Ordering a well-done steak: Unsophisticated?

Cafe Society
101

“Sophistication” is understanding the nuances of the hows and whys of something. For example, a sophisticated steak eater knows that a rarer (I usually go with medium) tends to bring out more of the flavor and is more tender than a well done steak. If you know this and still prefer your fillet done to shoe-leather perfection, your tastes are not unsophisticated…just baffling.

Same with wine. Ordering a Shiraz with my steak gets me a “good selection sir” from the waitress while my coworkers who order Pinot get the “this numbskull must have just seen Sideways” look. Or even worse, Merlot which gets the “hasn’t this numbskull seen Sideways?” look.

Actually I know Jack-Shit about wine except that red goes with meat and I like Shiraz.

102

You know, it’s often been my observation (purely amateur armchair psychology here) that accusations of snobbery are more likely to reflect a defensiveness and lack of conviction on the part of the accusers, than honest-to-goodness snobbery on the part of the accused.

If you truly liked your steak well done and beketchupped, and felt comfortable and secure in that preference, why would it bother you if other people liked their steaks poached in yak spit and slathered in pumpkin butter and skunk cabbage? Why would you consider their different preference to be an act of snobbery? I used to go to a wine bar with a group of work friends. Most of us were way into learning about the different wines, and the different ways to experience wine. One of us just loved white zinfandel. Period. We’d tease him mercilessly–“Waiter, bring us your PINKEST white zin!”–but he’d just grin and sip. Nothing we could say could change the FACT that he liked the taste of white zinfandel, nor could it have any effect on his enjoyment of it.

Some things affect you, some things don’t. Snobbery does not generate any measurable waves or particles. “Snob” is a word used only by people who feel themselves to be a victim of snobbery, to describe a feeling THEY THEMSELVES are experiencing; a feeling of being looked down upon. (There’s a Schrodinger’s Cat reference that can be pulled from this, but I’m not quite up to it. Any takers?)

Not making myself clear here; but snobbery is entirely in the mind of the “victim” of snobbery, and is an entirely self-created thing.

Flout the culinary conventions; flaunt your gustatorial independence. Eat your steak any damn way you please and smile sweetly at the snobs as their snob rays bounce impotently off your iconoclast’s deflector shields.

103

If a chef thinks that the customer would be just as happy with a lesser grade of meat and that it would benefit his restaurant finacially, then he should just say so. Instead, it sounds like he thinks the paying customer is an unsophisticated rube who probably shouldn’t even have been allowed IN his restaurant much less be allowed to order anything.

It’s not what is being said, it’s HOW it’s being said.

104

Look, I grew up on well done steaks, well done roasts, well done pork, chicken, you name it…well done everything. Cook it to the point that it’s done and then go an extra half hour till it’s burnt, that will give you an idea. My Mom and Dad just always did it that way, German and English cooking ethic I guess. I have always preferred my steaks medium to medium well, I like the taste and texture. It means steak to me and I enjoy it no less than those who prefer rare meat. I have had rare and medium rare steaks before, but I prefer clear running juices and the rare meat, well, it just tastes uncooked and is accompanied by a stringy, softish texture with a bloody squish. It isn’t really what I am used to and just have a preference all and all for a more well done steak.
That might be unsophisticated, I don’t know. To me it’s just a matter of preference. I have eaten “Gehacktes” (raw pork tartare) on farmer’s bread with mustard and loved it. Is that unsophisticated? So I put it to you, Rare Steak Snobs…would you eat Gehacktes and enjoy it? Probably not, because it’s not to your preference, right?

105

“Sounds like” . . . and you really can’t see how this is nothing more than subjective projection? What if it “sounds like” he thinks the paying customer is really a three-horned hermaphroditic Venusian in people skin?

Ascribing thoughts and attitudes to another person, and then CHOOSING to be affected by those attitudes, is nothing more than an exercise in self-sabotage.

Besides, if I go into a restaurant and read “attitude” of a waitron or chef or whoever, I just go somewhere else next time. I don’t stew in it and start a thread about the waitress who I JUST KNOW was looking at my shoes funny and thinking that I had bought them at Goodwill.

So what if she was? If my interpretation is correct and she really WAS looking askance at my shoes, isn’t that more about her than about me? And if I let it ruin my evening, isn’t that more about me than about her?

My point is, if it’s more important to you to APPEAR to be sophisticated to a total stranger, than it is to really enjoy what you’re eating, then, well, I wish I didn’t have anything more important to worry about.

106

It is neither more nor less sophisticated than insisting on “well done” or even “medium rare”. This sort of “sophistication” depends on culture and fashion, not with the food itself.

And you seem to have totally missed my subsequent point that sophistication and civilization includes having a regard for the sensibilities of others, and my following statement that I was willing to modify my food choices to avoid offending others at the table.

107

This is a totally straightforward OP here, folks: “Is ordering a well-done steak a sign of a lack of sophistication?” to which the answer in an unqualified “Of course it is–don’t be silly.”

To judge from how some of you are respondng to the OP, though, you’d think it asked “Is ordering a well-done steak a sign of stupidity, poor breeding, genetic inferiority, crummy personal hygiene, generations of inbreeding, or of ingesting your food through the wrong aperture?”

I don’t really get why those of you who like your steak extra-crunchy, with a fine soupcon of an ashy undertaste, don’t simply accept that in this one regard you’re unsophisticated, instead of insisting “Hey, Bozo, I’m plenty sophisticated, yo?”

Despite having some refined tastes, I (for example) am horribly unsophisticated in some ways, and being so described is fine with me. For a current example, I am sitting as I type this post in my BVDs (or Hanes, maybe) watching a World Series game on TV while eating pineapple out of a can (I am using a fork, not my fingers, to fish out the chunks, but still…) This may be the height of my personal pleasure for the week (sad, innit?) and I will defend it on several grounds, none of them the claim that it is very sophisticated behavior.

I may hold several advanced degrees, stand at (certainly towards) the top of my profession, have earned the respect of some sophisticated people, but I’m just not gonna claim eating pineapple out of a can while watching baseball in my shorts qualifies in any way as sophisticated. Not–gunna–do–it.

Now, as to the claim that chefs who give their unsophisticated clientele inferior cuts of meat–absolutely. Every single day. Are these chefs unprofessional? Absolutely not. If you place an order insisting that any food be overcooked (say you want your broccoli boiled for twenty-five minutes), I’d say it would be unprofessional for a chef NOT to give a quick look for the oldest, most bruised, least attractive head of broccoli in the kitchen, because when your broccoli has been cooked to death (and beyond), these imperfections will not matter at all. If I owned a restaurant (and I have) and found that my chef was selecting the freshest head of broccoli to serve Mr. Twenty-Five Minutes, I’d accuse him of being wasteful of my money, and I’d tell him the next time he did that, I’d boil his ass for twenty-five minutes, at which point it would have the approximate color, texture and taste of the head of broccoli

108

The point is that if a chef says something to the effect of, “I consider cooking a steak well-done is a travesty” (or some such), then that makes him a snob. Of course, if he owns the restaurant, he is well within his rights to not offer “well-done” as an option.

I don’t give a flaming (well-done) rat’s ass what he or his workers think of me by what or how I order (or what I look like, etc), but I want to get what I pay for. The restaurant can always refuse to take my money and ask me to leave, but that’s not good for business.
The whole point of this thread is about subjectivity. The very title asks a subjective question.

109

Depends on the cut and grade of meat and its preparation. A richly fatty cut can be cooked well-done. A tough gristlely cut must be well done to become tender. A steak smothered in mushrooms and onions and peppers might do better well done.

110

Yes, and if I’m ever starving on a desert island and come across a corpse decomposing in a pile of fecal matter, I would also try to cook that piece of meat “well-done” too, but what we’re discussing here is an order of “steak” in a restaurant. Come on, face it. You prefer your steak overcooked, and that is an unsophisticated taste. Doesn’t make you a bad person.

111

I would beg to differ, a good restaurant or Chef would hold to the directive of the service industry if they are worth their salt. You cook for the customer not to some haughty ideal that you believe the customer should share. The customer is always right. Most successful restaurants adhere to this standard across the board.

I worked in a fairly high end steakhouse and the keeping of inferior meat for well done orders practice never happened there. You probably wouild have been fired.

112

What was the turnaround for steak, that is, how much stock would you keep on hand?

113

I should add that I loved my steak burnt when I was a kid, and was grossed out by red meat. I saw James Garner in a scene from some movie (the Wheeler-Dealers, maybe) playing a Texan who insisted that his steak be burnt brown through-and-through, and I affected his Texas accent in ordering my meat that way for years and years.

But I would never describe my ten-year-old tastes (in food or mimicry) as sophisticated, either.

114

But that’s not the question of the OP. The question is, “Ordering a well-done steak: Unsophisticated?” To which the answer is, if you ask me, “Yes, but so what?” Insofar as the word “unsophisticated” has any meaning at all, that is. I’m not a huge fan of well done meat, but it’s my feeling–having certainly eaten my share of it–that eating well done meat is more direct, simple, straightforward, uncomplicated experience of meat: Meat with its strong notes turned up to eleven, and its softer notes turned down several notches. I equate “sophisticated” with “complicated,” in this context, and I don’t think there’s any doubt that well done beef is less complicated than less well done beef.

So what? Sometimes I’m just in the mood for vanilla ice cream. Uncomplicated is not inherently “lesser,” it’s only a different approach. “Unsophisticated” food–i.e., comfort food–can be extremely well prepared and a sublime experience. Just because it ain’t got cilantro and pomegranates don’t mean it ain’t great food. Foodie that I am–I may start a thread with my last dinner party menu, just to show off a bit–I’d probly rather have a chunk of bread pudding, or a mountain of mashed potatoes, than almost anything in the world.

Look, I’m the one who pops into most “guilty pleasure” threads and argues that there should be NO SUCH THING as a “guilty pleasure.” I like Krzysztof Penderecki AND Abba, and I couldn’t fathom feeling guilty about either of them.

MY point is, that to insist on invoking some effigy of a hypothetical snobby chef is utterly irrelevant to OP, and smells to me like little more than just ITCHIN to bring name-calling into a discussion that can be pretty fully realized without it.

115

Yeah. Me and Tony Bourdain.

It’s common practice. You may be insulted to find out how common it is, in high-end restaurants, you may denounce such practices as you choose to, but it’s what goes on.

In another thread, remind to tell you sometime what foods I will no longer eat after seeing closeup how those foods are routinely prepared in various Manhattan restaurants I’ve worked in and owned.

116

Then I misunderstood you. My bad.

To each his own, after all.

It would be unlikely for me to even encounter chefs as mentioned because I don’t go to higher end restaurants.

I can’t justify a high price for a meal, especially for “atmosphere”.

117

No! Food is not just an arbitrary fashion. There are reasons why a Chateu Lafite 1987 is considered a better wine than Boone Hill 2005. Maybe you prefer the taste of the Boone Hill, you would be unsophisticated. Not a bad person, not ignorant, just unspohisticated. To say otherwise would enter a morass of postmodern relativism in which “Left Behind” is considered to be just as literary as Shakespere.

And to all of you going on about the “sacred contract” between diner and chef, cmon. A restuarant exists to make money above all else. If they feel the extra savings of saving for well done exceed the cost of disgruntled customers going elsewhere, then of course they’re going to do it. If your so angry about it, then start your own restaurant serving exclusively well done meat and see how far you get.

118

Well it was a hotel restaurant and we were a steakhouse. We probably did a 100-400 covers a night. The lesser quality cuts either ended up in hamburger or the employee cafeteria. I am not sure of tonnage or anything, but it was a lot of meat.

119

I should also that my memory of Bourdain’s book has him saving meat that was not so much an inferior cut (which basically doesn’t exist in a decent kitchen) as much as it was meat that been sent back. If a piece of meat is returned by a customer who ordered medium rare, say, but felt it was too well-done, that meat will not get thrown out but saved for a future customer who wants his meat well-done.

I may be confusing the passage with my own memories of working in a kitchen, but I’ll check. I think that’s what he was saying.

120

Couldn’t agree more. I can’t imagine that anyone who’s owned a restaurant would read this thread with anything but amused contempt.

I mean, I think it’s unprofessional of musicians to take drugs and consort with loose women, but I can’t imagine that the music industry will rally to my cause. That’s the way it is, and getting all pissy about it doesn’t change the way it is. You’re unsophisticaed., Deal with that. Don’t come to me complaining that your behavior is as sophisticated as Tony Bourdain’s. And don’t be telling me that black is white, or that what I think is you pissing on my head is just the sweet fall of spring rain, either.