Ask if they actually communicate to the chef special modifications like “on the rare side of medium rare”, or simply send in medium rare like most restaurants.
I like my steak Medium Well. Barely a hint of pink in the middle.
And I definitely love my steak.
I can cook steak to any desired wellness without poking anything into it. Puncturing the steak is an absolute no-no. You can tell how well a steak is cooked by lifting it with tongs by one end - the floppier it is, the rarer it is.
If I order steak in a restaurant and ask for well done and it comes out seared outside but bloody red inside, I will send it back with specific instruction to not reheat the same piece of meat. You cannot achieve the same result by reheating - the outer layer becomes too dry and hard. If the come back out with the same steak I had, I will and have walked out.
You are serious business about your steak.
My favorite steakhouses won’t cook Filet Mignon or Prime Rib past medium rare. I love a restaurant with conviction.
I love watching people get upset, especially during big company dinners. Sometimes the menu is pre-set, so that one of the options is Prime Rib versus chicken or fish… or maybe filet vs whatever. When one orders the Filet or Prime Rib, the waiter will just say, “Medium rare, as the chef prepares it”, instead of , “How would you like that cooked?”.
My boss still doesn’t get it. He wants his prime rib well done (dammit!). I keep telling him, “Look, they don’t offer that particular menu item. They don’t offer spam, and they don’t offer mac and cheese, and well-done Prime Rib is NOT on the menu!”
How can you demand something that they don’t offer?
That’s so stupid it enters douchebag territory (the chef, not you). I can understand with Prime Rib, since it’s cut from a larger roast, but there is no reason on this planet why a restaurant can’t cook a filet past medium rare. None at all.
I’m like you, though I’ve moved down a scale. I grew up on medium well to well done and didn’t know any differently for a long time. Then I adventured out to medium and liked that a heck of a lot better. I’ve tried rare steaks but I honestly don’t prefer them.
What I want is a medium rare steak that’s just a twinge over medium rare. The problem is ordering it. If I try medium, what usually comes back is something closer to medium well, which is entirely too overdone but edible and I feel like a jackass for returning a steak for being, what? 5 degrees too warm? And if I ask for medium rare I risk it going the other way of being closer to rare.
What I want is a nice, warm, somewhat firm red center. That should be a medium/medium rare hybrid.
So to get back to the OP, yes, if I could, I’d order my perfect steak to be medium/medium rare, but I doubt most restaurants I go to would be able to handle it or care all that much.
I havn’t had problems with steak cooked badly in years. Because I never order steak from a restaurant anymore. I always cook it at home, and I’m damn good.
The only steak like thing I ever order is prime rib, and half the time it is overcooked. Not because I can’t cook it, but it doesn’t work very well for one person. You need at least a half rib to cook the center right, and 80 bucks worth of meat for one really great meal, is just stupid. Sure you get some great roast beef sandwiches, but I really don’t need 60 buck worth of roast beef sandwiches.
Sure, but it still doesn’t make a bit of sense to ask the waiter what he thinks about doneness. It makes sense for him to clarify what the customer means if he thinks it’s necessary, and it makes sense for the customer to give a description if he’s concerned, but the whole rigamarole suggested by the above poster is silly.
I’ve eaten a lot of steaks in a lot of restaurants, and I always order medium rare. And the vast majority of the time I get medium rare, or at least something close to it. I was at a good steakhouse recently where my medium rare came out medium well. I sent it back, and got something on the well-done side of medium. I’ve never been back. The first time could have just been a mistake. But twice? No.
Filet Mignon is a particularly thick cut. Not only would cooking it through be extremely time consuming, it would effectively be charcoal on the outside. I’m sure there are places that do it just fine, but IMO there is a clear reason for this policy. My wife only wants her steak well done. I have successfully cooked a filet mignon for her one time. I usually forget that it is on the grill and make a hockey puck that even she wont eat.
That’s fine, because like most people I’ve met that prefer steak well done, she doesn’t like steak.
I grew up with my dad cooking all the meat. He likes his meat dry. (On Thanksgiving we lost power so he ended up cooking the turkey in the grill. Then he thought it wasn’t done, despite the temperature being right, because the white meat actually had moisture. True story. Fortunately he doesn’t overcook to inedible, unless it’s fish. I love the man, but I’ve learned he isn’t as great of a cook as I grew up thinking.)
Anyway, I like my meat juicy. I tend to order either ‘medium rare’ or ‘as rare as you’re allowed to make it’ (since, as people have said, most restaurants have limits). I want it warm and not raw tasting, after that I have a huge range where I’ll eat it and enjoy it. I’ve never had to send meat back.
And this is why I tend to put most “I don’t like rare meat” down to squeamishness rather than the person not liking the flavor. Most of these people are so squicked by the idea of nearly-raw meat that they’ve never even tried it.
I’ve said that for years about both steak and eggs. With eggs, I’ve had countless customers order “over easy” when it turned out what they really wanted was “over medium”.
I was cooking in a steakhouse years ago, and a guy came in and ordered a porterhouse steak “medium rare”. I sent him a perfect medium rare steak, and he sent it back, saying it was overcooked. I ended up cooking four 20-ounce porterhouse steaks for the guy, each cooked less than the previous one, before he was happy. That last steak was closer to “blue rare” than “medium rare”. It’s people like that who have me convinced that some people just send things back because doing so makes them feel “special”, rather than having anything to do with how they actually like their food.
The context given was a large company dinner, and from a cooking perspective that’s very different from a normal, one-order-at-a-time restaurant situation. When you’ve got a set menu with a large number of people all getting the same thing, then everybody’s getting it cooked the same way. My current cooking job is in a banquet facility that does no restaurant business at all - we strictly do banquets. If the entree is steak, the steaks are all marked/seared on the broiler well ahead of time, and placed on large sheet pans. Depending on the size of the steaks, this can be up to 60 steaks on a pan. Shortly before the meal is to be served, the sheet pans are put in the oven to finish cooking. They’re cooked to medium rare in the oven, and then we plate everything up assembly-line style.
When you’re feeding 200+ people all at the same time, it’s logistically impossible to allow everybody to have their steak done “to order”. It would be sheer chaos. A banquet or “company dinner” situation is not a “fine dining” setting where the whole purpose is to savor the food. The meal itself is usually of secondary importance, usually being simply a part of a larger event/agenda, and trying to customize individual meals just ends up screwing up the schedule.
It is possible to cook a well done steak and have it be very juicy.
Know your grill. Start the steak on the hot spot, briefly. Barely brown both sides.
Move the steak to a cooler part of the grill, cover the top of the steak with aluminum foil. Slow cook it and flip it as needed to avoid charring, keeping the top of the steak covered.
You’re saying it doesn’t make a bit of sense to ask how the chef defines levels of doneness? Granted, I’d just say how I want it done, but it makes perfect sense to ask.
I’ve catered dinners for as many as 700 people, seated, and I know what you mean. However, the context given was “my favorite steakhouses won’t cook filet mignon past medium rare.”
Not true at all. Sear the outside, and place it in the oven. No burning at all. It will be drier, but that is true for any cut of steak.
Bull. It is not possible at all. It may be possible for it to be not completely dried out, but the only way to make it “very juicy” is to add liquid after the fact.
Maaan. I was feeling your style through this whole thread. Now, you losing me. I make a juicy freakin’ well done steak. Right? That’s what my mom told me. Dammit.
I suppose it’s all in how you define “juicy”. It is impossible to cook a lean cut of meat over dry heat and not lose moisture as the steak gets warmer. I’ve had cuts of meat cooked well done that were juicier than others, but it isn’t in the same stratosphere as what you get with medium rare.
Maybe we could use a few kangaroo farms. But we do have buffalo, and the same is true of buffalo meat. It’s really good, but much leaner than beef, and so care is called for in cooking.
But ‘medium’ steak is by definition, by culinary standards, and nominatively the perfectly cooked steak… it is not overcooked. On the other hand, anything that is below medium and hence ‘rare’ (hrēre (OE)- boiled lightly) is by definition not cooked fully and is incomplete.