Walk down 31st Street NW on a Tuesday night this September and you could miss the whole thing. Nothing about the block signals what's happening one door in. But turn into Congress Court, the alley locals have used for decades mostly to avoid Wisconsin Avenue foot traffic, and you'll find a line for a 25-seat Thai wine bar that took ten years to find a permanent home.
That's Alfie's, and it's not alone back there. Georgetown's most talked-about restaurant openings of 2026 didn't happen on M Street or Wisconsin Avenue, the two corridors everyone assumes are the neighborhood's dining spine. They happened behind those corridors, in two alleys most residents have walked past hundreds of times without a second look.
Two Alleys, Two Hospitality Groups, One Bet
Congress Court runs behind the Wisconsin Avenue shops near 31st Street. Cherry Hill Lane sits off M Street, cobblestoned and easy to miss if you're not looking for it. In 2026, two separate hospitality groups independently decided these were the right addresses for their most ambitious concepts, not the visible storefronts a few feet away.
In Congress Court, chef Alex McCoy and chef Justin Ahn opened Alfie's on September 2 at 1228½ 31st St NW, a permanent home for the northern Thai pop-up McCoy had revived on and off since 2016. It's tiny by design, a 25-seat room where the wine list runs through Virginia bottles by the glass and the kitchen changes dishes several times a week depending on what's at the market. Within a week of reservations going live on Resy, the restaurant had booked more than 700 covers, according to Axios.
Alfie's isn't the only tenant in that alley. Flora Pizzeria, a spinoff from the team behind Pluma and Bluebird Bakery, sits right next door and reaches its entrance from Potomac Street rather than 31st, according to the Georgetowner. Two Nine, an omakase spot, and a new restaurant from Claire and Ari Wilder round out the same stretch of alley, according to Resy. Four concepts, one hidden corridor, all opening within months of each other.
A few blocks away, Cherry Hill Lane tells the same story with a different hospitality group. Chef Ryan Ratino, whose Michelin-starred Jônt sits directly upstairs from the space, opened Ox & Olive there on May 7 in what used to be the Reverie tasting room. It's a 50-seat "petite steakhouse," Ratino's word for it, sourcing beef from a dozen or more small farms across the US and Australia and aging cuts anywhere from 28 to 60 days, according to Washingtonian. The menu plays it straight and then doesn't: mini brisket hot dogs, a whipped potato loaded with beef jam and comte, milk chocolate soft serve served with a side of steak fries. There's a $95 chef's table if you want the full treatment, and a candlelit lounge in front if you don't.
Meanwhile, Out Front on Wisconsin Avenue
The contrast is what makes this worth noticing. While two hospitality groups were building out custom, semi-permanent alley spaces, the visible storefronts a few doors away kept doing what storefronts do: turning over.
Take 1560 Wisconsin Ave NW. For nearly a decade it was Dolcezza, the gelato shop most longtime residents still associate with the address. After Dolcezza closed, the space cycled through Oakberry, then La Jolie Bleue Bakery & Cafe, then Bharati, each lasting long enough to change the awning and not much longer, according to The DC Voice. This August, it became Delhi Belly, an Indian street food concept from Vikas Kakkar and Raj Manroy, the pair behind Bethesda's Virraaj. Five tenants in one storefront since the mid-2010s.
Down the block at 1218 Wisconsin Ave NW, Ten Five Hospitality and chef Tim Hollingsworth took a different approach in June, opening The Oak Room on the ground floor and Bernadette's, a supper club with a restored 1920s Steinway grand piano, upstairs, according to Georgetown DC's own events page. It's a bigger investment than a quick storefront swap, but it's still a street-facing bet in a corridor that has shown it can chew through concepts fast.
None of this means Wisconsin Avenue is struggling. Retail vacancy on the strip sat near 7.66 percent this spring, with Georgetown overall at 8.34 percent, well under the District-wide average of roughly 13.96 percent, according to a Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors report cited by the Georgetowner. Spaces aren't sitting empty. They're just changing hands faster than the alleys are.
Why the Alleys, Why Now
The pattern isn't random. A storefront on Wisconsin Avenue or M Street is a bet you can walk away from if it doesn't work, which is part of why those addresses see so much turnover. An alley buildout like Ox & Olive or Alfie's is a different kind of commitment. Ratino gutted the old Reverie space and built a gothic, candlelit dining room from scratch. McCoy and Ahn custom-built Alfie's around a wine program they'd been developing for a decade. Neither reads like a placeholder.
That's the detail worth sitting with if you live here: the alleys are where the operators with the longest runway are choosing to plant themselves, precisely because they're quieter, cheaper to build into, and harder for foot traffic to stumble across by accident. The people who found Alfie's in its first week weren't walking by. They were looking for it.
If You're Going This Week
- Alfie's takes reservations through Resy, and walk-in seats are held nightly, though the restaurant had already logged 700-plus bookings within days of going live.
- Ox & Olive offers a $95 chef's table if you want the full tableside presentation, or you can walk into the 16-seat martini bar up front without a reservation.
- Flora Pizzeria's entrance is off Potomac Street, not 31st, so don't circle Congress Court looking for a second door on the wrong block.
- Delhi Belly is easiest to find if you remember it as the old Dolcezza corner. The gelato case is gone, but the address hasn't changed hands this many times without reason, and it's worth watching whether this one sticks.
Georgetown's front-of-house churn will keep making headlines because it's visible. The alleys won't generate the same kind of buzz, not because less is happening there, but because you have to already know to look.
If you're weighing a move to a neighborhood where the interesting stuff sometimes hides a block off the obvious street, that instinct for reading a market from the ground up is exactly what The K Team brings to Georgetown and the rest of Northwest DC. Contact us when you're ready to talk about what's next.
