slow Clock Running Underneath

While all of this has moved at restaurant speed, a much slower process is unfolding across the same blocks. The Montgomery County Planning Board held a two-part public hearing on the draft Friendship Heights Sector Plan on September 10 and September 14, 2026. The plan covers the commercial corridor along Wisconsin Avenue and identifies The Collection and the former Saks Fifth Avenue property as among its named "opportunity sites" for future redevelopment. Planning staff have scheduled work sessions beginning September 24 to revise the draft, and the Chevy Chase Village Board's own public update notes that the plan isn't expected to reach the County Council until late 2026 or early 2027, with the Council's formal hearing process unlikely to start before 2027.

That means the physical future of Friendship Heights, whatever shape it eventually takes, is still years from a vote. Open Road and Cove will be seating diners at 5471 Wisconsin Avenue before the County Council holds its first hearing on what that block might become decades from now. The dining wave and the planning process are both real, but they are running on entirely different clocks, and the one that actually changes what you can walk to this year is the faster one.

What This Means If You Already Live Here

None of this points to a shopping center in trouble. The anchors that have carried The Collection for years, Clyde's, Sushiko, and Potomac Pizza, are staying put. What changed is that two storefronts turned over, and the operators who moved in are the kind that don't take a first-in-a-new-state bet lightly.

For anyone in Chevy Chase or Friendship Heights tracking what's actually opening near them this fall, here's where things stand. Open Road and Cove are targeting the fourth quarter of 2026 at 5471 Wisconsin Avenue, though CCLC hasn't released exact dates or menus. Kneads Bakeshop is described as coming "soon" with no address confirmed yet. Wheelhouse has been open on Connecticut Avenue NW since June and is already taking reservations. Char'd has been serving smash burgers in North Bethesda since March.

If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by what's on the corner rather than by what a report says it might become, this is the season to watch the corner.

Watching who bets on a neighborhood, and why, is part of how the Carmen Fontecilla Group reads Chevy Chase and Friendship Heights year-round. If you want that same block-by-block read applied to your own corner of the neighborhood, request a personalized market consultation and we'll walk through what's actually shifting around you.