Inside Elena James, Chevy Chase’s New All-Day Venture From Familiar D.C. Names | Eater DC

"Opens in Chevy Chase on Friday, December 6 — five years after restaurateurs Colin McClimans and Danilo Simic came up with the idea to do a quintessential neighborhood spot. The concept fully realizes an all-day restaurant with breakfast and lunch options that can be ordered for takeout come mid-December, as well as snacks, hefty entrees for a classy dinner, and kid’s-menu favorites like homemade dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. McClimans told Eater, “We wanted to do something that had a high level of hospitality in food and in service and in beverage, but we felt, from being in fine dining, that that didn’t necessarily have to come with white tablecloths and with the setting that comes with fine dining.” He and Simic say they learned how to adapt to to-go orders during the pandemic while developing their other venues, and they intentionally designed the new place to be inclusive of families: “Danilo and I both have kids, so we talked a lot about what those experiences are like and what you really need from those restaurants in order to make it a less stressful process for the parents,” McClimans explained. Menu highlights draw on McClimans’s childhood in Chevy Chase: dinner rolls with honey butter inspired by the ones his father served; a green salad topped with crunchy La Choy chow mein noodles “like his grandmother used to make”; pizzas covered in caramelized onions, truffles, and spiced lamb with tzatziki (reflecting simple pizza Fridays of his youth); and an all-time classic patty melt labeled “the American,” topped with melty Gruyere on thick slices of Texas toast. An array of five different pastas — from pesto-drenched ricotta gnocchi to braised short rib bolognese lasagna — extends early ideas from their other restaurants. Cocktails balance classics (spicy margarita with habanero orange liqueur, Old Fashioned, smoked Negroni) with staff-forward originals: Simic says the Coffee Delight, “a coffee-infused drink with cinnamon, orange essence, and cinnamon,” quickly became a staff favorite and replaces the repetitive espresso martini seen across town. The owners held on to a 5,000-square-foot space below the Ritz-Carlton Residences at Chevy Chase Lake for two years and hired Grupo7 Architecture + Interiors to combine two retail storefronts to create a day-to-night vibe; that resulted in two entrances (one to a quick-service space with small tables and the other to a main dining room with a long bar, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an open kitchen). The larger goal is a welcoming neighborhood restaurant where 20-somethings grabbing birthday drinks, families with young children, and solo diners who just want burgers, wings, and a beer at the bar can equally enjoy. McClimans added that they “really look at where the need for a restaurant and where it makes sense for that community... here’s a neighborhood that doesn’t have one of these staple kind of neighborhood restaurants.”" - Emily Venezky