Mike Randolph opened his latest restaurant, Original J’s Tex-Mex Barbecue, only last November, but the acclaimed chef is already assisting on a new project: Edera, an Italian restaurant slated to open in May in the former Scape American Bistro space in the Central West End.
At Edera, Randolph is acting as a culinary consultant for the Koplar family, which closed Scape in April 2019 after an 11-plus-year run — one of several high-profile Central West End restaurant closures in recent years.
Randolph acknowledges the closures, but he tells Off the Menu, “What you have here is a family that has for decades invested in this little area and owned this swath of land on Maryland, and they are saying, ‘We are going to double-down on the Central West End because we still believe in it.'”