Old Dominion Drive Is Full Again, Just Not Where McLean Expected

Drive down Old Dominion Drive on a Friday morning this August and you pass two different explanations for how a downtown restaurant scene rebuilds itself. At 6671 Old Dominion, tables spill onto a patio that did not exist two years ago. A short drive away, inside the remodeled storefronts of Chesterbrook Shopping Center, a small line has already formed outside a bagel counter that also did not exist two years ago. Both are recent. For a long time, most of McLean was watching only one of them.

That one address, the old Café Oggi corner, was supposed to be the whole story. It was not.

The corner everyone was waiting on

Café Oggi ran on that corner for more than three decades before closing its doors in early 2022, and its absence left a real hole on a stretch of road that had defined downtown McLean's identity as a dining destination for a generation of residents. For years the space sat quiet while a new ownership group worked through a renovation, and every time a McLean parent group or neighborhood email chain speculated about what was coming to Old Dominion Drive, this corner was the answer.

What arrived, after the wait, was Town Kitchen & Bar, which opened for business on December 13, 2025. The concept comes from an owner who has lived in McLean for years and previously ran Greenhouse Bistro in Tysons, and the build-out was substantial: a 20-seat bar, roughly 100 seats inside, and a patio built to hold 35 more. The menu leans into American comfort food, smash burgers, steaks, wings, and the owner has described the intended feel as something like "if Patsy's married Randy's," the two Great American Restaurants staples that generations of Northern Virginians grew up on.

Eight months in, the early reviews split in a way worth knowing about before you plan a special occasion around it. OpenTable reviewers frequently describe it as a genuine neighborhood gem and note that early service hiccups have smoothed out since opening month. Other diners, writing on Tripadvisor, have been sharply critical of consistency in the kitchen and pricing that did not match the printed menu. That kind of split is normal for any restaurant in its first year, but it means Town has not yet become the uncontested anchor that nearly four years of anticipation set it up to be.

What actually filled back in was down the road

While Old Dominion Drive's most-watched corner worked through its opening year, a much larger and much quieter project was finishing a few storefronts down. Federal Realty Investment Trust, which had managed Chesterbrook Shopping Center for nearly two decades, acquired an 80 percent interest in the 90,000-square-foot property for $32.1 million in 2021 and began an $8.5 million facade and amenity renovation the following September. The center marked its completion with a "Friendsgiving" celebration on November 14, 2025, capping a rebuild that touched landscaping, lighting, storefronts, and sidewalks.

What makes Chesterbrook the more interesting story is not the construction. It is what moved in once the construction was done.

• Sorn Thai, which opened in March 2025, is run by sisters Boom and Wym Teawbut and built its menu around their late grandmother's southern Thai recipes, a departure from the pad-Thai-and-fried-rice formula most Thai restaurants in the area lean on.
• Call Your Mother, the D.C. bagel shop that first tested the market with a food truck in the parking lot, opened a permanent 1,405-square-foot storefront after customers lined up even in bad weather.
• Sweetgreen opened its 2,571-square-foot location on December 2, 2025, after a public delay pushed the date back from an original November 11 target.
• Surfside, the D.C. taco chain known for its beach-inspired menu, opened its first Virginia location at Chesterbrook this spring.
• The McLean Art Gallery found its first physical home in the center, alongside the medical spa SkinSpirit and the longtime anchors Safeway and Milo's Grill.

Put the two projects side by side and the contrast is the actual story.

The address everyone talked about for nearly four years produced one restaurant still finding its footing. The address nobody was watching produced a bagel shop with a line out the door, a Thai restaurant built on family recipes, and a taco concept crossing the Potomac for the first time. If you are trying to explain why downtown McLean feels different walking around this summer than it did two years ago, Chesterbrook is doing more of that work than the corner that got all the attention.

The farmers market did its own quiet turnover

The same pattern shows up on a smaller scale at the McLean Farmers Market, which runs every Friday from 8 a.m. to noon at Lewinsville Park through October 30. This season brought two new vendors to the lineup: Siesta Gozleme, serving traditional Turkish and Kurdish dishes, and Sicilian Mom, selling handcrafted Sicilian arancini made from scratch. Fairfax County Park Authority staff visit every participating farm to confirm vendors actually grow what they sell, and the county continues a plastic-free policy that funds compostable bags through its plastic bag tax revenue. For residents on SNAP benefits, the county currently matches up to $40 in weekly benefits for fruit and vegetable purchases at five of its ten markets, McLean's among them.

None of that is a headline on its own. Together with what happened at Chesterbrook, it points to the same conclusion: McLean's food and retail scene this year grew through a series of specific, smaller additions rather than one defining reopening.

Restaurant Week showed up for the first time

Downtown McLean also got something it had never had before. The McLean Revitalization Corporation held the inaugural McLean Restaurant Week from April 12 to 19, 2026, with participating restaurants offering prix fixe menus and bundled deals across the neighborhood's business core. A first-time event like that only happens when there are enough independent restaurants worth organizing around, which is itself a sign of how much the tenant mix along Old Dominion Drive and Chain Bridge Road has filled back in over the past four years.

What is actually on the calendar this month

If you are deciding what to do with a McLean weekend right now, the Friday farmers market at Lewinsville Park runs through the end of October, and the McLean Community Center's Old Firehouse Center closes out August with its Ignite: Back to School Kickoff & Tailgate Party on August 29, a free event from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with games, food, and music for families heading into the new school year. The McLean Community Players wrapped their run of "1776" at the Alden Theatre earlier this month, and fall class registration at the Community Center opens August 10.

None of this required a single big reopening to happen. It required a shopping center renovation most residents never tracked closely, a farmers market that swaps in two new vendors a season, and a restaurant corner that is still working out its kitchen consistency eight months after finally opening. That is a more accurate picture of how a small downtown actually changes than any single ribbon-cutting would suggest.

If you have watched this stretch of McLean shift over the past few years and found yourself wondering what it might mean for your own plans in the neighborhood, Barnes Real Estate Company has been tracking Alexandria and Northern Virginia's neighborhoods since 1957. Get Your Instant Home Valuation and see what three generations of local knowledge can tell you about where McLean stands today.