Drive past the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Chevy Chase Lake Drive right now and you will hit orange cones before you hit a parking space. That has been true for so long that a lot of longtime Chevy Chase residents have stopped registering the plaza behind the cones as a finished place. It reads as a construction zone because the street in front of it still is one.
Behind those cones, though, something has quietly wrapped up. Chevy Chase Lake's developer, Bozzuto, announced full lease-up of both the apartments and the retail space last year, along with the arrival of three new restaurants. The plaza is done. The sidewalk is not. Those are two different projects on two different clocks, and most people driving through are still reading them as one.
From One Restaurant to Six
When Elena James opened its doors on a Friday evening in December 2024, it did so more or less alone. The all-day restaurant from chefs Colin McClimans and Danilo Simic, the team behind Nina May and Opal in Chevy Chase, D.C., moved into the Ritz-Carlton Residences at 8551 Connecticut Avenue while the Purple Line work along that same corridor was still very much active. For a while, Elena James was the plaza.
That is no longer the case. Dok Khao, a Thai restaurant making its first move into Montgomery County, opened in July 2025. Ro Sushi arrived next door to Elena James as an attached sushi concept. Uncorked opened as a wine and spirits lounge with a full bar and to-go pours. Playa Bowls filled the acai and pitaya bowl niche. That is five kitchens where there was one, in under two years, inside a single development.
What's Actually Behind Each Door
If you have not walked the plaza since spring, here is what is currently open and running:
- Elena James – all-day New American restaurant and café, 8551 Connecticut Ave., open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday with a counter-service breakfast and lunch side
- Dok Khao – Thai street food, the restaurant group's first Montgomery County location
- Ro Sushi Co. – the sushi concept attached to Elena James
- Uncorked – wine and spirits lounge with a full bar and elevated to-go options
- Playa Bowls – acai and pitaya bowls
That list grew again earlier this year. Sarah's Handmade Ice Cream, a locally owned chain with two shops in Bethesda and one in Rockville, took over the former Charmery space next to Dok Khao after the Baltimore-based chain closed that location in June 2025. Co-owner Annie Park told Bethesda Today in January that the shop was aiming for a soft opening at the end of February and a grand opening in early April, and by her own account the choice was personal.
"We consider this our home base," Park said of expanding into Montgomery County, where she grew up.
The One Still Filling In
Not everything announced for Chevy Chase Lake has opened yet. Osteria Divina, an Italian restaurant from the team behind Osteria 177 and Carpaccio Tuscan Kitchen in Annapolis, has had "coming soon" signage up since late last year on the ground floor of The Claude at 3820 Chaplin Place. The plan is fresh pasta, seafood, prime meats, and a curated wine list built around a modern take on the traditional osteria. As of the most recent local reporting in January, management had not confirmed an opening date. If you have been checking the windows for a lit sign, you are not missing anything. It simply is not there yet.
The Weekly Rhythm the Plaza Didn't Used to Have
Full lease-up matters for a reason beyond restaurant count. A half-built plaza with vacant storefronts cannot support a recurring calendar. A finished one can, and Chevy Chase Lake has started to run one. The lawn at 8525 Chevy Chase Lake Terrace has hosted an outdoor acoustic series called Wine Down Wednesday, and a family-focused weekend series called Lake Buddies has carried daytime programming. The plaza also put on a spring oyster event with eight participating restaurants and a rotation of pop-ups through the warmer months.
None of that existed when Elena James was the only tenant. A single restaurant does not anchor a Wednesday night habit. Six restaurants, a wine bar, and an ice cream counter can, and that is the actual mechanism behind the shift from "there's a new place at the Lake" to "there's a thing happening at the Lake most weeks."
Meanwhile, Outside the Plaza
The reason the whole development still gets mistaken for a work site is that the street in front of it genuinely is one, and will be for a little while longer. Purple Line crews have kept utility work, curb installation, and final paving going on Chevy Chase Lake Drive, with that phase expected to wrap by the end of this summer, which is essentially now. The sidewalk along northbound Connecticut Avenue between Chevy Chase Lake Drive and Manor Road has remained closed for an extended stretch, with pedestrians directed to the crosswalks and the sidewalk on the southbound side instead. If you have been avoiding that walk on foot, the detour signage is the reason, not a dead end.
Parking has an easier answer than the sidewalk situation suggests. Garage access to the plaza runs through Manor Road or Chevy Chase Lake Terrace, near where the future Purple Line bridge will eventually cross. That entrance has been usable throughout the construction, even when the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk has not been.
This is not a short wait, either. The Purple Line overall was roughly 90 percent complete as of early August, with the remaining work concentrated on systems testing and the Bethesda station connection, and the current public projection has the full line opening in late 2027 or early 2028. The plaza finished on its own schedule. The road is on a longer one. Planning around both, rather than waiting for one to catch up to the other, is the more useful habit for anyone in the neighborhood right now.
What This Means Going Into Fall
The practical version of all this is simple. If your mental picture of Chevy Chase Lake is still "half-built retail next to a construction site," it is about eighteen months out of date on the retail half. Six food and drink concepts are open, a seventh is in the pipeline, and the development has enough foot traffic to run a standing Wednesday night event. The construction tape out front is real and will be there into next summer at least, but it belongs to a different project with a different finish line.
For residents who have been driving past without stopping, or walking the long way around because of the old detour habit, this is the season to recalibrate. The garage off Manor Road works. The plaza has a calendar. And the next storefront to watch is the one at 3820 Chaplin Place, where Osteria Divina's signage has been up for months, waiting on a date.
If you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth to live in, not just to drive past, that's the kind of on-the-ground context Jennifer Vaughan brings to every conversation about Chevy Chase and the close-in Maryland suburbs. Let's Connect.
