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DC steakhouse Medium Rare opens in Baltimore (‘Secret steak sauce’ now sold online)

New Baltimore location. (Courtesy Medium Rare)

Cleveland Park Steakhouse Medium Rare has opened a location in Baltimore’s hip Hampden neighborhood — its second of several planned locations outside of the D.C. metro area.

The Baltimore location is in a former CineBistro at The Rotunda in Hampden.

Medium Rare, whose simple, $29 prix fixe steak frites menu is bread and salad, steak and fries and dessert (it has a weekend brunch menu too, and an off-menu vegetarian menu), began nationwide expansion in August, with a location in New Orleans. It also plans locations in New York City, Houston and San Francisco.

Medium Rare is also selling its Dijon-based salad dressing and its “secret steak sauce” online again. The online sales push is thanks to the new Baltimore location.

It started selling both dressing and sauce online during the early days of the pandemic as one way to keep staff employed, but eventually stopped actively promoting the e-commerce sales.

“It wasn’t our primary business, With the Baltimore store now open, we designed and built it with more storage for sauces for sale,” said owner Mark Bucher.

Dressing and sauce are not cheap ($24), but it would take a while to use a quart of either of them.

The secret sauce really is a secret. Bucher claims no single employee knows the entire recipe.

Bucher, whose local restaurants now include the original in Cleveland Park location and outposts in Bethesda and Arlington, is a philanthropic restaurateur.

He started a nonprofit during the pandemic called Feed the Fridge, which pays other restaurants to stock free meal coolers in community centers throughout the D.C. area, which has served more than 1 million free meals since.

Bucher also has a sense of humor.

The restrooms at Medium Rare restaurants play a soundtrack of a French-speaking person reciting pickup lines. Its cocktail napkins are equally as humorous, with pickup lines printed in French. (English translations inside the napkins.)

Massachusetts court hears arguments in lawsuit alleging Meta designed apps to be addictive to kids

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts' highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state's lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2023 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. “We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state's claim has nothing to do the company's algorithms or failure to moderate content. Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit “would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions” and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment.
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