http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~acrobat/fc99-int.pdf
would indicate that there was issued by the FDA,CDC, and others in or around 1998/99 an advisory. NOT a law. It probably caused restaurants to universally start telling their customers about beef.
http://www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/tektran/data/000006/60/0000066037.html
This article might also give some hint as to why it occurred.
Aha! It may then have been a recommendation that some restaurants adopted to try to be in line with that advisory.
Thank samclem. This is starting to seem like it’s not just a random phenomenon, but maybe something a few of the key chains I go to have have decided to do based on that.
Howdy: dumb ass line cook here.
I’ve cooked on a flat-top grill and a charcoal grill for over 7 years.
In the steakhouse I work at this is how our temperatures break down:
Extree Rar: Seared on the outside only (This gets rid of most germy germs supposedly.) Expect it to be cold throughout when you eat it.
Rare: Red throughout and cool in the middle. Light brown on the outside.
Medium Rare: Bright red center and mostly throughout, traces of pink on the edges. Warm middle and darker light brown outside.
Medium: Red center with mostly pink throughout. Dark brown outside.
Medium Well: Trace line of pink, mostly grey/brown meat. Dark brown to light blackish outside.
Well: Brown/Grey meat throughout. Dark brown to lightish blackish outside.
Extree Ell: Hockey puck imported from Canada, served with Tar sauce.
Extree Extree Ell: Above hockey puck, covered in tar, lit on fire and poohed on.
These are the temperatures that have been used in most restaurants I’ve worked in since 1993. Fine dining tends to lower the temperatures for some reason.
There are, according to co-workers with advanced degrees in culinary arts, temperatures which correspond to each temperature.
Where I work, we use a seasoning on the outside, so the crust (outside) of the steak is darker than cooked without.
A note about ordering steak:
Each steak is different, believe you me. Sometimes they give us poohed steaks. And we have to serve them to you. If you don’t like it, send it back. Experienced cook just don’t give a crap about that stuff anymore. And we really don’t have the time or care enough to actually do the supposedly nasty things we supposedly do to people who send back food.
If you expect a certain degree of doneness during busy times (hour or plus wait), you might want to order a half/whole temperature under (especially for medium well steaks). They tend to cook while under the heat lamp waiting to be taken to your table.
At a busy restuarant, being the grill cook ain’t easy. Most people really couldn’t do it. On mother’s day, our store did $29,500 dollars of business (which broke every store record). The store can theoretically only do $35,000 a day. So I cook around 150 steaks on a slow Monday. I cook around 6-700 steaks on a busy weekend night.
Sure, I might overcook a steak or four a night. Stuff happens, things slip through, food gets ran to tables wrong, etc… Don’t bitch, get a new one. If I did (and I know my job so well I know which steak goes to which table even hours after they leave) overcook it, bullocks to me and I’ll be more careful.
Hi BytopianDream,
Just to be clear, I wasn’t calling anyone a dumbass line cook. I was saying that’s what the Strategizers were thinking. The only people I called dumbasses were the Strategizers themselves. Sorry if there was any confusion, I know the job is tough.
When I order a steak, I ask, “Does the steak chef tend toward the red or the grey?” Then I know which side of medium rare to order. If the waitron does not know, I order rare.
Another former grill cook here:
I would bet anything restauraunts are doing this because people really don’t know what the the temperatures mean. I got many a steak sent back because so yo-yo thought that a medium steak wasn’t supposed to have any pink in it. Many, many customers are idiots.
BTW, the thread title sounds much more provocative than the actual question. I was a little disappointed. 
[ul]
[sup]Yes, but just reading the title gives one a warm comfy feeling.[/sup][/ul]
Excellent thread title, excellent thread content, even if they don’t quite match our expectations.
I was reading a memoir of a professional chef (I can’t recall the title at the moment, sorry), in which he said that chefs will take the worst pieces of steak, the ones with gristle in the wrong place, are tough and stringy, or perhaps a little bit “off”, and “save them for well-done”. In other words, the stuff they can’t pass off on the regular customer, they can broil until unrecognizable and give to the customer who ordered well-done.
Urg.
Good cooks will do that.
Even if you buy the best steaks you can, some of them will be a bit better then the others. You have to use to best ones when you’re cooking rare. Connective tissue causes toughness when first heated, but given a bit of time, will soften again.
Of course, you walk into a restaurant, you have no idea whether the cook knows he or she is doing. Ordering a rare steak doesn’t guarantee you the best of the batch. And the restaurant may well just buy crap steak to start with, in which case you’re actually better off ordering it well done.
I would say "Thanks for the warning. If I wanted that I would have ordered medium rare. Please cook it until the pink disappears from the middle. That’s medium."
They probably started doing it because people like me kept sending our steaks back with caustic comments.
BTW – Any “chef” who brings me a hockey puck when I ask for well done will get the steak returned to them uneaten with the notification that I will be returning on [designated return date] to give the place a second try before writing the review, and then I leave without paying.
A well done steak is cooked on low heat, turned often, and served when it is so tender that you can’t lift it without it falling apart, and it’s still juicy on the inside.
Any idiot can fling a piece of raw meat over a flame long enough to tan the outside.
Eek! I don’t think I would be that…ummm…forward. Lest people have the wrong impression, I don’t mind at all them asking, rather I appreciate it. It just seemed like it started happening all of a sudden, so I wondered if there was some driver or recommended policy that came out.
You know, my steaks at the Outback have seemed a little less “done” than I typically favour. Maybe they are one-setting off…? Because every “medium” I get there is invariably pink, even a little tiny bit bloody in the middle. 
In fact, for Mother’s Day, my Mother ordered a “very rare” steak there that came out more done than my medium was. :eek: She did send hers back.
I wonder if this is the correct thread to ask a related question, which hopefully you manly menfolk will know (and which for some reason I’m not having come up in Search…): what is the relationship between these cuts of meat? (I put them in what I think is order of quality, based on price)
Minute steak.
“Skirt Steak”.
Sirloin.
Ribeye.
Tenderloin.
KC-Strip.
New York Strip.
T-Bone.
Porterhouse.
Filet.
I know that some are a combination of others, but the relationship between them is sorta vague to me. I typically order filet or ribeye, and I know it’s typically good. But really…what are all of these?
Una, most of the steaks you listed are cut from different parts of the bovine bio-unit. This interactive site details where most of them come from.
As for “minute steak,” IIRC it’s a chopped and formed product made from lesser cuts of meat. I haven’t had one lately, so I don’t recall.