restaurant rumpus

[mharbourgirl]

I have a horrible cold, and I was almost gagging by the time I got this far in the thread.

If meat is still pink it IS NOT COOKED. If there is a trace of pink in my steak, or especially in my hamburger, the meal is OVER for me. I will barf just seeing it, most times. Thankfully, the Hubster has mastered the art of making a drool-worthy burger dripping with juice but not even remotely pink anywhere in the middle. Same with steak. He has a talent for grilling and it's one of the reasons I married him.

And yes, I am one of those people who LOVES the taste of charcoal on certain food items. Marshmallows, crispy edges on a burger or steak, send my bagel through the toaster until it catches fire sort of fing. Don't cook the meat until it's leathery and dry, please, and a few little charcoal bits are nice, but if there's any pink...

[Lace Neil Singer]

The OP's story reminds me of this stupid woman I once saw at a Beefeater restaurant. She'd ordered a burger, and after she and her family got their meals, she called over the waitress and haranged her, saying her burger was burned. No, it wasn't; it just had grill marks on it as burgers get when they're grilled rather than panfried. The SC demanded that all the meals be comped and that she get a £50 voucher.

The waitress called over the manager who refused to comp all the meals or give her a voucher; he said that he'd replace her burger, but since they grill their burgers rather than panfry them like McDonalds do, the replacement will have lines as well. The bitch refused a replacement meal and just sat there sulking and hungry while her husband and son scoffed down their meals.

I like my steak to be rare and oozing blood. ^^ I love a bit of blood to dip my chips in.

[Solumina]

Good meat shouldn't be allowed to ooze all over your plate, I like my meat on the medium side of rare (as red as you can get it without leaving a cool spot, unless we are going with a beef tartar, which can be amazing) but I know the importance of letting it rest before digging in.

[Luna Baby]

I have a horrible cold, and I was almost gagging by the time I got this far in the thread.

If meat is still pink it IS NOT COOKED. If there is a trace of pink in my steak, or especially in my hamburger, the meal is OVER for me. I will barf just seeing it, most times. Thankfully, the Hubster has mastered the art of making a drool-worthy burger dripping with juice but not even remotely pink anywhere in the middle. Same with steak. He has a talent for grilling and it's one of the reasons I married him.

And yes, I am one of those people who LOVES the taste of charcoal on certain food items. Marshmallows, crispy edges on a burger or steak, send my bagel through the toaster until it catches fire sort of fing. Don't cook the meat until it's leathery and dry, please, and a few little charcoal bits are nice, but if there's any pink...

I feel the exact same way--Pink is not cooked. When ordering out and I have a hankering for beef, I always tell them extra well done and even burned is not bad. I promise not to send the steaks back for being over cooked. I still get the strangest looks. My guys at work have mastered grilling my well done steak (it'll melt in your mouth tender!) without the slightest bit of char at all.

The last time we ate a steak dinner out, I got rib-eye and asked for it to be well done. The "chef" who grilled my steak delivered it personally and I wanted to kiss him! It was just perfect!

[Muses_nightmare]

I like my steaks medium to medium-well (depending on who's cooking). I didn't even know that hamburgers were cooked any way other than well done until I was in a restaurant in Washington and the waitress asked how I wanted my burger cooked, I said well-done, yet there was still some pink in it when I got it sorry, but ground beef ALWAYS needs to be cooked all the way through to kill all the bacteria that gets mixed in when it's ground. Undercooked hamburgers gross me out, seriously.

[Stryker One]

Eat the Meat

My mom always liked her steaks in the danger zone of rare. She once told the waited to just "run the cow by the table and she'd rip off a chunk".

As for me, I like the 1800 degree steaks, medium-rare with just a bit of char. However, when it comes to hamburger, I agree, WELL-DONE. It's just too big a risk otherwise.

The one thing I do like blackened though is polish/German sausage.

Funny, all this talk of beef and nobody's asked for a big throbbing piece of meat.

[Tora]

I live in Alberta, Canada. Believe me when I say that people here love their beef. I am particularly fond of the perfect medium-rare: deep pink with clear juices. *drool* What this woman wanted in her steak is a travesty. I mean, I love a nice char on my steak. I LOVE to grill my steaks for that reason. But who in their right mind wants to eat a steak-flavoured briquette? XP

[Mikkel]

Undercooked hamburgers gross me out, seriously.

So you wouldn't want the goodness of a beef tartare?

[Racket_Man]

My mom always liked her steaks in the danger zone of rare. She once told the waited to just "run the cow by the table and she'd rip off a chunk".


Funny, all this talk of beef and nobody's asked for a big throbbing piece of meat.

hmmm I think your Mom would like the Restaruant At the End Of the Universe specifically

"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

[shadowpanda]

I think it's all about the way you ask for stuff in restaurants. If you don't like your meat pink, then tell the servers. The people that have commented here have highlighted just how different definitions of medium etc can be, but if you explain that 'burnt is ok' it removes doubt and means you are more likely to get the food you want first time. Everyone ends happy

Shame that the people on this forum have, you know, earth logic compared to the weird and wonderful <--- anything BUT wonderful, world of SC logic

[EricKei]

hmmm I think your Mom would like the Restaruant At the End Of the Universe specifically

"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

I've been thinking of that scene for about 20 posts now ^_^ (for those unfamiliar with the H2G2 books, this is in a scenario in which someone decided that the most humane way to supply people with steaks was to breed a cow that actually *wanted* to be eaten, and is capable of saying so. Wonderfully weird books ^_^).

The guide from wiki, above, is the one I've always gone by. By its definitions, I do medium/MW on steaks (pink is fine, but I'll send back red), MW/Well on burgers (preferably Well), and Well Done or better on pizzas (1.5x full trips thru the oven)...The odd thing is, my brother used to try and tell me that Medium Well did not even exist, and was just something that people made up to tick off the cooks. Once I got older and worked in a kitchen, that myth was quickly dispelled.

Some of the guys I hang out with these days like to hit the ol' steakhouse from time to time, and they have a standing rule -- Anyone who orders Well Done, even once, is asked not to join them on steak binges in the future ... I'm not quite that extreme -- I say to each his own -- but I cannot comprehend the desire for shoe leather >_<

[reimero]

When it comes to steaks, there is nothing particularly inherently unhealthy about rare (beef) steaks (other than those things that are inherently healthy to all red meat.) It may appear gross, but biologically, it's pretty much a non-issue.

Hamburger is an entirely different story. That needs to hit an internal temperature of 160F (71C) in order to kill the harmful bacteria. (A steak can be cleaned or seared clean, hamburger is all ground up, so it can't.)

[hatori]

More like the real way to guarantee you'll be sick. If it's so rare, there is pink all over your plate....ew.

You won't get sick by eating a medium-rare steak. My sister of all people loves it when it's still bloody, and never has issues digesting it afterward.

I prefer mine with a bit of pink; enough to make it tender and juicy still.

[shankyknitter]

mmmm steak. Drat it now I want bison steak. My dining hall doesn't ever serve regular steak without cooking all the flavor out. Grr. I need a job so I can go get bison steak and do a stew in my crockpot. Mmmmm.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

<snip>
(as an aside, the owners lived in an apartment over the restaurant, and their dogs, two very cool and very big German Shepherds lived in the back yard. The owners were nasty jerks. Whenever they really pissed me off I would cut huge slabs of steak and throw it out to the dogs. Those dogs loved me!)
<snip>

Heh. That's one way to deal with a problem: ding the cause, and give pleasure to someone else. Granted, in this case, it was the act of dinging that gave pleasure to someone(s) else, but... it works!
I'd've loved to have a brace of German Shepherds on my side.
(although, really, that's "stealing product," but who wants to be a business nazi? No I, good sirs. Not I. I'm not going to business school! )

<snip>
Mrs Loon come back into the kitchen. She is very happy. She is sorry that she was harsh before, and she realizes that I am very young and have a lot to learn, but when people are paying a lot of money for a steak the really want it cooked right. But I finally got it right! They were perfect! She hands me a $10 bill. (a fortune to a high school student back in the olden days.) I am confused for life.

... whatever. Troll. (her, not you.) She should learn what she means and say what she wants. I refuse to speculate on her sex life.
(REFUSE!)
At least she was happy eventually, and WooT-tip!