Medium Rare — Restaurant in Arlington

After driving for 8 hours to our hotel we were starving and looking for a restaurant close by. We stumbled upon this place and decided to go. Being unfamiliar with the DC area we decided on this nice looking steak restaurant. With the name "Medium Rare" we were expecting these people to be steak aficionados. We gambled and lost.

Red flag number one was that there was NO choice for what you ordered, only how it was cooked. The menu had three (3) items on it. Bread as a starter, a house salad as a second and your steak as a third. With the only decision being what we wanted to drink, the fun of perusing a menu in a new city with local specialists and local flavors was lost on this establishment. The bread was a sourdough of sorts with Sysco salted butter on the side. The salad was very basic with red leaf lettuce, romaine, arugula and three half cherry tomatoes with a light dressing. Adequate in flavor, but nothing exciting. A robust Caesar salad would have been much more appropriate for a steak house. After being moderately disappointed by the first two courses our main dish arrived. Imagine in your mind what a perfect steak looks like. Beautiful char? Oozing juice? Perhaps a whole inch thick? Now imagine the opposite of that.

At first glance, I thought our waitress brought us smash burgers with no bun and a side of fries. It was our steak.

This "steak" was a 4 oz, pre-cut, fanned out, thin as a pancake, rump roast, drenched in enough creamy zip sauce to put out a fire. It was served with shoestring fries that were, surprisingly, adequately salted. This "steak" absolutely needed this sauce to be edible. The rump is one of the cheapest and least flavorful cuts on the cow so of course this restaurant needed to figure out to stretch their dollars as far as possible by disguising this cheap cut as something "fancier". This place has the personality of a fake Rolex. To add insult to injury, a pint of beer is $10. This is the Fazoli's of steak restaurants. The bill for the five of us was almost $300. If this place wasn't cheap enough, the treat that came with the bill was a piece of bazooka bubble gum instead of a mint or a chocolate. Thinking back on it, this gum was actually very fitting for the establishment. To send you off on your way on a candy flavor that lasts 45 seconds to continue to leave you disappointed after you leave.

Out of all the bad restaurants I've ever been to, this takes the #1 spot. This place was so bad, the banter we had over our meal was the most memorable part about the night. I will forever remember my time here and I will not be coming back.

This is the restaurant you come to and break up with someone.

Anyway here's the recipe for their "world famous" creamy zip sauce (it's nothing special)

2 tbsp of butter 1 cup beef stock 1 tsp Dijon mustard 1/4 cup heavy cream 1 tbsp crushed black pepper corns 1/2 tsp salt Heat a small saucepan on the stove to medium heat. Add butter. When it melts, whisk in beef stock, mustard, heavy cream, crushed peppercorns, and salt. Stir regularly as sauce thickens for 5-10 minutes. Once the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, remove the pan from heat to stop the cooking. Immediately pour sauce on food or transfer to a sauce cup.

Save your money. Make a rump...

I had been wanting to try this restaurant for like a year, so it disappointed me to have the food experience I had. I’ll start off with the bread, it was fresh, crispy on the outside, soft on the inside- loved it. The butter is what ruined it, I noticed they put salt on top which I liked. I didn’t like that the butter was cold and hard. Even though the bread was fresh, the butter wasn’t really melting as I tried to spread it. The cocktail I got was the pineapple mule and I’m not really a drinker so my opinion on it doesn’t hold that much weight. But it was alright, I didn’t hate it, and I wish there was a slightly stronger pineapple taste. The salad tasted good, but the texture of the lettuce was too soft for my liking. I made my reservation for 5:30 so it was basically when they opened that I had arrived. I don’t mind salad that is already tossed in the dressing, but how soft the lettuce was seemed like it had been sitting for longer than it should have. I feel like if you’re gonna do that, maybe toss everything closer to when it’s going to be served. The steak frites, I had added pepper to it when I got my first batch…it did nothing for the flavor. I was super excited to try it because I’ve read the reviews raving about the gravy. One person said they would drink it if they could. The gravy was so bland, the second batch of steak frites I added salt and pepper and it elevated it slightly. I’m sorry to say this, but I’ve had better tasting gravy from the blue box. The fries were fresh each batch though, so that was a plus. I got the side of mushrooms, they were also okay. The sauce did help elevate the mushrooms, which is why it would’ve helped having a little more of it. Lastly, the part of the dinner I was looking forward to the most- the sundae. I was extra excited to eat it because of the pictures and the reviews for it. Now I know that the whipped cream is what gives the sundae its height, I know it wasn’t going to be ice cream stacked to the top. However, once I got through the massive whipped cream pile up I was disappointed at the amount of ice cream and fudge that was actually underneath. My cup had the fudge mainly on one side which is fine. It is kinda hard to evenly disperse hot fudge especially once it solidifies. But the amount of ice cream I had seemed like two scoops at most. For $12 for the dessert I would’ve liked a bit more ice cream. I was pretty bummed the food didn’t live up to the hype it gets and for the amount I paid for it. Someone I worked with raved about this place and I forgot about it until I saw them on instagram so then I wanted to try them once I saw the pictures and read the reviews. I wanted to make sure I gave this place a good try before I came to my final conclusion of it, that’s why I ordered the extra stuff. I usually don’t give reviews unless a place was really good or really bad imo. This restaurant just didn’t cut it for me, I liked the inside and the staff was great and attentive. It was really just the food that was pretty mid, I thought if a restaurant has a fixed menu then the food would have to be good because it’s not like you have other menu items to focus on like...

Bottomless mimosa brunch! I recently came here for the first time with a very large group (about 35 people) for Saturday brunch and the experience was nothing to speak about, so here’s my review:

Service: our group RSVP’d long enough in advance so the restaurant was aware that we were coming in with a large number of guests. They had a long table set and ready for us upon arrival and we were able to be seated right away. One waitress came by to take our drink order after being seated for about 15 mins (1 for a group of 35) and another waitress came by about 10 mins after the first to take our food order. While we waited for our drinks and food, baskets of sourdough bread were brought to each table. The food took extremely long to come out, understandably, the kitchen had a lot to prepare for our group and we weren’t the only ones in the restaurant, so I understand having to wait. Our servers brought out everyone’s drinks one by one at first (mimosas) and we’re not even asking anyone if they wanted anything to drink for a while before they finally realized that they needed to bring carafes of mimosas in order to not have to keep refilling our glasses.

Food: I wasn’t too impressed with the menu options, as there were only 5 options (2 of which were almost exactly the same: steak and fries, except one option came with eggs and the other didn’t). I ordered the French toast with sausage and the person next to me order the steak and fries. Every single one of the 35 guests in our group received their food order, but somehow, mine was forgotten. By the time I tracked down a server to notify them, most of the group had already finished eating their meal. I will say, when my French toast came out, it was hot which was good and I was given a large portion. The French toast was easily shareable between 2 people. It was crisp out the outside and soft on the inside (it was a little too soft/mushy for my taste, but others seemed to enjoy it). Although I didn’t personally try the steak and fries, the steak was cooked how everyone requested it and came with a sauce. Mostly everyone who ordered it enjoyed it and said it was good. Every entree also came with a side of either salad, parfait or fruit cup.

Atmosphere: this restaurant is spacious and also offers outdoor seating with umbrellas. They have a parking garage and street parking available and it was clean inside as well as the restrooms were...