Have you noticed that the team behind Matt & Tony's now runs the restaurant across the street too? It's easy to miss if you haven't walked past 1504B lately, but that storefront sat empty for most of last year, and now it's doing brisk lunch business under the same ownership as the place that's been anchoring that block of Mount Vernon Avenue, Del Ray's main commercial strip, since 2022. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's the clearest sign yet that this fall on the avenue is going to look and feel different than last year's, whether you're grabbing dinner, walking the dog past the festival tents, or just trying to get across Four Mile Run without adding twenty minutes to your commute.
Here's what's actually changed, and what it means for the next six weeks.
One Team, Two Doors
Matt Sloan and chef Eric Brannon opened Matt & Tony's All Day Kitchen + Bar at 1501 Mount Vernon Avenue in 2022, in the space that used to be Charlie's On The Avenue. It built a following fast, enough to land on Yelp's list of top 100 U.S. restaurants and top 100 brunch spots, and this year it's a finalist for a 2026 RAMMY Award for Best Brunch, one of the region's more competitive restaurant honors.
This summer, the same two partners opened a second concept directly across the street. Little Birdie took over 1504B Mount Vernon Avenue, the storefront that had been empty since Benny DiForza's Pizza closed in October 2025. Brannon built the menu around chicken sandwiches on Japanese milk buns, alongside Chesapeake oysters, Virginia-grown produce, and bread baked in state. Prices land in familiar Del Ray territory: sandwiches run about $15, shared plates $12 to $16, entrees in the low $20s. It's open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed Mondays.
At the ribbon cutting, Virginia State Senator Elizabeth Bennett-Parker called the corridor one of the city's clearest examples of small business investment, telling the crowd that "small businesses are the heartbeat of opportunity." That's not just a nice line for a photo op. It's a fairly literal description of what's happening on this specific block: one ownership group betting on two storefronts within sight of each other, on a street where a pizza shop had just gone dark.
A few blocks down, Del Ray Pizzeria made its own move this spring. The 1908 building at 2218 Mount Vernon Avenue is now Del Ray Public House, keeping the same team and the pizza menu that built its following, but adding a Southwest-inspired lineup that includes Green Chile Fritas Con Queso, a green chile burger called The Roswell, and a 32-ounce steak built for two. Tuesdays now mean Country Fried Steak dinners, a small but telling shift for a restaurant that spent years being known for one thing.
Two storefronts changed hands or reinvented themselves within months of each other on the same half-mile of avenue. That's the kind of turnover that either signals a street in trouble or a street that businesses are still willing to bet on. Given that both moves were expansions and reinventions rather than closures, this reads like the second story.
The Saturday That Doubles Up
If you're mapping out which weekends to keep free, here's the one that will catch people off guard: September 12 is stacked.
That Saturday is both the fifth annual HalloWEIRD Art Market, run by Del Ray Artisans at the Mount Vernon Recreation Center athletic fields, and the monthly Del Ray Vintage & Flea Market, which always lands on the second Saturday. They're not the same event and they're not even at the same spot. HalloWEIRD fills the rec center fields at 2701 Commonwealth Avenue, next door to the Del Ray Artisans gallery, with more than 40 local artists selling ceramics, fiber art, and jewelry alongside a distinctly goth-and-cider mix of costumes and hayrides. The flea market spreads across three locations along Mount Vernon and Bellefonte avenues with more than 50 vendors, the kind of sprawl that's earned it a "best flea market in the state" nod from Domino magazine.
Neither event requires a ticket, and both are free, but if you're trying to hit both in one morning, plan for a walk between them rather than a quick stroll. The gallery is also running an exhibit called "Celebrating Hispanic Heritage: Voices Through Visuals" through September 26, so there's a reason to swing by even after the market tents come down.
Here's the fuller lineup, in the order it lands:
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sept. 12 | HalloWEIRD Art Market | Mount Vernon Rec Center fields, 2701 Commonwealth Ave |
| Sept. 12 | Del Ray Vintage & Flea Market | Mount Vernon Ave and Bellefonte Ave |
| Oct. 3 | Art on the Avenue | Mount Vernon Ave, between Hume and Bellefonte |
| Late Oct. | Del Ray Halloween Parade | Mount Vernon Ave, starting at E. Bellefonte Ave |
Art on the Avenue is the one most people already know. It's the region's largest multicultural arts festival, drawing more than 300 artists, several stages of live music, and food vendors covering everything from crab cakes to homemade cider, all packed into the stretch of Mount Vernon Avenue between Hume and Bellefonte. It's free, it runs rain or shine, and Virginia Living readers have voted it a best live event often enough that it's become something of a fixture rather than a novelty. This year the festival lands on Saturday, October 3.
Then there's the Halloween Parade, which starts at Bellefonte Avenue and runs down Mount Vernon. Last year marked its 29th annual run, which puts this year at the 30th, a small but real milestone for an event that's been building costumes-and-strollers tradition for three decades. Around the same stretch of the calendar, keep an eye out for the seasonal pop-up bars that tend to reappear on the avenue each fall, including a Halloween-themed bar that's occupied 2312 Mount Vernon Avenue in years past.
Getting There While the Bridge Is Still Torn Up
None of this matters much if you can't get to it easily, and that's where the timing gets a little tighter than usual.
The Arlington Ridge Road/Mount Vernon Avenue bridge over Four Mile Run, the span that connects Alexandria to Arlington at the north end of the avenue, has been under joint reconstruction by Arlington County and the City of Alexandria since summer 2025. The project isn't expected to fully wrap until summer 2027, but the current phase, which involves rebuilding the west side of the bridge, is on track to finish in October 2026. Until then, one lane in each direction stays open and the east sidewalk remains passable for pedestrians, though the Four Mile Run Trail underpass on the Arlington side stays closed, with trail users detoured via South Lang Street and South Glebe Road.
There was a full closure back in May, when crews needed to install steel girders and shut the bridge completely for what was supposed to be a week. Crews finished the girder work early and canceled the remaining closures before Memorial Day weekend, which is a good sign for how the rest of Phase 1 might go, but it's not a guarantee against short notice closures between now and October.
The practical upshot for anyone coming from the Arlington side to catch Art on the Avenue or the Halloween Parade: budget extra time, and consider whether walking or biking across makes more sense than driving. Metrobus routes A11 and A12 have already been rerouted once this year during construction windows, skipping stops between West Reed Avenue and South Glebe Road, so transit riders should check current routing before heading out rather than assuming the usual stop is running.
What This Adds Up To
Put the pieces together and the picture is pretty clear. A well-known restaurant group just doubled its footprint on the same block instead of relocating or expanding elsewhere. A historic pizza shop reinvented itself rather than closing. The neighborhood's fall calendar is stacking two major events into the same six-week window it always has, plus a market collision on September 12 that first-timers won't see coming. And the one piece of infrastructure that makes all of it easy to reach from the Arlington side is still mid-repair, with a firm end date that hasn't quite arrived yet.
None of that is bad news for the avenue. If anything, it's a sign that Mount Vernon Avenue's businesses and its calendar are both operating at full capacity even while the street itself is a little harder to get to than usual. That's worth knowing whether you've lived here for twenty years or you're just trying to figure out where to park on October 3.
If you're weighing whether this stretch of Del Ray is the right fit for a move, not just a Saturday plan, the team at YAMO Premier Properties knows Mount Vernon Avenue block by block, from which storefronts turn over fast to which ones have been anchors for decades. Reach out and ask for a free market report on the neighborhood, and we'll walk you through what's actually happening here beyond the festival tents.
