D.C. restaurateur Mark Bucher will open a fourth location for his popular steak frites restaurant Medium Rare in Columbia, Maryland, this fall.
Medium Rare joins Busboys and Poets and Peter Chang in the rapidly-growing Merriweather District in downtown Columbia. The Medium Rare location will have an outdoor patio with seating for 60 that faces the performance stage at Merriweather.
The restaurant will create about 40 new jobs, Bucher said. It will be located on street level at 6000 Merriweather Drive, in the Juniper Apartments building.
The original Medium Rare is in D.C.’s Cleveland Park, with other locations in Arlington and Bethesda.
Medium Rare’s only dinner offering is a $25.95 prix fixe menu of pain de campagne (a rustic artisan bread), salad verde (a mixed greens salad), hand-cut fries and thinly sliced steak colotte served with Bucher’s “secret sauce.”
Bucher says no single employee knows the entire sauce recipe. The beef comes from one supplier, and the logistics of the cut are also kept secret, he said.
The restaurant offers hungry diners a second helping of steak as well. For weekend brunch, Medium Rare adds egg dishes and French toast.
Developer Howard Hughes Corp.’s Merriweather District, a mix of residential, retail and restaurant units, has grown to more than 5 million square feet. Another 2 million square feet of overall new development is planned for downtown Columbia’s Lakefront District, around Lake Kittamaqundi.
Columbia is in the midst of a major reboot by Howard Hughes. It was one of the first master planned communities in the U.S. when it was founded by developer James Rouse in 1967.
Additional long-term redevelopment plans make for more than 14 million additional square feet of residential, office, hotel, retail space and public parks.
