a $30 steak dinner!?!

New restaurant will bring $30 steak dinners to bustling Midtown development

Medium Rare serves a steak dinner for $28.95.

Medium Rare/Facebook

A new restaurant is coming to Midtown that will satisfy Houstonians’ carnivorous cravings at an affordable price. Medium Rare has claimed the former Artisans Restaurant space, at 3201 Louisiana Rd., for a Houston-area location that will open next spring.

Founded in Washington, D.C. in 2011 by chef and restaurateur Mark Bucher, Medium Rare serves a very simple, prix-fixe menu. Every diner receives bread, a green salad, and steak frites — a coulotte (top sirloin) topped with a Bordelaise-style sauce and paired with hand cut fries — for $28.95. Vegetarians may replace the steak with a grilled portobello topped with a roasted red pepper sauce.

Beverage options are similarly succinct: five red wines, four draft beers, three white wines, and one sparkling. Add one of five desserts for $12.

Weekend brunch has a few more options, including eggs Benedict with steak and portobello mushroom hash, French toast and sausage, and, of course, steak and eggs.

The restaurant has expanded to three locations across the D.C. area. A New Orleans outpost opened last month.

The simple menu keeps Medium Rare’s costs down by reducing food waste and allowing it to serve diners more quickly than a restaurant that offers more options.

“We have no waste, and since people don’t have to make a lot of decisions, the tables turn a little faster. You can easily get in and out in an hour,” Bucher told Nola.com.

Medium Rare is charitably minded, too. Its Feed the Fridge program pays restaurants to stock refrigerators with free meals. The program has dozens of locations at D.C.-area schools, community centers, and other locations.

Houstonians already know the area for providing beef-loving Texans with an affordable meal. Gen Korean BBQ, which is also located at The Mix in Midtown development, serves an all-you-can-eat menu for $29.95 at dinner.

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wave goodbye, Wooster's

Midtown bar with creative cocktails and craft taps will close in February

Photo courtesy of Wooster's Garden

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A staple Midtown cocktail bar will soon serve its last drink. Wooster’s Garden will close on February 12, co-owner Jeff Barati announced on Instagram.

He paid tribute to the bar in an emotional post about its legacy.

Since 2014, Wooster’s Garden has been so much more than a place to grab a cocktail – it’s been a second home, a meeting place, a celebration spot, a refuge after long days, and the backdrop to countless memories. Truly my favorite of all our concepts. So many great memories that are very difficult to put into words. I’m getting emotional typing this.

We’ve watched first dates and engagement parties turn into lifelong partnerships, strangers become regulars, and regulars become family. We’ve shared laughs, tears, milestones, cigar nights, and late nights. None of this would have been possible without the community that showed up night after night – your support, stories, and loyalty are what gave this Midtown haven a heartbeat.

Barati tells CultureMap that he and business partner Andy Aweida have leased the space to a new operator who will announce its plans soon. Still, he has some hope that Wooster’s will be revived in the future.

“Our tentative plan is to reopen elsewhere if we can find the right location,” he writes a in a text. “The staff wants to stay together and reopen.”

Opened in 2014 by the Kirby Group, Wooster’s Garden offered a compelling mix of craft cocktails paired with an extensive tap wall of beer and wine along with creative, upscale bar food. Its format and indoor-outdoor design served as a template for a number of the group’s later concepts, including Heights Bier Garten and Bayou Heights Bier Garten.

Closing Wooster’s Garden follows the Kirby Group’s recent decision to shutter Verde Garden, its Mexican-themed bar in Montrose’s Harlow District development. It will be replaced by Exilio Latin Flair, a pan-Latin restaurant from the owners of Bari Ristorante.

cocktails closings wooster's garden