Calls for a cite.
-FrL-
Speaking of Red Robin, I have a theory that their rating scale on their feedback cards feature the mascot because they want to guilt you out of rating them low. Who wants to check the lowest rating box when it’s accompanied by a really sad-looking bird?
Which also makes me say this: chain restaurants like Red Robin are one of the few types of places I know where almost all checks are accompanied by a feedback card. I hope the OP filled one out with exactly what happened.
Dude…seriously. People have been ordering eggs sunny side up and burgers medium rare for about forever in terms of modern consumption of these food items.
If you order a burger medium rare ( I like medium on burgers), then YOU assume the risk of foodborne illnesses that cannot be killed by heat.
Lifeguard NOT on duty, swim at OWN risk, and disclaimers alluding to such are on every reputable restaurant’s menu these days.
I don’t get your outrage, when YOU are the one ordering your meat a certain temperature.
Read any culinary textbook or cookbook written in the past 30 years. I’m far too lazy to get one off the shelf right now for you. Or, go to a steakhouse (a real one, not Outback Steakhouse) and ask how they prepare rare steaks and burgers without being sued into oblivion.
ETA: OK, I’m slightly less lazy than I thought. From my very first google on the subject: Rare steak ‘is safe to eat’
So like I said: competent chef, safe steak.
Medium is just fine according to the Beef Industry Food Safety Council, which recommends cooking hamburgers to an internal temperature of 155°F.
Maybe restaurants could get off the hook for potential E. coli 0157:h7-induced illness and other types of food poisoning, by just making their menu disclaimers a bit more graphic:
“Consumption of undercooked ground beef could result in your developing bloody diarrhea, dehydration, and in the most severe cases, kidney failure. Restaurant staff may have undetected cases of norovirus, which will put you flat on your back for 24-48 hours, with barely enough strength to reach the toilet, which you’ll need to do up to several times an hour for the duration. Raw shellfish can cause a nasty case of hepatitis A. Maybe it would be safer if you just ate at home.”
joins arms with featherlou
This is why I try to never eat at buffet places. I’d have to stay there two hours to eat the same amount as the rest of the party can eat in 45 minutes! Waste of money. Otherwise, eating out, I’ve just gotten used to taking home about half my meal and finishing it later. I do stress out a bit when eating out with new people, I feel like I need to apologize for my lack of speed.
(I just noticed that on the ‘Reply to Topic’ page, there’s a rollover for the posts that shows the post number. Neat!)
We’re talking hamburgers not steak. If you take a hunk of beef that has some e-coli on the surface and ground it up into burger then you suddenly have e-coli on the surface and inside that ground up hunk of meat. You might kill all the surface e-coli but that doesn’t make it safe to eat because there’s still e-coli on the inside.
Marc
Your efforts are appreciated.
I don’t know anything about culinary science. Does a chef only count as competent if he sterilizes his utensils in ethanol before each use?
-FrL-
I love it when the waitstaff do that. Hell, bring me my ticket WITH the meal, I don’t care. That way I don’t have to sit there and wait to get the bill only to stick my debt card in to wait AGAIN for you to come pick it up, to wait AGAIN to bring back the receipt so I can sign it.
Ground beef is usually subject to a much higher contamination because it is usually older “about to go past due” steaks, like chuck roast, that get ground up. Nobody is going to be grinding up fresh tenderloin. It needs to be cooked, and medium-well is a safe point. Chain restaurants suck majorly, but not because of their ground beef policy.
You don’t have to go quite that far. Chefs are taught to always use separate sets of utensils and surfaces for handling raw meat in order to avoid contamination. You also store raw meat and cooked meat completely separately.
This can be largely mitigated by proper storage procedures, and using the freshest possible meat (less time for bacteria to spread.) Also, depending on the size, it’s possible to get the inside of a burger hot enough to kill most all bacteria while not cooking it beyond rare. You have to be fast and it takes practice, though. A friend of mine was a burger cook at a good restaurant and received intensive training in the practice.
Cite?
Holy fuck, you are an idiot. Go away soon please.
To the OP: I love our local Red Robin. It is staffed with friendly people, some of whom have been working there for years as they work their ways through college or just because they enjoy the work and make a fairly decent wage for this area. Only the hostesses may be less than 18 because you can not serve alcoholic beverages until you are 18 in WA. We have never been rushed to complete our meal, even when it was standing room only in the lobby. But our Red Robin is a locally-owned franchise and the owners are stellar. Complaints are immediately taken care of. Food will be comped, especially if they undercook your burger.
Sorry you had a bad experience. You should definitely complain to the management.
Can you explain this comment please? I’m not sure what’s supposed to be making scrambledeggs an idiot.
-FrL-
Red Robin is just limiting their liability. They care about being put out of business by the lawsuit that will follow someone becoming ill from undercooked contaminated meat. Perhaps the supplier of their meat has told them it’s a bad idea to undercook their product, in which case you might want to find another restaurant.
Huh? There’s a way to get heat inside of a burger quickly enough to kill bacteria but not cook it beyond rare? What kind of technique could that be that requires intensive training? I’m guessing it has something to do with learning to read a thermometer and a timer so the meat can stay on the ultra hot heat source long enough? I’m guessing you don’t have a cite for this technique, right?
I’m not sure what you’re asking me, but in order to cook a rare burger safely, you have to get it hot enough inside without cooking it medium. This takes good timing and practice if you’re working in a restaurant kitchen with lots of orders to fulfill. Too long and you’ve got a medium burger, too short and it’s an unsafe burger. By “intensive training” I was using a bit of hyperbole to indicate that it takes a little while to learn, not that it requires a master’s degree.
And working in a restaurant kitchen, you never have the time to use a meat thermometer.
Indeed. I don’t understand pitting a waiter for bringing the check promptly.
You know what else I hate about being a slow eater? When someone rants about how waitstaff are rude to slow eaters, and everyone just focuses on the serving temperature of hamburgers. Really toasts my buns. 