Medium Rare, the no-menu steak frites restaurant that brought its fixed $30 three-course format to Dallas’ Lower Greenville neighborhood in 2024, is closing for good. The restaurant will serve its final dinner service next Sunday after just over two years at 5631 Alta Ave., with no plans to reopen in the market.
Co-owner Mark Bucher told The Dallas Morning News that slower-than-anticipated sales drove the decision to shutter the Dallas location, which opened in the Lowest Greenville neighborhood in 2024 during what the paper described as a broader steak frites boom sweeping North Texas restaurants at the time. The closure came as Medium Rare confirmed via an Instagram post, as reported by the Dallas Observer, that the shutdown is permanent and follows roughly two years of operation at the Alta Avenue storefront.
The Dallas closure comes just six days after Medium Rare permanently closed its Midtown Houston restaurant on September 4, effectively ending the chain’s entire physical footprint in Texas, as Hoodline previously reported. Dallas was the brand’s first and only Texas location before Houston followed in November 2024, and now both outposts are gone within the same week.
A No-Menu Format Built Around One Dish
Medium Rare’s entire business model hinged on simplicity: there was no menu to browse, just a fixed three-course meal of bread, salad, and steak frites for about $30 per person, with diners only required to specify how they wanted their steak cooked. A grilled portabella mushroom with red pepper sauce served as the sole non-steak option, according to the Dallas Morning News. The steak came topped with the restaurant’s signature secret sauce, an 18-herb-and-spice blend that owners have described to CultureMap Dallas as a Bearnaise and Bordelaise hybrid layering in notes of au poivre and steak Diane…