WASHINGTON — Medium Rare, which has built a Washington following among steak lovers with its one, prix fixe menu of bread, salad, fries and steak, opens its fourth D.C.-area location Saturday in Arlington, Virginia.
The 3,000-square-foot Arlington Medium Rare is at 3601 Fairfax Drive, part of the Latitude residential and mixed-use development. It will have 40 employees, bringing Medium Rare’s local workforce to about 200.
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Medium Rare’s only dinner offering is a $20.95 meal consisting of pain de campagne (a rustic artisan bread), a salad verte (mixed green salad), hand-cut fries and “secret sauce,” and thinly sliced steak culotte. It opened its first location in D.C.’s Cleveland Park neighborhood seven years ago.
It opened its second restaurant at Barracks Row four years ago, and a third in Bethesda, Maryland, last year.
“We based our concept after Le Entrecôte in Paris. Just steak frites there, too. And we Americanized it with big American desserts just as the hot fudge sundae,” founder Mark Bucher told WTOP.
“When we started using the culotte cut (the cap of the prime rib), we were the only ones using it. We chose it for its unique tenderness and flavor. As of late, the Brazilian steakhouses call it picana,” he said.
Bucher said they source the beef from one supplier, and the logistics of the cut are secret, just like the sauce.
“No single employee knows the entire recipe,” he said.
Not full after you’ve finished your plate of steak and secret sauce? Medium Rare offers diners a second helping of steak as well.
The menu is not entirely just salad and steak frites. Medium Rare also has a weekend brunch that adds steak and eggs, French toast, and a steak and portobello mushroom hash eggs Benedict to the menu.
And its dessert menu includes apple pie, chocolate fudge layer cake, Key lime pie, carrot cake and its hot fudge sundae. There is also an off-menu vegetarian option daily.
The restrooms at Medium Rare also play a soundtrack of a French speaking male reciting pick up lines. It’s napkins are equally as humorous.