I like Texas Road House. It’s not the greatest steak or anything, but for the price point it really hits the spot. I ordered an 8 ounce NY strip cooked to medium and what they brought me was rare. It took a while for my waitress to return to the table, so my wife was almost done with her meal by the time they took the steak back to the kitchen.
I had cut my steak in half to make sure the whole thing was undercooked and that made it easy to identify that same steak they returned. I was a little miffed and made my displeasure known.
Me: You brought me the same steak back?
Them: Yes. It’s our policy to just throw undercooked steaks back on the grill.
Me: I’ve never seen that before.
Them: Did you want a new steak?
Me: No. It’s fine.
I didn’t want to argue with the guy. My meal had already been ruined and I just wanted to get out of there. I hardly ever send a steak back because I order them medium because I’m okay if it’s medium-well or medium-rare, but rare was too much for me. Was it unreasonable of me to expect a new steak on my plate?
I still tipped the waitress. She didn’t do anything wrong.
Yes, in this one particular case, of wanting a steak a little more done, it is kosher to just cook it some more. This is about the only time it is okay.
I don’t see how. Any bacteria OP might have introduced to the steak by touching it would have been killed once it went back on the grill.
OP: Most restaurants are barely profitable as it is and steaks are expensive. (I recall going over a P&L sheet once when I was at Jack in the Box and discovering that our location’s net profit for the month was $6.) I see no reason to throw out a perfectly good cut of beef that was a little pinker than you’d have liked.
The inside of the steak isn’t dangerous in terms of bacterial contanimants. The outside is where the bacteria live and as long as the exterior of the steak is heated to a temperature of 145 (which it will be within seconds of hitting the cooking surface).
Note that hamburgers are different - with ground beef, the entire thing is essentially surface area, which is why it’s important to cook burgers to well done.
The grill is being hit with raw steaks all day long. That’s how they cook 'em
I would have been a little surprised to see my steak return but agree that it makes sense. Since I always order my steaks rare, the only time I send one back or complain is if it doesn’t have any pink (which happens depressingly often) so it’s always a new steak. So my perspective of how it should be handled is colored by that.
Curiously, a couple of times I have ordered a steak rare and had it come thoroughly cooked. When I’d point this out to the server, they’d go off and invariably bring me a whole new steak, even if I said I didn’t want to wait for one. Last time, I just ate my overcooked steak since my wife was eating as well and the restaurant brought me a second steak packaged to go.
In all those instances, I was suprised they didn’t just try to comp me part of the cost. I wasn’t out for a free meal but I assume the economics favor giving me twice as many steaks for $X than just giving me $X or even $X/2 back. To use easy numbers, if I bought a $20 steak, each steak must cost them under $10 or else they’re taking a loss versus just giving me my $20 back. It doesn’t feel like it’s a service issue because even when I explictly say I’m not interested in getting a second piece of meat, they make it the only option to call it good.
A good rule of thumb is that food cost should be about 30% of your revenue. For that $20 steak, the meat should ideally cost the restaurant about $6-7 - the rest of the price accounts for the labor (wages + employee benefits + business insurance), rent and utilities, furniture and equipment, maintenance upkeep, business fees and taxes, other assorted expenses, the delivery company’s cut (if your business is on Uber/Doordash/Grubhub, etc, which is almost a necessity these days) and your profit margin, which for most places winds up being somewhere around 3-5%.
In practice, I’m not sure I’d want to eat a $6 steak in this day and age. The last steak I bought at the grocery store was about $15 and that was frankly on the lower end in terms of quality.
I’ve always thought this was the normal way of doing it: if it’s underdone, just heat up a little more. I wouldn’t expect a new steak in that situation, nor would I want one. Then again, the chances of me sending a steak back to be cooked more is near zero. However, I could swear being with a dining companion and the server telling us that she could ask the kitchen to put it on the grill a little more.
I don’t see an issue here. I have sent a rare steaks back on occasion, I fully expect they would just put it back on the grill or in the oven for a few minutes to bring the temp back up and then let it rest again.
I wouldn’t have expected a new steak in that situation and I’m not sure I understand why anyone would. There are certain errors that are fixable - a steak that is too rare, there’s no cheese on my salad, the loaded baked potato I ordered comes out with just butter. Of course they are just going to cook my steak a little more or bring me the other toppings for the potato and bring the salad back to the kitchen and throw the cheese onto it. I’d get annoyed someone tried to fix the opposite errors - like scraping the sour cream etc. off the potato I ordered with only butter or telling me that they make all the steaks well-done ( which actually happened)
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