A kosher restaurant would not serve butter or sour cream with steak. And a non-kosher restaurant would not serve kosher meat. 
And I just noticed I replied to an oooooold post.
Yes, I’m in rural Victoria. Melbourne’s the largest nearby location that people are likely to know so I have used it as my location from time to time, but I’ve never lived in Melbourne. There’s not much of a Jewish population out this way.
So what’s the deal if a kosher-observant wants to eat out? MUST they find kosher restaurants? Or is it sufficient that their meal be kosher ingredients/assembly (i.e. the vegetarian wrap, please) and ignore all the kosher dish and cutlery etc. rules, or is this a matter of personal preferences? Can you safely assume a salad wrap tortilla bread, without cheese is kosher?
One usually orders a salad, without salad dressing (since those are usually not kosher). Even then, if you it’s a restaurant where someone you know may see you, it is not allowed to eat there because of the “mar’it ayin” rule.
My parents would order vegetarian, dairy or fish (not shellfish) and not worry about cutlery, etc.
I had a colleague who was orthodox and he would have to go to great lengths to try to ensure that his meal was kosher, but sometimes he would just draw a line and live with it. Usually we would end up eating packaged foods together, because they are commonly labeled kosher. But once we did end up going to a restaurant and he ended up getting a baked fish but asked them to bake it wrapped in two layers of aluminum foil. Technically, he probably should not have eaten there at all, because the kitchen wasn’t a kosher kitchen, but I guess – for that particular instance anyway – he decided just to let it go at that.
Not as I understand it - you can’t even have cheese with chicken (which does not, and never will barring some extreme genetic engineering, give milk).
Even the Talmudic law has some ambiguity. I know Orthodox Jews who simply will not eat food where there is any question of adherence to the restrictions, as proclaimed in detail by their own Rabbi. Others follow their own interpretation, some reducing it to mere symbolism. Kosher is in the eye of the beholder.
While some of these laws may go back to Moses, I believe most were added to the bible much later as a means of discouraging Greeks from opening diners in ancient Palestine that would have competed with existing local establishments.
Orthodox Jews do not “follow their own interpretation”. The rule is “aseh lecha rav” - you find a rabbi to guide you, then follow that guidance.
That’s another way of saying the same thing. As along as there is ambiguity and an individual makes the decision for themself, he is following his own interpretation. As I said, some only follow the specific dictates of a Rabbi.
I know this is a zombie thread but I wonder about this situation.
You visit a kosher deli with two prep areas one for dairy and one for meat. You order two sandwiches one a cheese sandwich and one a meat sandwich. Instead of being served on a plate each sandwich is brought to your table wrapped in paper.
If you then combine both sandwiches into one because you do not keep kosher have you harmed anyone?
It’s not just the food but the eating environment (plates, table etc) so eating the now unkosher food (since you now mixed meat and dairy) in that environment makes the environment unkosher as well. Not to mention disrespectful of the environment being created- remember that people who keep strictly kosher do it out of respect of G-d, so it is very important to those who observe.
AFAIU, there would be no kosher restaurant that would serve both dairy and meat. At most, there would be two adjacent separate restaurants, the kosher restaurants I have seen had an admonition not to bring in outside food, even baby food.
You mean women can’t breastfeed their baby in a kosher restaurant?
Not as I understand it. Any animal that eats the flesh of another animal is not allowable under kosher rules. Zombies eat brains, therefore they are not allowed even if they’ve got cloven hooves, chew their cud, etc.