Mount Vernon Avenue's New Doors All Lead to Old Friends
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Walk Mount Vernon Avenue on a Friday night this month and you will pass at least three storefronts that did not exist, in their current form, six months ago. Crooked Run Fermentation poured its first pint at 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue last Friday, August 28, in the space that used to be Dolce & Bean. A few blocks down, Cubbies has been serving Chicago-style Italian beef and hot dogs above Del Ray Public House since mid-July, though only on weekends. And at 1504B, Little Birdie has spent the summer building a following for its open-kitchen seafood, directly across the street from the restaurant that made its owners famous in the first place.
None of this is a coincidence, and none of it is really about new restaurants. It is about who is behind them.
Look past the fresh paint and the new signage on any one of these openings and you find the same handful of names that have been running Del Ray's food scene for years. That is the part a resident walking this street will not find on a map or a portal listing, and it is the part that changes how you should think about your own next few Saturdays here.
Laurel Fisher already owned Del Ray Public House before she opened Cubbies in the space upstairs. It is the same landlord, the same building, a second concept layered on top of a first one that was already working. Matt Sloan and chef Eric Brannon own Little Birdie, and they also own Matt & Tony's All Day Kitchen + Bar directly across the street at 1501 Mount Vernon Avenue, the restaurant that opened in 2022 and has since become a finalist for a 2026 RAMMY Award for Best Brunch. Sloan spent years as a managing partner at Alexandria Restaurant Partners, the group behind The Majestic, Mia's Italian Kitchen, and Ada's on the River, so when he and Brannon signed a second lease steps from their first, they were not gambling on an unproven street. They were betting on themselves, in a neighborhood where they already knew the regulars by name.
Crooked Run is the one true import in this stretch, and even that comes with a track record. The brewery started as a nanobrewery in Leesburg back in 2013 and now runs taprooms in Leesburg, Sterling, and Washington's Union Market district. Its Del Ray location is smaller than the Union Market outpost, small enough that the full pizza and wings menu did not make the cut, but the build-out tells its own story: co-founder Lee Rogan, a former construction project manager, spent months fixing a sagging floor with self-leveling concrete and installing a walk-in refrigerator before the doors opened. This is not a chain testing a new zip code. It is an established regional operator committing real capital to one specific corner of Del Ray.
What ties all three together is that nobody walking in for the first time has to take a risk on an unknown. The new name on the door is borrowing trust that already exists on the block.
Four storefronts, four different uses, one street. The stretch runs from the low 1500s to the low 3100s on Mount Vernon Avenue, which means all of this happened within walking distance of itself over a single Del Ray summer.
Here is the detail that says the most about how tightly this neighborhood already trusts its own restaurant families. On June 7, weeks before Little Birdie officially opened, its team entered the 17th Annual Taste of Del Ray with two dishes that had not yet appeared on a public menu anywhere. The Crack Chicken Dip on Crostini and the Spicy Tuna Tartare on Crispy Lotus Root took second place in the festival's People's Choice voting, beaten only by Spice Kraft Indian Bistro, whose Butter Chicken Pot Pie and Avocado Bhel Chaat swept both the judges' and the people's top honors that year.
A restaurant that has not opened its doors does not place second in a neighborhood vote by accident. It places second because the people casting ballots already know the chef, already trust the kitchen, and are voting on reputation as much as on the bite in front of them. That is not a story you can tell about a chain arriving cold. It is a story about a neighborhood that keeps its own scorecard.
None of these openings changes what Saturday morning already looks like here. The Del Ray Farmers' Market still runs every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon at Pat Miller Neighborhood Square, on the corner of Oxford and Mount Vernon, with more than twenty vendors during peak season selling produce, meat, cheese, fresh pasta, and baked goods. On the second Saturday of every month, the Del Ray Vintage & Flea Market takes over three locations along the same avenue, more than fifty vendors deep, a market Domino magazine named the best flea market in the state.
Alexandria Restaurant Week just wrapped on August 23, giving Del Ray regulars a reason to book tables at the restaurants they already know before turning attention to the ones they don't. None of this cares whether Crooked Run's taps are flowing or whether Del Play has broken ground on its build-out. The market runs whether or not a new storefront opens next to it, and that continuity is worth more to daily life here than any single ribbon cutting.
If you have been putting off Cubbies because the hours seemed confusing, they are simple: Friday 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday 2 to 10 p.m., Sunday noon to 8 p.m., and closed the rest of the week. Plan around that if you want the Italian beef.
Crooked Run just opened, which means the first few weekends will likely run heavier than a typical Tuesday at the bar. The kitchen is smaller than the brewery's other locations, so expect a tighter menu than you might know from the Union Market spot, built around a signature buttermilk and hot sauce brined chicken tender rather than a full pizza lineup.
Del Play is not open yet. The founders, a former elementary school teacher who now works in data analytics and her husband, a classically trained chef, are aiming for December, with a toy lending library at the center of the concept and a small lounge that sells coffee, tea, and snacks but is not trying to be a cafe. If you have a toddler and a house full of toys nobody plays with anymore, that is worth watching for later this year rather than expecting this fall.
The bigger picture is simpler than any single opening date. Del Ray did not import a wave of unfamiliar concepts this summer. It expanded the footprint of the people already running the block, which means the newest thing on Mount Vernon Avenue is rarely a stranger. It is usually someone you already trust, opening a second door.
That kind of continuity is exactly what makes a neighborhood feel worth staying in, and it is the same quality that makes it worth understanding closely if you ever find yourself weighing a move within it or out of it. Paula Heard has spent her career translating that kind of neighborhood detail into contract terms and negotiating leverage for buyers and sellers across the DMV. If Del Ray, or any corner of Alexandria, ever becomes part of your own next move, schedule a free consultation and bring the questions the block itself can't answer.
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