A week ago I received a press release that was quite unlike any I had seen in 35 years in this business. I was writing the newsletter at 7am when I opened my email. I had never read any press release that made me want to drop everything and go have the experience I was reading about.
After the show, we did just that. We met another couple Uptown at Medium Rare, a new restaurant in the space across the side street from the Whole Foods barn. I love the building it is in. When the kids were little we had an Eat Club at Tipton County BBQ. In between it has been Slice, then Juan’s Flying Burrito, and probably a few I’ve forgotten. But this place is so different. Very modern. Sparkling. I have never seen it look this good.
Medium Rare is the fourth location of a small chain in DC, and the only one not in that area. It’s a unique concept and I am looking forward to watching it here. There is a simple prix fixe menu for $28.95 that includes a mixed green salad with French vinaigrette dressing. When you are seated, rustic French bread is brought to the table with Irish butter.
Everyone gets the steak with frites piled on top, and the “secret” sauce, which is an intense meat-flavored reduction heavy on the pepper and cream.
The bread was sensational, a single piece per person of a rustic loaf with great butter. I asked about it and the waitress happily told me they got it from Sysco. Too bad it was the best thing we had that night.
I was shocked to see the salad arrive. It was wilted like it had been sitting for hours. This was a huge disappointment because I love French vinaigrette salads.
The steak was plentiful. It was an unusual cut of meat, called a coulotte, a thin piece from the top sirloin. It was sliced and fanned out and had an odd texture that I thought seemed sous vide. The fries were nice bistro fries and were supposed to be hand-cut. Everything on this plate was cold. It seemed to have been sitting for a long time. I’m sure it would have been much better had it been the proper temp, but it was so far from that it was alarming.
.jpg)
While we were still working on this overflowing plate of food, another of the many very nice servers here arrived with a cast iron griddle. It was another whole plate of the same steak frites combo. We didn’t ask for it but it just came with the deal. We were advised to just take it home. And we did. As you are still processing the shock of being offered another whole plate of food the servers remind you that they can also just bring you a box for you to take home.
In this same conversation, they offer one of the gargantuan desserts on display by the bar. We passed on this, so I’ll never know it if was actually good or just another part of the gimmick. We did receive a pile of Bazooka Bubble Gum as a parting treat.
.jpg)
I left more curious than ever about this newcomer to the dining scene. We spoke to Mark Bucher, one of the owners of the operation, on The Food Show (airs 2-4pm weekdays on 990AM.) The first question I had was whether that steak was sous vide or not, and he assured me it wasn’t. Then I asked how such a specific business model came to be.
He told me that he has been in the business a long time as one of the owners of BRG, a burger concept doing well nationwide. Not long after selling the whole shebang, a friend in the restaurant supply business asked him for some help feeding the multitudes at a supply show in Paris. For dinner in Paris one evening, fate brought them to a place his friend’s daughter loved which had a simple menu of steak and frites, red or white house wine.
Back in the States Mark called his friend and reminded him of their earlier conversation to “partner up on something.” He had decided “the something” should be a French-inspired restaurant with a single item prix fixe of steak frites. That was twelve years ago. Since then Medium Rare has thrived and multiplied in the DC area.
Mark was anxious to return to this city, having never gotten it out of his heart after time spent here cleaning up after Katrina. His friend Dickie Brennan convinced him to make the move, and here they are.
Tom has always maintained that it is unfair to the restaurant and ill-advised for the diner to go to a newly opened restaurant. His magic number was six months. Mary Leigh and I have never followed that dictum, especially if we were really excited about a place. Our record of disobeying Tom’s advice is 50/50.
But things have really changed in the world at large and the restaurant business since he declared that opinion. Competition and the immediacy of social media make it foolhardy for a restaurant to open its doors without firing on all cylinders.
Everyone involved had clearly been well-trained, and the only thing wrong was cold food. I don’t mean room temp, I mean food that had definitely been sitting a long time. The reason very few places do fresh-cut fries is that they are a monstrous project, so it is extremely ambitious for those to be a part of the program. But frites are fresh-cut, and that is the program. Furthermore, I am not a fan of the steak itself. It is a thin piece of meat from the top sirloin with a texture I found unappealing.
I was heartbroken by this experience. The popularity of Steak Nights around town implies that people would be really receptive to a simple menu of steak and potatoes, but it has to be good. This was not, and I am curious to see how fixable it even can be in this current labor market.
Such a thing would never fly in a place as serious about its food as New Orleans. The diners are discriminating. But the same hurricane waves that brought owner Mark Bucher to town brought in a lot of other young people from around the country, from places with no strong food identity. They have stayed, and have not assimilated to this delicious food culture. They are twisting and bending it and diluting it. And maybe they will love Medium Rare.
