It’s an unseasonably warm spring night and the 20 seats on the patio at Opal, the charming American bistro that chef Colin McClimans and business partner Danilo Simic opened in October, are full. Sitting beneath a forest-green-and-white fringed umbrella and sipping on a refreshing gin cocktail boosted with thyme syrup, grapefruit and lemon, I come dangerously close to making the rookie restaurant mistake my mother warned me against when I was a kid: filling up on the bread my friends and I had ordered to nosh on while negotiating menu choices. It’s two wedges of focaccia that McClimans tops with za’atar seasoning (sesame seeds mixed with herbs he grows onsite and dries), parbakes and finishes in the wood-fired oven of Opal’s small open kitchen. Served with honey butter and good extra-virgin olive oil, it’s fluffy, yeasty, irresistible and worth every penny of its $8 price tag.
Opal is the second restaurant for McClimans, 35, and Simic, 33. They opened mid-Atlantic-focused Nina May in Washington in 2019; an all-day cafe called Elena James is slated to open by the end of the year in the Chevy Chase Lake development under construction in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The two consider all their projects to be labors of love, but Opal a bit more so to McClimans. He grew up in the neighborhood and lives there now with his wife and two children and says the project has special meaning to him. “We’d go to Arucola Osteria [which occupied the Opal space from 1994 to 2019] for all our family birthdays,” he recalls. “We felt that the neighborhood was underserved and there was a market to do a food-experience-driven restaurant there.” He and Simic looked at the space in January 2022 and made a deal with its owner, Tim Walsh, who had turned Arucola into Capital Crab seafood restaurant in 2019, closing it in 2020. They named the restaurant Opal, McClimans says, because he and Simic ran out of kids’ names—McClimans’ two children are May and James; Simic’s are Nina and Elena.
McClimans caught the cooking bug as a kid from his father, who taught him at an early age to make waffles for the family breakfast. As a teenager, he started working as a busboy in restaurants when visiting his grandparents in Ohio during summer vacation. Over the years, he worked his way up to fry cook, then grill cook, at a fine-dining French restaurant. “They had a chef’s garden and sourced beautiful things,” he says. “I was fortunate to be young and have my career shaped in a kitchen doing the right things.” He worked for a four-star resort in North Carolina after graduating from Catawba College there in 2011 with a B.S. in business administration, returning to Washington in 2012 to take a job as chef de cuisine at chef Todd Gray’s Equinox restaurant, where he worked until 2018.
Opal, which is 2,500 square feet, seats 70 on the first floor, including 10 at the bar. An upstairs private dining room seats 20. The decor is simple, with a white beamed ceiling and walls, light blue banquettes and blond wood floors and accents. A rear booth offers a bird’s eye view of the wood-fired oven, where a deft cook may be pulling out oysters bubbling with orange-hued tequila chile butter or roasted rainbow carrots. The bivalves are delectable (crush some of the housemade dill-laced oyster crackers onto them) and so are the carrots, which are glazed with black vinegar and hot spicy honey, then piled atop whipped feta cheese and crowned with pickled shallots.
The menu refers to starters as “A Few Things to Try.” Some, especially pastas, are ample enough to have as a main course. McClimans’ saffron spaghetti with clams is a fine rendition of the dish his father used to serve to impress company; its sauce of clam broth, white wine, butter, lemon and garlic confit is lick-the-plate good. Delicate agnolotti stuffed with ricotta cheese, peas and ramps and served in a buttery sauce laced with tarragon and preserved black truffle is, like most of the chef’s dishes, an ode to seasonality. Case in point: butter-poached asparagus served with frizzled leeks and gribiche sauce (a creamy vinaigrette made with hard-boiled eggs, capers, pickles and shallots—it’s the “it” sauce of the year, showing up on many DMV menus).
A smart strategy at Opal is to opt for the prix fixe menu for the table, which includes three snacks, two shared plates and each diner’s choice of entree. The abundance is a bargain at $59 per person. The snacks, in my case a mini avocado tostada with mustard green chimichurri and toasted sesame seeds, a small cup of sunchoke soup with toasted hazelnuts and pickled mustard seeds, and a flaky, diamond-shaped spanakopita topped with dollops of tzatziki and harissa (spicy red pepper sauce), are perfect accompaniments for pre-dinner cocktails. I don’t care for one of the shared plates—a mishmash riff on Niçoise salad with green beans, olives, giant capers and potatoes—but the other, a crispy ham and mashed potato croquette with aioli, parsley oil and an herb salad, is a winner. (They don’t publicize it, but diners can order prix fixe menu items a la carte.)
For entrees, don’t miss the seared scallops with cannellini beans. McClimans and staff shelled 200 pounds of beans in November and froze them so we can reap the rewards now. They’re cooked simply and slowly with carrots, bacon and butter, melding into a sumptuous stew. Ham steak is not something one sees much in restaurants these days other than at breakfast, which makes it all the more intriguing. McClimans buys pork shoulders from Virginia’s Autumn Olive Farm, dry-cures them for 24 hours, then cuts them into steaks that he cooks sous vide for 24 hours. They’re seared to order and served with ricotta cheese, asparagus, mustard vinaigrette and sprigs of mint and chervil that join in a springtime jig in one’s mouth. Grilled chicken breast paillard is covered with so many things—sunchokes, cucumbers, olives, fingerling potatoes and dill—that I’m inclined to summon an editor. The grilled dry-aged strip loin with peppercorn sauce and frites, by contrast, shines in its restraint.
Opal has the makings of a great neighborhood restaurant—a talented chef at the helm; affable, well-versed servers; and a (mostly) unfussy seasonal menu. Desserts, however, are a weak spot. Having sampled all three (key lime pie, tiramisu ice cream and bittersweet chocolate mousse with berry compote), I can’t recommend any of them. It’s a minor glitch that could easily be resolved by taking a cue from Buck’s Fishing & Camping, a great neighborhood restaurant a half mile down the road. They only offer ice cream and sorbet (outsourced) and a square of housemade un-iced chocolate cake with whipped cream for dessert. Sometimes, plain but good wins the day.
Opal
5534 Connecticut Ave. NW, Chevy Chase, D.C.; 202-570-0289; opal-dc.com
Favorite dishes: Ramp and pea agnolotti; saffron spaghetti with clams; rainbow carrots with smoked feta cheese; wood-fired oysters with tequila chile butter; seared sea scallops with cannellini beans; the Simple Summer Menu’s snacks (avocado tostada; sunchoke soup; spanakopita) and ham-and-potato croquette
Prices: Appetizers: $14 to $23; entrees: $22 to $36; desserts: $12
Libations: Co-owner Danilo Simic created Opal’s beverage program. The wine list numbers 53 bottles (five sparkling, $40 to $188; 17 whites, $42 to $77); three rosés ($39 to $49); and 28 reds ($44 to $170). Reds and whites are divided equally into three categories: USA, Europe and the rest of the world. Fifteen wines by the glass range between $12 and $16. The 10 alcohol-based cocktails ($13 to $17) are mostly interpretations of classics, such as a caipirinha flavored with mandarin orange, a mule made with berry basil syrup and a smoked Sazerac. There are also three non-alcoholic cocktails ($7).
Service: Friendly, knowledgeable and attentive
This story appears in the July/August issue of Bethesda Magazine.