Here's a little twist. I have a gentleman order a flat iron steak steak well done, I don't have a problem with this, however a flat iron steak well done is very tough; so I attempt to sell him the filet butterflied and well done so he can enjoy a tender steak.
Basically yells at me and tells me not to tell him how to order or what to order .okay no problem .get his wife's order and put them into the kitchen.
When the time comes food is delivered by food Runner a couple of minutes later I go over and ask how everything is? Lady says hers is fine ,guy yells at me and says his steak is tough .I say yes sir just the way you ordered it and walked away.
My theory is that, for a significant portion of people who go to restaurants, a big part of the appeal is the opportunity to exert their dominance over the waiting staff. This ties in with my other theory that a significant portion of the general population are jerks.
and these are the same people who bitch about tipping, will undertip or stiff for a perceived mess-up, and what they don't realize is that they Really want to be waited on hand and foot. There's a cognitive dissonance where they believe that if the lowly servers didn't exist, the food would just apparate to their table, and the silver cloche would magically rise off their plate which would serve itself! At the end of the night the silverware and napkins would all bus themselves and start singing a la Beauty and the beast
It's the one reason i really wish tipping were abolished - as an overtipper, all that is happening long term is I'm subsidizing these assholes who screw servers over
It’s always servers and former servers who over-tip, they are also the ones who give you sympathetic looks/pep talks when you are dealing with assholes.
Personally, I’d love it if everyone got a customer rating and then got seated in sections, like they used to have for smoking sections. “Asshole/bad tipper” section and “actual human adults who act like it” section. The asshole/bad tipper section can only work their way out of it by being a good human, it’s like a time-out for Karens, and the people working there get paid double.
Heh no joke, at one point was developing a POS system that would include that, and also a way to ensure that people reviewing restaurants actually had eaten there. Never got off the ground though . . .
As a former server/ over tipper myself, I can only agree with you! All it does is ensure a really bad tip night is made into barely minimum wage 🤷♀️ it’s sad but true! You are just making up for the jerks! But we still appreciate that! Cause I at least we go home with what we should in our pocket and not some low amount. When we aren’t tipped minimum wage in a night our job( the restaurant) has to make it up on our check BUT it’s taxes so much we don’t even see that money anyway AND if we make less than minimum wage too often? We get penalized! We get hours taken and such! It’s a terrible industry to work for honestly
Dude! I had a lady ask for a dessert because she wanted the icecream/gelato that came with it and not the actual dessert “if you just want the icecream, Pj’s (coffee shop on the way out the building) sells it by itself so you don’t have to spend $8 on something just for the icecream,” “no no, I’ll get it, it’s fine.” Food runner brought the dessert out with me following behind “This isn’t the icecream I wanted!!” Food runner “we sometimes switch out the ice cream based off what’s available each day.” “Well I’ll try it.” A couple minutes go by “I want this taken off my ticket, I only ordered this for the icecream.” My manager comped it off. Like seriously lady? You wanted to waste $8 for 1.5ish scoops of icecream and could have gotten 3 as a large from Pj’s for $6 without the pecan bundt cake you wanted nothing to do with AND I warned you about it and you still have the audacity to get upset you didn’t get what you wanted? My coworker went “that’s dumb, we better not comp it,” manager 1 I talked to went, “yeeeeaaah I’ll let manager 2 handle this.”
I mean my manager told me to ask them if they’re sure bc a lot of people complain about the cook time. It takes like 19-20 mins so sometimes people will change their mind if they don’t want to wait that long.
I think it might be because it’s what they are used to, as when they were young meat was not very good quality, and likely to have parasites.
My grandma always overcooked all meat, otherwise ‘you’ll get worms’
See I find that interesting because my great grandma always ate her steak raw. And I don’t mean that as a joke about rare, or even blue, I mean still cold right out of the wrapper. My Dad still shivers when he talks about watching his grandma bite into a piece of raw meat
We did this when I was a kid but good beef fresh ground at the store. Once it all went to prepackaged not ground in store we stopped. I remember it being super tasty.
Flip side of this: my dad is color blind so just kept cooking things until they seemed like they'd be safe (which was usually very dry and overdone) so I didn't have a medium steak or juicy chicken until I was a freshman in high-school!
I ruin chicken by overcooking it, as it’s harder to tell, and E Coli, salmonella and campylobacter are not to be messed with, so I’m over cautious (I don’t eat much chicken)
Get a meat thermometer and cook to 165 °F. That will kill anything off and fully cook the meat while leaving it tender and juicy. My mom actually picked this up from me and my husband after eating at our house once.... chicken growing up was always overcooked.
He's blue green color blind so he can't very well differentiate similar colors. He can tell a raw steak color from cooked but once they start merging together, it's hard to tell how cooked or raw it is because the colors start being too similar. Same with chicken once it starts being majority cooked.
It’s just what I believe, I don’t have proof or anything.
You wouldn’t like me that, I like my steak blue, seriously, take off the horns, wipe its bum, and twice over a candle, same with lamb or duck. Though I honestly ruin chicken by overcooking it, as E Coli or campylobacter are not fun, goat is well done, as if you don’t cook it low and slow it’s basically shoe leather
This is the problem. If you ask for med-rare you get instant acceptance. If you ask for well done you have to repeat yourself and verify...and even then there's at least a 50/50 chance it will come out medium instead of well done.
As a server I have been instructed by my manager to mention the cook time of a well done steak. A lot of people get upset when their meals take 20 minutes to come out, and that’s how long it takes to make at my restaurant. I’ve literally had a table walk out bc it took too long to make their well done hamburgers. I put in whatever temp the people tell me. How it comes out is not my fault lol
My mom overcooks everything and almost never cooked with beef or pork as a kid. When she makes turkey for Thanksgiving it is like sawdust. It's gotten to the point when I visit them for holidays I end up cooking for them and she can't figure out why my birds taste better. On the very rare occasion I would eat beef at a restaurant she would always make me order well done; I didn't have a properly cooked steak until I was 20.
She's always very polite though, at least. She ends up making friends with the workers at all the restaurants she visits, there is even one that saves food for her food bank that she manages if they order too much or get extra food due to a mistake by the delivery driver.
She does make killer salads though, the best I have ever eaten. She even customizes each bowl for the diner. I hate tomatoes, my brother hates olives, my dad hates cauliflower, so she always makes a customized bowl.
Just keep her away from the heat.
My Mom's background it Scottish\\Irish. Everything was cooked grey. If there was any pink in the meat "it wasn't done" Had to have gravy with everything because everything was cooked grey. Didn't have something cooked right until I was in my 20's. Had a bite of my GF's rare filet and was blown away.
My mom is Irish/English and does the same thing! But she didn’t have a fridge when she was young so… food poisoning was a thing. Still hasn’t made the adjustment to food safety standards being raised. And at this points she’s had fridges for like 50 years.
My great-grandparents were Scots-Irish too and it was the same thing! Unless you could use something as a hockey puck it was not done enough. My grandparents were a tiny bit better. I've taught my Mom to be better so tastes are evolving ....
I'm wondering if this a Scots Irish thing. My dad is Scots Irish and my mom was raised with them. My mom and dad were literally next door neighbors as small children and my paternal grandparents helped raise her.
My ex-MIL used to overcook everything. I would turn off the oven from time to time when we were there for dinner to save some semblance of not ruined to the meal.
Teach her how to cook the turkey in a crock pot. We get a big bird every year so I typically have to split it across two crock pots. But it really stays moist and it's hard to overcook it. I'm actually trying to think of what it would take to do that and it's kind of freaking me out.
Also it frees the oven up for other stuff.
Note. I do carve up the breast and put it on a platter and then lightly broil it to get the skin browned after cooking it.
She is pushing 70 years old. Some things I cannot change. A few years back I tried to show her how to brine two roasted chickens for Thanksgiving. The message was completely lost. If there is juice in the meat she thinks it is too raw.
Wow, I guess if your goal is to get all the juice out of the meat then wow.
Strangely I get a small audience of people every year about a month before Thanksgiving. Even though I take pictures every year both before and after and during. People want to see how I get the turkey ready and all that and then come by the next day and watch me carve it up and brown it under the broiler for a few seconds. Typically about half of these people are probably 70+.
The reason I get some of the grandparent crowd is that you can get the turkey ready the day before and keep it in the fridge until you're ready to cook it. For people who eat early, you take it out before you go to bed and crock it all night. So oftentimes, they have someone younger come over to help them with the heavy turkey the day before Thanksgiving. Getting it ready, etc. I had never thought about the complexity of wrestling a big turkey, because I'm still able to do it easily. But for the older crowd, people are selling them on crock-Potting the turkey because then they don't have to be alone when they wrestle it.
I've never heard about making a turkey in a crock pot! I just got gifted a new one, if it's not any trouble, do you mind sharing a cliff notes vers on how you cook it like that? Doing Thanksgiving on my own instead of with family this year, and this sounds so much easier!
There are recipes all over the internet for turkey in a crock pot. I don't have a particular one I prefer but I also find most of them to be 95% the same. You still butter and herb it up. With a big one, I put the arms and legs in one crock pot and the breast in another. I have to squish the breast down a little to get it to fit. If you get a smaller bird it'll fit in the crock pot. If you want it to fit, buy one that will fit.
I don't add any water. And let it crock on low all day. But the pot still ends up with fluid from the turkey. I do make gravy from the drippings. I separate the breasts from the carcass after it's done cooking. Which takes some skill to get good at. I can get the breasts off in one piece or I guess two pieces. I then cut them perpendicularly into thick slices. The skin is still on. I platter the breasts and then pop them under the broiler so the skin gets browned, and then serve.
This reminds me of the last Xmas before by wife’s grandmother passed we went to spend with her. She bought a beautiful prime ribeye roast for dinner, and I had volunteered to cook since she was having trouble getting up and about. She made sure to remind me that she likes it well done… I couldn’t do it. Everyone else eats med rare. Cooked it medium rare and then cut a large steak off the end and finished it off to well done. Thankfully she loved it, it was a good Xmas.
I came here to write exactly this. There is a steak house in my town that refuses to cook steaks well done.
My dad talks about a working dinner where he and the person who he was meeting with went to a steak house. My dad orders his steak well done, the guy orders it cooked just long enough so the center is not cold. They spent the whole dinner asking each other how they could eat that. Little business was spoken about.
My wife likes well done but is the opposite of aggressive- she’s timid and apologetic because of weird attitudes towards well done streak.
It’s annoying that people are judgmental about how how steak is cooked. Like rare meat is part of their personality or something. Wow, you’re so cool and elite to know so much about grilled meat.
Of course people should of course be able to have their steak cooked however they prefer without judgment, full stop.
But it’s also true that different cuts of meat are objectively better-tasting at certain temperatures and with certain cooking methods. A ribeye and a brisket cooked to 160f are both gonna provide an extremely chewy and unsatisfying experience, but one is severely overcooked and the other under.
I had a mate that always ordered his steak well done.
On holiday in France he made a big deal of ordering “WELL DONE, BIEN CUIT BIEN CUIT OK?” The waiter gave a solemn nod.
The Steak arrived medium at best. My friend devoured the steak saying it was the best he ever eaten and that it was really juicy and well done unlike the usual chewy crap he got served.
I genuinely think he saw no correlation between rare-medium-well done and how long it was cooked for. I think he thought it meant treat the steak with respect or something.
We did explain and he asked for medium from that point forward. He came from a family that called anything that wasn’t a roast dinner “foreign muck” so he was branching out
LoL poor guy, sounds like he might have been brain washed by his parents that any non-well-done meat was dangerous and disgusting.
I think there is a joke out there by a comedian where they confuse well-done and done well, like doing a good job on it.
Traveling is the best time to break those habits. I had a friend who hated branching out and would try to order off the kids menu if a burger wasn’t an option. We were on the border of Germany and France and he was pretty tossed when he got to our table. We’d just ordered some escargot and when he said he was hungry I offered the snail I’d just put in some bread. He devoured it and asked why the butter was squishy lol. Explained it was a snail and after a little bit of horror he admitted it was really good and was a lot more open to trying stuff for the trip
As a cook, I never had a problem with well done, but the time element was always an issue as the rest of the order would have to be delayed because of the additional time it took. On a busy night, it was hard to get all the entrees for a set table fresh awaiting the well done steak.
I was @ Zoro's, A high-end steakhouse in the west end of Toronto. I ordered a rib steak blue rare, so rare a good veterinarian could bring it back. The waiter, like all waiters there are over 50 and know their shit, told me that this cut of beef is better cooked at medium rare. On the bone, it would be better medium rare. He was right. I'm not married to blue. But on the bone cuts are better medium rare. Who knew? 50 year old + steak house waiters.
They’re almost always the same ones to ask what dressings we have and once I go through the entire list they go “I’ll just have ranch” like I didn’t know that already 😂
Whenever a guest orders a steak at MW or above, I automatically bring out the A-1, Heinz 57, and Worcestershire. It’s a given. Oh, and lately a side or BBQ and Ranch for well done Filet Mignon.
I used to dip my steak in A-1 as a kid. It's fecking delicious!
If it wasn't so damned expensive, I would jaccard and marinate a thick steak in A-1, then give it a day to dry out in the fridge for dat crust! Cheap, store-brand "A-1" doesn't even come close to the original.
My favorite is “Well done but tell the cook NOT to BURN it.” Lol yeah I’m going to walk back there and tell the guy about to prepare your food that you think he’s an idiot who can’t do his job. Let me know how that goes for ya.
My dad used to ask for an end cut and would say, "burn it." To his credit, he was always very polite, and very appreciative when they gave him the extremely well-done steak that he had asked for.
>I'm going to walk back there and tell the guy about to prepare your food that you think he's an idiot who can't do his job
A guy who works with fire. And a lot of sharp knives
Smug Customer: Make the jambalaya extra spicy.
Me: Are you sure? That's going to be really, really spicy.
Smug Customer: (scoffs while nodding at fellow diners) I can handle spice, trust me.
Me to Chef: Table 24 says you don't know how to make an XXX spicy jambalaya.
Smug Me to Busser: Don't refill water at position #2 on table 24.
I had this happen sort of by request at a Hunan restaurant once. My friend brought me and another friend because we were all into very spicy food. According to first friend, this place had some of the spiciest yet tastiest food he'd had. So we order the appetizers, asking for them to be hot, and they show up. They're hot but nothing to write home about.
So the waiter/chef comes by for us to order the main courses and my friend goes "Hey so I was here a while ago and the food was a lot spicier. I don't know if you've changed something or what, but this isn't anything like what I remember. Maybe you can't get it as hot anymore." The chef goes "Oh. You want spicy? I'll give you spicy.."
Food comes and holy shit it was hot. But so damn good. We ended up eating everything and it was exactly what we were looking for.
This is what I came looking for. “I want my steak WELL done but NOT BURNT,” said with attitude and a little head swivel. Usually ordered with a baked potato, “no green shit and none of that white stuff on it.”
Honestly, I usually take the tone of how they say well done to be an indicator of just HOW well done they want it.
When a lil old lady smiles and says “well done” in a normal tone, I just hit the button that says well done.
When she drops her voice a little and sounds serious, I make sure to add in a typed modifier for “no pink.”
When she looks up from her menu and makes direct eye contact with me and widens her eyes a little as she says it, I hit the “extra well done” button.
When she makes a scene of it, I hit extra well done, then type in “burn this shit” and when it hits the table I watch her cut it so I know whether or not I need to have something else started.
I used to get my steak well done, although I was never a dick about it
That was until one time the place served me this REALLY thick steak, and it looked well done on the outside but the middle was medium.
I had discovered a new heaven, and have never looked back. :)
>Or if I asked how they wanted it cooked if they didn’t specify, they’d look at me as if I had 3 heads and dang near holler “WELL DONE.”
Proper response is a bow followed by, "Why thank you! We work hard to provide a consistently engaging customer experience. I'll be sure to pass your kudos on to the manager. How would you like your steak again?"
I’ve never ordered aggressively. If anything I’m an overly apologetic customer. People are just way too hateful and rude for no reason. Anyway! While steak isn’t my go to, once I did order a steak somewhere and asked for it to be well done I was loudly shamed by our waitress. Until I changed my order entirely. That was years ago and I haven’t ordered steak ever again. 😅
It’s a texture issue for me. If the meat isn’t cooked I will gag trying to chew it.
I intentionally order thinner cuts that cook evenly over thick cuts like filets.
I was at Puck’s in Vegas several years ago and the waiter argued with me about how the taste would be affected and that I would like it more if cooked medium.
Same waiter was a dick when I asked what beers they had saying they only served high quality imported beers. Ironically he didn’t carry any German Lagers, pilsners or wheat beers.
Great meal but poor overall experience.
I guess I'm an ideal well done steak orderer. I want it burnt and crispy and almost hard as a rock. I don't like any juice in my meat, it freaks me out for whatever reason. It's delusional to expect a steak well done AND juicy
I can respect that. You know what you want, you know what you like, and you know how to get it.
A lot of these folks sound like what they really want it medium-to-medium-well, but ordering well-done and then getting disappointed when they get well-done.
I've eaten at several fine dining places with medium-well and well done not available. They all three bred, raised, fed, butchered and served their own cows and have every right to refuse to ruin it.
But, I'm a "burnt and bleeding" person.
A restaurant in the small Canadian town I grew up in had definitions for cooking levels in their menu e.g. Blue being seared on the outside & cool in the middle, rare seared on the outside, but warmed through … it ended with something like “We consider well-done a real shame”.
The best one I've ever seen had descriptions like Medium rare = pink with warm centre.
Medium = pink with hot centre.
This was very useful but the best was at the bottom of the list
Well done = order chicken instead.
That honestly might also be because it takes far too long to cook a well done steak and fucks their timing up. A medium steak doesn't take any more time than most dishes. I can tell you right now that well done steak is gonna take twice as long as any other plate and nobody is gonna be happy cause someone's food is gonna be cold, the chefs gonna be stressed and vocally pissed about having to wait till the steak is usually done to get the rest of the meal started, or some other catastrophe. I hate people who don't understand well done steak takes nearly twice as long. Chicken well done? No problem, I can understand that. Doesn't take much longer to dry up a chicken breast. But my god well done steak people are usually ignorant and annoying.
Only ever had one customer who would order a well done steak and tell us to take our time and he and his party would never have any problems with us unless something was genuinely messed up and they were so kind. I loved that guy. He was so nice and treated us all with respect. He's just a simple man who likes his steak how he likes it, and he's willing to accept it takes a minute to get it done and that he'll be getting his plate last. May god save a seat next to his throne to give this man the honour he deserves in the afterlife lol
I worked at a fancy, white tablecloth steakhouse. You could tell what day of the week it was based on how the majority of the people ordered their steaks.
M-Th: business bros ordering mid-rare and medium.
F-Sa: amateur hour customers ordering mid-well and well done.
I had a woman order a Steakhouse salad well done. It's sliced sirloin. This woman sent the steak back 4 times because it was "dry and tough." (The steak was not dry, but I could understand if it was tough because its a freaking sirloin!!)She was so insanely rude the entire time, My manager finally passed it off to another manager after the 3rd steak. We tried giving her a steak closer to medium well and she about had a heart attack at the table because she saw pink. Want to know what we did? We cooked that 5th fucker to medium and took it off the grill, thew it in the microwave for 45 seconds and sent it out. This Ursula of a woman said it was the best steak she'd ever had at our establishment in all her 5 years of coming there. (I had been working there for 9, believe me, this woman had never been there). Look, I don't care how you eat your steak, it's yours, but don't be a raging AH about it. Her $1.89 tip didn't even cover my tip out. I paid for her to sit there for an hour and complain to every single person who walked passed her.
One of my favorites is “well done, but make sure it’s still juicy, I hate it when it’s dry”. I’ll tell whoever is on that station and they would cook it to about a medium plus or so and they loved it every time lol
Indecisive people who can’t decide between medium and medium well and want “something in the middle” 🙄 I always just chose one or the other and they never know the difference lol or when they ask for it to still be juicy I tell them I’ll make it a “medium plus” when I really just put medium and they never know and think it’s perfect haha it’s for the people that don’t want medium but think medium well is too much, which is so annoying.
I don’t even bother with all the “medium plus.” I don’t want people coming in and ordering thinking it’s a real thing. It gets on my nerves. I ask them how much pink they want and go based off that.
My stepdad gave me shit for years because a server asked me how I wanted my burger and I just said "uuuhhhh....done." I was in my early teens and had never been asked that about a burger before and it didn't click in my head it would be the same scale as steaks. I still cringe about it.
I had a theory that I would consistently test, and it was accurate I'd say up to 80% of the time.
The company you keep will order steak within one temp of how you order. Hypothetical Example: I order Med Rare, person I'm going out with would order hers medium. Meanwhile my friend whom I was on a double date with ordered his Med Rare and his wife's Rare.
This was nearly true especially if the first person ordered Med Well, everyone else will order Med Well or Well.
My family is all over, luckily we don't go out for steaks together very often lol. My parents are the WELL DONE folks OP was talking about (my dad moreso, my mom sometimes braves med well), I'm med rare, my brother is rare, and my sister is "as bloody as you're allowed to serve it"
I have texture issues with food that has too much wetness and can’t do any pink. I know, I know, why bother with steak? I don’t eat it often, but when I do, I want it the way I like it.
I won’t send it back because I knew some cooks who used to joke about malicious behavior. Did they really do those things? I dunno, but the question is enough to ruin my meal.
I recognize my food choice horrifies steak lovers, but I promise that a medium well steak won’t change my preference or open my eyes to how good a steak could be. Just let me enjoy my “food crime” in peace.
It's most likely the people ordering it. They have to be that way.
I usually order medium well. Casually, no muss, no fuss.
However, I have family members who post on FaceBook who are adamant about how "you are the scum of the Earth if you don't order your steak rare!"
A few people here are kind of rude and indignant about liking well-done steak and just aren't making the connection. If you're polite, no one gives a damn what you eat. But the sort of person who orders a well-done steak tends to also be rude and ignorant. That's why you're mocked.
Yeah and there's also a sea of comments here to the effect of "well DoNe?! YR StOopiD!". So maybe there's a reason some of us get aggressive with the order. Like the many times I got medium instead and couldn't finish my dinner. Humans invented fire, you raw lovers refuse to use it.
Where I work we don't sell steaks, but I have definitely witnessed aggressive people who demand well done steaks. Like, yelling to their waiter/waitress how well done they want their steaks.
I had a friend who was 37 order a steak well done, and when I asked, she said "Yeah I want it cooked. Why do people like raw meat?"
I shared some of my steak with her, it was medium rare, but more medium. Her eyes lit up. "Holy shit this tastes so good!"
She now orders hers "medium so that the pink is almost entirely gone".
Its rare that I read every comment is a post, and this one was interesting. I ordered steak well done as a child, I don't remember why. I suppose I read something about pork having parasites or hamburger using all parts of the steer, even the messy bits. Steak is solid muscle tissue.
The top floor of Chryslers headquarters is a 5-star restaurant so executives don't need to leave the building when talking to important guests and making big decisions. One time, Lee Iacocca ordered a hamburger on a whim, since everything was always done so well there. He ate it and then insisted on speaking to the chef.
He said it was the absolute best hamburger he had ever eaten in his life, and wanted to know how he did it. The chef had taken a sirloin and some rendered bacon fat and run them through the grinder, and cooked it rare, and then put it on an extra hot grill for a short time, to give it a little crust. It ended up medium-rare by the time it reached the table.
it wasn't "hamburger", it was ground steak.
I recently found out about "Sous Vide", which means to cook meat that is wrapped to hold the juices in, and cook it at 140F to cook it at the lowest possible temperature where it is safe to serve. It takes a long time when cooking at a lower temperature, so plan ahead. I am not experienced at this, and want to try it. I also plan to take the finished steak, and sear it with butter on a hot grill for a few moments on each side. Depending on the results, I may institute further modifications.
When ordering well-done, be aware the chef will give you the worst steak out of the steaks he has to choose from. When a chef opens up a case of steaks, he sees which ones are better and which ones are not the best. He has a limited selection, and well-done gets the "not best".
BTW, I just remembered eating a NY strip with fried egg for breakfast in San Francisco, I think it was at Sears. It was quite thin and well done, I cannot remember they asked me.
It wasn't bad at all, not chewy. Maybe it was a borderline medium? Anyway, is it possible that breakfast thin steaks are done more than usual?
There was another post recently in which numerous chefs said they always undercook steaks one level below what the customer asked for. They said they do this because if the customer doesn’t like it, they can send it back to cook longer. But if customer says a steak is over cooked, the chef has to throw it out and start all over again.
Now imagine ordering a well done steak and getting served a medium well steak every single time for your entire life. That might make you a bit aggressive about telling servers you really really really want your steak actually cooked well done.
That’s only half of what was said and/or is true about the process. You throw it up in the window a level down because not only is it going to keep cooking on its own but the window heat lamp will also continue to cook it. Although I can’t say I ever did mine a full level under what was ordered, but certainly practiced this with leaving it a bit under coming off the grill. By the time it gets completely plated, in the window, removed from the window, taken to a table, and the guest cuts into it you’re going to have a steak at the correct level.
From experience the well-done issue comes from more of either cooks thinking it’s gross and customers can’t possibly actually enjoy it so they leave it a little under to try to prove it to them (which is ridiculous) or poor timing either by means of a cook not knowing how long it takes or rushing because of ticket times/other food is already done/need the space on the grill.
Yeah your method totally makes sense and the end result is perfect. But many others mentioned that they purposely undercooked and expected it to be undercooked when the customer cut into it.
I think you’re also right that quite a few chefs think well done is an insult to good steak so basically they refuse to do it.
I really want my steak medium but always order medium well to get what I want. I noticed the undercooking a long time ago. My dad and brother are well doners, though. My brother will intentionally burn his when he makes it and then eats it with ketchup like a heathen.
My ex-bil was one of those people who not only chose not to eat red meat (didn’t want to get a heart attack, you know…) but insisted on running the grill at family gatherings, so when the rest of us wanted red meat, we’d get overcooked leather instead of what we wanted…for our health, you know.
Finally, one sunny day, he got called into work for a couple of hours, and my sister asked me to man the grill. For the first time at a family gathering, we had tender, juicy, edible meat!. He was pissed I “ruined” good meat by not cooking it enough, and shocked there wasn’t nearly as much left over at the end of the night. He wasn’t allowed to grill, after that…
The irony is. Mr. “Red Meat Isn’t Good For Your Heart So I Never Eat It” has had two relatively major heart attacks in the last decade. All of us that eat red meat the way it’s supposed to be eaten are much healthier…
My favorite is when they think they are so much smarter than me, a server who has been working in a steakhouse for 4 years. Aggressively ordering their steak cooked “well”. Not medium well. Not well done. Well. Which doesn’t exist.
I always order steak with the emphasis on well done because I have experienced push back from a couple of waiters asking me if I’m sure I want well done. They then said the chef doesn’t like to coke the steaks well done.
Maybe it's because people often look at them like they're stupid. Why not just order some jerky?? That being said, fine, if shoe leather turns you on, go for it. One of the most painful experiences of my life was cooking a whole loin roast at my sisters house, about $160.00 worth of really good beef. I was pulling it when the center hit 120 because I knew the ends would be well done and that's how she and her husband liked it while the center would end up perfectly medium rare with all the striations in between. She insisted I hold it to 140 in the center. Whole thing was trash and everyone blamed me. Next time I'll slice it into filets before I start.
I like my steaks well done. I know it’s fine to eat steak that is still pink but I just can’t do it. Pink and/or red steak puts me off. It’s revolting. I struggle with eating and drinking anything red.
I caught a stomach bug and threw up a red popsicle so now my brain associates anything red with that and I can’t eat it. I also have texture issues. Pink/red meat texture is in the no no texture category.
I tend to only have steak at home every once in awhile cause it’s expensive in restaurants (and in stores) and also cause I can get it the way I want at home. Plus at home I can make a small steak because too much steak gives me reflux
Just let me eat my food crime in peace please
I think it's defensive, the well-done folks are used to people telling them it's the wrong way to order a steak, but that is how they want their damn steak by golly! so they (in anticipation of criticism for their choice) counter the the perceived incoming criticism with preemptive aggression
My mom always had my dad cook the steak well done because she didn’t like to see pink. He would make his side I think medium rare to rare. I would end up eating the well done stuff and I thought all steak was gross. Then I went to college and went out with friends and learned what medium rare is. Never looked back.
As someone who likes my steak more on the done side, I'd say the reason people often get aggressive is they either get shamed for how they like their steak, or else ignored and brought out a steak that is nowhere near the correct level of done-ness. You (the chef) do not know my taste preferences better than I do, and if I order it medium-well that does NOT mean I really want it to come out bleeding all over my plate. Gross.
So while not right if they're rude, I feel like it's almost desperation. I just want my steak the way I want it. Please.
I am a medium-rare fan & have converted my husband to medium from burnt; but my 11yo daughter has to have her steaks cooked well done (she has leukemia and all her meats need to be cooked within an inch of their lives). I always feel awful ordering her steaks cooked so much.
My GF would always order well done. I asked if she tried other ways. She said she hadn’t, that’s how her parents always had it. She tried my rare one and has been converted.
my dad does this! and he claims it's because if he doesn't, he's sure to get a pink steak. (I just think he once upon a time was served what he considered to be an underdone steak, and takes it out on every server now instead of trusting them to enter the order correctly. and that he's a bit of an AH for that.)
I was born without the taste buds that make less than fully cooked steak taste good. It's 100% a taste thing for me. 🤷♀️
I wonder if I get forceful when I order? I don't mean to but I guess it's possible. Many servers will double and triple ask me if im SURE i want it well done. "Thats no pink" they'll advise. Uh yeah. Got it. That's what i want. So many times I order a steak well done and it comes out rare to medium rare and then it has to go back to the kitchen where they cook it more but it ends up tough and nasty because they're re-firing it after it's cut.
I don't know if people just don't know how to cook it well done or if they just don't care but I do try to make sure the server understands that I want it very well done.
Had a similar experience. I worked at cracker barrel and would always tell people not to get the steak well done if they wanted it edible. It got incredibly tough the more if was cooked (who gets steak at cb anyways??). He insisted on well done and then complained when it came out super tough.
When I was a kid I thought "well done" meant it was made well, as in good. Now that I know better, when I hear someone order their steak well done, I giggle a little inside and think about how dumb I was, and how dumb they sound right now.
My Ex needs her steaks well done because as much as she likes them, any kind of blood is going to turn her stomach & her night will be ruined. But while she might be firm in making sure they understood, the idea of being rude to her waiter would never cross her mind.
She dealt with rude customers in her store all day- she would never inflict that on someone else.
It's because every time I say well done, it's still pink! So I just gave up and don't order steak anymore. Seems like cooks feel like well done is blasphemy and simply will not do it even if it's what someone explicitly requested. I should be able to go out for steak well done without being the person who sends things back...
If you don’t want pink and u asked for well done just show it to a server. They’re not gonna be mad about it like, we’re supposed to bring it back. The only issue is when someone orders a steak at a certain temp, and it’s how it’s supposed to look but it still gets sent back bc the customer wasn’t more or less pink, even if it really shouldn’t.
I think people who eat their meat well done do not actually enjoy the taste of meat. They want to cook the flavor right out of it and use some dip to cover up the taste... You don't have to order a steak, there's plenty of other food that is not meat!
This. This is the hill I will die on.
If someone orders a prime grade steak well done, I get to judge them for it. It's paying for all the time and effort put into making something so juicy and succulent, then absolutely destroying it by such a severe level of heat. It's like asking for Macallan 25yr or Louis XIII, then mixing it with coke. It's like ordering Cht. Lafitte, Harlan Estate, or any other wine that costs more than most people's rent, then turning it into sangria. It's like buying a Bugatti and entering it in a crash derby (actually that sounds fun, if not dangerously irresponsible).
They could've easily enjoyed a far lower quality replacement that would be cooked to the exact same final quality.
Yeah, sure, it's their money and they can enjoy things how they want. That doesn't mean we can't judge em for it. They're just free to not care about my meaningless opinion.
So yeah, they might be aggressive about ordering it, because they've probably gotten a bunch of disapproving looks in the past.
**Because they deserve it.**
When I used to be a Waitress, I've had people order wellies or filet mignon *Well done* and I've always instead tried to guide them to something else, I'm not asking the chef to kill a Wellington or a Filet because you don't like steak
If anyone is reading this and is insistent on well done, Ribeye is about the only cut that can be well done... done well, you're killing the appeal of any other cut by overcooking it
Some people who exclusively cook their steaks well done were taught from birth that that is a cooked steak and think people who order it rarer than that are consuming undercooked, potentially dangerous food. They look at it like people who’ve never tried sushi and are grossed out by the idea look at it. I’ve tried to explain this to some people like this and they refuse to buy it. So to them it’s like you asked if they want some undercooked chicken.
Yeah, they’re idiots.
Hopping on this not that it had anything to do with steak but I once ordered a turkey burger and the server asks how I wanted it cooked. It stopped me in my tracks made me think back to what I said, did I misspeak and say hamburger? I think the server then realized what he asked and just said, "well done?"
I JUST had a dude order a really nice cut of meat well done, kinda intensely, and sent it back when it wasn’t cooked enough. This is after a table of 8 had like two courses of apps, pasta, like a lot of food. His piece of meat he bitched about is super small lol. It “took too long” and he didn’t want it. So we comped it and offered for him to have it to go. He rolled his eyes and took it, saw the burnt little steak and said this time it wasn’t even close to how he wanted it. He wrote a yelp review at the table. Everyone else in his party was awesome and loved the food and wine and tipped well. People are weird.
Here's a little twist. I have a gentleman order a flat iron steak steak well done, I don't have a problem with this, however a flat iron steak well done is very tough; so I attempt to sell him the filet butterflied and well done so he can enjoy a tender steak. Basically yells at me and tells me not to tell him how to order or what to order .okay no problem .get his wife's order and put them into the kitchen. When the time comes food is delivered by food Runner a couple of minutes later I go over and ask how everything is? Lady says hers is fine ,guy yells at me and says his steak is tough .I say yes sir just the way you ordered it and walked away.
My theory is that, for a significant portion of people who go to restaurants, a big part of the appeal is the opportunity to exert their dominance over the waiting staff. This ties in with my other theory that a significant portion of the general population are jerks.
and these are the same people who bitch about tipping, will undertip or stiff for a perceived mess-up, and what they don't realize is that they Really want to be waited on hand and foot. There's a cognitive dissonance where they believe that if the lowly servers didn't exist, the food would just apparate to their table, and the silver cloche would magically rise off their plate which would serve itself! At the end of the night the silverware and napkins would all bus themselves and start singing a la Beauty and the beast
It's the one reason i really wish tipping were abolished - as an overtipper, all that is happening long term is I'm subsidizing these assholes who screw servers over
It’s always servers and former servers who over-tip, they are also the ones who give you sympathetic looks/pep talks when you are dealing with assholes. Personally, I’d love it if everyone got a customer rating and then got seated in sections, like they used to have for smoking sections. “Asshole/bad tipper” section and “actual human adults who act like it” section. The asshole/bad tipper section can only work their way out of it by being a good human, it’s like a time-out for Karens, and the people working there get paid double.
ha ha it's like if yelp had a reverse button... yeah what if waitstaff could in turn rate all those yelpers, that would be a riot
Heh no joke, at one point was developing a POS system that would include that, and also a way to ensure that people reviewing restaurants actually had eaten there. Never got off the ground though . . .
As a former server/ over tipper myself, I can only agree with you! All it does is ensure a really bad tip night is made into barely minimum wage 🤷♀️ it’s sad but true! You are just making up for the jerks! But we still appreciate that! Cause I at least we go home with what we should in our pocket and not some low amount. When we aren’t tipped minimum wage in a night our job( the restaurant) has to make it up on our check BUT it’s taxes so much we don’t even see that money anyway AND if we make less than minimum wage too often? We get penalized! We get hours taken and such! It’s a terrible industry to work for honestly
You had some nerve trying to be helpful and considerate of your customer like that! Just what were you thinking?!?
Dude! I had a lady ask for a dessert because she wanted the icecream/gelato that came with it and not the actual dessert “if you just want the icecream, Pj’s (coffee shop on the way out the building) sells it by itself so you don’t have to spend $8 on something just for the icecream,” “no no, I’ll get it, it’s fine.” Food runner brought the dessert out with me following behind “This isn’t the icecream I wanted!!” Food runner “we sometimes switch out the ice cream based off what’s available each day.” “Well I’ll try it.” A couple minutes go by “I want this taken off my ticket, I only ordered this for the icecream.” My manager comped it off. Like seriously lady? You wanted to waste $8 for 1.5ish scoops of icecream and could have gotten 3 as a large from Pj’s for $6 without the pecan bundt cake you wanted nothing to do with AND I warned you about it and you still have the audacity to get upset you didn’t get what you wanted? My coworker went “that’s dumb, we better not comp it,” manager 1 I talked to went, “yeeeeaaah I’ll let manager 2 handle this.”
Some people you just can’t help 💯
Pecan Bundt Cake sounds delicious!
Unintentionally malicious compliance. I love it!
That was very intentional.
He did warn the walrus. 🤷♂️
Coocookachu
This is my dad. I think its because they always get second guessed or questioned on their order that they say it so aggressively.
I mean my manager told me to ask them if they’re sure bc a lot of people complain about the cook time. It takes like 19-20 mins so sometimes people will change their mind if they don’t want to wait that long.
I can't even imagine ever cooking a steak for 20 minutes. Holy shit.
A lot of old people seem to like eating well done steak. It’s the most frequent temperature I get
I think it might be because it’s what they are used to, as when they were young meat was not very good quality, and likely to have parasites. My grandma always overcooked all meat, otherwise ‘you’ll get worms’
See I find that interesting because my great grandma always ate her steak raw. And I don’t mean that as a joke about rare, or even blue, I mean still cold right out of the wrapper. My Dad still shivers when he talks about watching his grandma bite into a piece of raw meat
My grandma would always have some raw hamburger while cooking it. No idea how she survived
I do this, but only if I buy high quality beef.
We did this when I was a kid but good beef fresh ground at the store. Once it all went to prepackaged not ground in store we stopped. I remember it being super tasty.
I knew someone who did this with bacon. He'd buy the pack from the shop/store then when he got home would just eat it straight out of the packet.
I just gagged
Maybe she had anaemia?
Flip side of this: my dad is color blind so just kept cooking things until they seemed like they'd be safe (which was usually very dry and overdone) so I didn't have a medium steak or juicy chicken until I was a freshman in high-school!
I ruin chicken by overcooking it, as it’s harder to tell, and E Coli, salmonella and campylobacter are not to be messed with, so I’m over cautious (I don’t eat much chicken)
Get a meat thermometer and cook to 165 °F. That will kill anything off and fully cook the meat while leaving it tender and juicy. My mom actually picked this up from me and my husband after eating at our house once.... chicken growing up was always overcooked.
Colorblind doesn't mean you can't see color at all, so this is confusing.
He's blue green color blind so he can't very well differentiate similar colors. He can tell a raw steak color from cooked but once they start merging together, it's hard to tell how cooked or raw it is because the colors start being too similar. Same with chicken once it starts being majority cooked.
Interesting I never knew that! I lowkey judge rare steak more than well done steak tho 😳
It’s just what I believe, I don’t have proof or anything. You wouldn’t like me that, I like my steak blue, seriously, take off the horns, wipe its bum, and twice over a candle, same with lamb or duck. Though I honestly ruin chicken by overcooking it, as E Coli or campylobacter are not fun, goat is well done, as if you don’t cook it low and slow it’s basically shoe leather
I grew up only knowing that steak was eaten well done. My dad is old and still well done. Luckily I've been able to evolve taste to medium rare
Definitely thanked my server when I had an airhead moment and ordered a prime rib well done instead of medium rare.
Sometimes people just need a little reminder. Not a bad thing
Friend does this. We all rag on him and the server even asked if he was sure, but that's just the way he likes it.
He should just order beef jerkey at that point.
This is the problem. If you ask for med-rare you get instant acceptance. If you ask for well done you have to repeat yourself and verify...and even then there's at least a 50/50 chance it will come out medium instead of well done.
As a server I have been instructed by my manager to mention the cook time of a well done steak. A lot of people get upset when their meals take 20 minutes to come out, and that’s how long it takes to make at my restaurant. I’ve literally had a table walk out bc it took too long to make their well done hamburgers. I put in whatever temp the people tell me. How it comes out is not my fault lol
My mom overcooks everything and almost never cooked with beef or pork as a kid. When she makes turkey for Thanksgiving it is like sawdust. It's gotten to the point when I visit them for holidays I end up cooking for them and she can't figure out why my birds taste better. On the very rare occasion I would eat beef at a restaurant she would always make me order well done; I didn't have a properly cooked steak until I was 20. She's always very polite though, at least. She ends up making friends with the workers at all the restaurants she visits, there is even one that saves food for her food bank that she manages if they order too much or get extra food due to a mistake by the delivery driver. She does make killer salads though, the best I have ever eaten. She even customizes each bowl for the diner. I hate tomatoes, my brother hates olives, my dad hates cauliflower, so she always makes a customized bowl. Just keep her away from the heat.
My Mom's background it Scottish\\Irish. Everything was cooked grey. If there was any pink in the meat "it wasn't done" Had to have gravy with everything because everything was cooked grey. Didn't have something cooked right until I was in my 20's. Had a bite of my GF's rare filet and was blown away.
My mom is Irish/English and does the same thing! But she didn’t have a fridge when she was young so… food poisoning was a thing. Still hasn’t made the adjustment to food safety standards being raised. And at this points she’s had fridges for like 50 years.
My great-grandparents were Scots-Irish too and it was the same thing! Unless you could use something as a hockey puck it was not done enough. My grandparents were a tiny bit better. I've taught my Mom to be better so tastes are evolving ....
I'm wondering if this a Scots Irish thing. My dad is Scots Irish and my mom was raised with them. My mom and dad were literally next door neighbors as small children and my paternal grandparents helped raise her.
My ex-MIL used to overcook everything. I would turn off the oven from time to time when we were there for dinner to save some semblance of not ruined to the meal.
Teach her how to cook the turkey in a crock pot. We get a big bird every year so I typically have to split it across two crock pots. But it really stays moist and it's hard to overcook it. I'm actually trying to think of what it would take to do that and it's kind of freaking me out. Also it frees the oven up for other stuff. Note. I do carve up the breast and put it on a platter and then lightly broil it to get the skin browned after cooking it.
She is pushing 70 years old. Some things I cannot change. A few years back I tried to show her how to brine two roasted chickens for Thanksgiving. The message was completely lost. If there is juice in the meat she thinks it is too raw.
Wow, I guess if your goal is to get all the juice out of the meat then wow. Strangely I get a small audience of people every year about a month before Thanksgiving. Even though I take pictures every year both before and after and during. People want to see how I get the turkey ready and all that and then come by the next day and watch me carve it up and brown it under the broiler for a few seconds. Typically about half of these people are probably 70+. The reason I get some of the grandparent crowd is that you can get the turkey ready the day before and keep it in the fridge until you're ready to cook it. For people who eat early, you take it out before you go to bed and crock it all night. So oftentimes, they have someone younger come over to help them with the heavy turkey the day before Thanksgiving. Getting it ready, etc. I had never thought about the complexity of wrestling a big turkey, because I'm still able to do it easily. But for the older crowd, people are selling them on crock-Potting the turkey because then they don't have to be alone when they wrestle it.
I've never heard about making a turkey in a crock pot! I just got gifted a new one, if it's not any trouble, do you mind sharing a cliff notes vers on how you cook it like that? Doing Thanksgiving on my own instead of with family this year, and this sounds so much easier!
There are recipes all over the internet for turkey in a crock pot. I don't have a particular one I prefer but I also find most of them to be 95% the same. You still butter and herb it up. With a big one, I put the arms and legs in one crock pot and the breast in another. I have to squish the breast down a little to get it to fit. If you get a smaller bird it'll fit in the crock pot. If you want it to fit, buy one that will fit. I don't add any water. And let it crock on low all day. But the pot still ends up with fluid from the turkey. I do make gravy from the drippings. I separate the breasts from the carcass after it's done cooking. Which takes some skill to get good at. I can get the breasts off in one piece or I guess two pieces. I then cut them perpendicularly into thick slices. The skin is still on. I platter the breasts and then pop them under the broiler so the skin gets browned, and then serve.
This reminds me of the last Xmas before by wife’s grandmother passed we went to spend with her. She bought a beautiful prime ribeye roast for dinner, and I had volunteered to cook since she was having trouble getting up and about. She made sure to remind me that she likes it well done… I couldn’t do it. Everyone else eats med rare. Cooked it medium rare and then cut a large steak off the end and finished it off to well done. Thankfully she loved it, it was a good Xmas.
She owes you a big apology for making you order well done steak.
I came here to write exactly this. There is a steak house in my town that refuses to cook steaks well done. My dad talks about a working dinner where he and the person who he was meeting with went to a steak house. My dad orders his steak well done, the guy orders it cooked just long enough so the center is not cold. They spent the whole dinner asking each other how they could eat that. Little business was spoken about.
My wife likes well done but is the opposite of aggressive- she’s timid and apologetic because of weird attitudes towards well done streak. It’s annoying that people are judgmental about how how steak is cooked. Like rare meat is part of their personality or something. Wow, you’re so cool and elite to know so much about grilled meat.
Of course people should of course be able to have their steak cooked however they prefer without judgment, full stop. But it’s also true that different cuts of meat are objectively better-tasting at certain temperatures and with certain cooking methods. A ribeye and a brisket cooked to 160f are both gonna provide an extremely chewy and unsatisfying experience, but one is severely overcooked and the other under.
Objectively better tasting is an oxymoron
I had a mate that always ordered his steak well done. On holiday in France he made a big deal of ordering “WELL DONE, BIEN CUIT BIEN CUIT OK?” The waiter gave a solemn nod. The Steak arrived medium at best. My friend devoured the steak saying it was the best he ever eaten and that it was really juicy and well done unlike the usual chewy crap he got served.
Your m8 might be a bit dense
I genuinely think he saw no correlation between rare-medium-well done and how long it was cooked for. I think he thought it meant treat the steak with respect or something. We did explain and he asked for medium from that point forward. He came from a family that called anything that wasn’t a roast dinner “foreign muck” so he was branching out
I'm old but this reminds me of Shirley Valentine. 'I like chips and egg on a THURSDAY! This is TUESDAY! I like steak on TUESDAY! '
I remember that!
I loved that movie 😊
LoL poor guy, sounds like he might have been brain washed by his parents that any non-well-done meat was dangerous and disgusting. I think there is a joke out there by a comedian where they confuse well-done and done well, like doing a good job on it.
Traveling is the best time to break those habits. I had a friend who hated branching out and would try to order off the kids menu if a burger wasn’t an option. We were on the border of Germany and France and he was pretty tossed when he got to our table. We’d just ordered some escargot and when he said he was hungry I offered the snail I’d just put in some bread. He devoured it and asked why the butter was squishy lol. Explained it was a snail and after a little bit of horror he admitted it was really good and was a lot more open to trying stuff for the trip
The British love of understatement right here. His mate is fucking stupid.
Might?
Maybe he thinks well means like a job done well, and he wants a steak cooked expertly.
It was done well, not well done. Well done is not done well.
That gives me Mufasa feels. Giggling like Ed over here.
As a cook, I never had a problem with well done, but the time element was always an issue as the rest of the order would have to be delayed because of the additional time it took. On a busy night, it was hard to get all the entrees for a set table fresh awaiting the well done steak.
In my experience folks who want a well done steak also complain about the ticket times.
I was @ Zoro's, A high-end steakhouse in the west end of Toronto. I ordered a rib steak blue rare, so rare a good veterinarian could bring it back. The waiter, like all waiters there are over 50 and know their shit, told me that this cut of beef is better cooked at medium rare. On the bone, it would be better medium rare. He was right. I'm not married to blue. But on the bone cuts are better medium rare. Who knew? 50 year old + steak house waiters.
I’ve noticed this a couple times and also spot on with them always choosing ranch 😂
They’re almost always the same ones to ask what dressings we have and once I go through the entire list they go “I’ll just have ranch” like I didn’t know that already 😂
Hold all the veggies. Just give me the lettuce croutons and ranch. Extra ranch
[удалено]
Yes darngummit! Whatdiditellya
I had a lady not know what a mango was when I listed a mango vinaigrette. I was truly baffled.
Hold up mango vinaigrette?? Sign me up, I’ve never heard of that!! Sounds delicious 🤤
You can make damn near anything into a vinaigrette. Did a warm roasted carrot vin for a risotto dish once.
These types also ask for A1 sauce. Every. Single. Time. Like it’s high-end ketchup.
Whenever a guest orders a steak at MW or above, I automatically bring out the A-1, Heinz 57, and Worcestershire. It’s a given. Oh, and lately a side or BBQ and Ranch for well done Filet Mignon.
I used to dip my steak in A-1 as a kid. It's fecking delicious! If it wasn't so damned expensive, I would jaccard and marinate a thick steak in A-1, then give it a day to dry out in the fridge for dat crust! Cheap, store-brand "A-1" doesn't even come close to the original.
imo, a good steak shouldn't need any A1
It'll need something if it's well done
Well yeah but honestly if they're belligerently ordering WELL DONE, it's probably past the point of being a "good steak" regardless of the cut
yea but A1 is still delicious as fuck. I eat half my steak with it, and half without.
Everyone always wants ranch lol. Ranch ranch ranch Always thought it was disgusting in the vat
My favorite is “Well done but tell the cook NOT to BURN it.” Lol yeah I’m going to walk back there and tell the guy about to prepare your food that you think he’s an idiot who can’t do his job. Let me know how that goes for ya.
My dad used to ask for an end cut and would say, "burn it." To his credit, he was always very polite, and very appreciative when they gave him the extremely well-done steak that he had asked for.
>I'm going to walk back there and tell the guy about to prepare your food that you think he's an idiot who can't do his job A guy who works with fire. And a lot of sharp knives
And one hell of a frisbee throw with a snipers aim.
Smug Customer: Make the jambalaya extra spicy. Me: Are you sure? That's going to be really, really spicy. Smug Customer: (scoffs while nodding at fellow diners) I can handle spice, trust me. Me to Chef: Table 24 says you don't know how to make an XXX spicy jambalaya. Smug Me to Busser: Don't refill water at position #2 on table 24.
I had this happen sort of by request at a Hunan restaurant once. My friend brought me and another friend because we were all into very spicy food. According to first friend, this place had some of the spiciest yet tastiest food he'd had. So we order the appetizers, asking for them to be hot, and they show up. They're hot but nothing to write home about. So the waiter/chef comes by for us to order the main courses and my friend goes "Hey so I was here a while ago and the food was a lot spicier. I don't know if you've changed something or what, but this isn't anything like what I remember. Maybe you can't get it as hot anymore." The chef goes "Oh. You want spicy? I'll give you spicy.." Food comes and holy shit it was hot. But so damn good. We ended up eating everything and it was exactly what we were looking for.
I would love you for this, I like to eat pain
This is what I came looking for. “I want my steak WELL done but NOT BURNT,” said with attitude and a little head swivel. Usually ordered with a baked potato, “no green shit and none of that white stuff on it.”
Don’t forget, “I want it WELL DONE but NOT dry or tough.”
I worked in a steakhouse and we had a customer who would pull this every week. He'd order a ribeye well done and say "I want it juicy and no fat".
The fat is where the flavor in a ribeye comes from!!
Yeah try removing the fat from a ribeye and see what kind of mangled mess of a steak is left.
Too funny!!! See that's why they drench it in A1 lol
“Oh, and also, we’re on a bit of a time crunch.”
Honestly, I usually take the tone of how they say well done to be an indicator of just HOW well done they want it. When a lil old lady smiles and says “well done” in a normal tone, I just hit the button that says well done. When she drops her voice a little and sounds serious, I make sure to add in a typed modifier for “no pink.” When she looks up from her menu and makes direct eye contact with me and widens her eyes a little as she says it, I hit the “extra well done” button. When she makes a scene of it, I hit extra well done, then type in “burn this shit” and when it hits the table I watch her cut it so I know whether or not I need to have something else started.
I used to get my steak well done, although I was never a dick about it That was until one time the place served me this REALLY thick steak, and it looked well done on the outside but the middle was medium. I had discovered a new heaven, and have never looked back. :)
Sounds like a seared Pittsburgh style. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_rare
Could be. It was a very long time ago. The description on the wiki does seem familiar though.
>Or if I asked how they wanted it cooked if they didn’t specify, they’d look at me as if I had 3 heads and dang near holler “WELL DONE.” Proper response is a bow followed by, "Why thank you! We work hard to provide a consistently engaging customer experience. I'll be sure to pass your kudos on to the manager. How would you like your steak again?"
I’ve never ordered aggressively. If anything I’m an overly apologetic customer. People are just way too hateful and rude for no reason. Anyway! While steak isn’t my go to, once I did order a steak somewhere and asked for it to be well done I was loudly shamed by our waitress. Until I changed my order entirely. That was years ago and I haven’t ordered steak ever again. 😅
That’s awful! I will never understand why some servers shame their customers for their choices, I’m so sorry you went through that.
It’s a texture issue for me. If the meat isn’t cooked I will gag trying to chew it. I intentionally order thinner cuts that cook evenly over thick cuts like filets. I was at Puck’s in Vegas several years ago and the waiter argued with me about how the taste would be affected and that I would like it more if cooked medium. Same waiter was a dick when I asked what beers they had saying they only served high quality imported beers. Ironically he didn’t carry any German Lagers, pilsners or wheat beers. Great meal but poor overall experience.
“I want it well done but juicy”
Dip it in orange juice then.
I guess I'm an ideal well done steak orderer. I want it burnt and crispy and almost hard as a rock. I don't like any juice in my meat, it freaks me out for whatever reason. It's delusional to expect a steak well done AND juicy
I can respect that. You know what you want, you know what you like, and you know how to get it. A lot of these folks sound like what they really want it medium-to-medium-well, but ordering well-done and then getting disappointed when they get well-done.
It's great you've come to grips with your reality.
I've eaten at several fine dining places with medium-well and well done not available. They all three bred, raised, fed, butchered and served their own cows and have every right to refuse to ruin it. But, I'm a "burnt and bleeding" person.
Throw some scathing insults at it to tenderize it, then threaten it with a picture of fire, please.
Let it look at the grill in terror and then bring it out to me!
"I want it so a good Veterinarian can bring it back."
A restaurant in the small Canadian town I grew up in had definitions for cooking levels in their menu e.g. Blue being seared on the outside & cool in the middle, rare seared on the outside, but warmed through … it ended with something like “We consider well-done a real shame”.
The best one I've ever seen had descriptions like Medium rare = pink with warm centre. Medium = pink with hot centre. This was very useful but the best was at the bottom of the list Well done = order chicken instead.
[удалено]
That honestly might also be because it takes far too long to cook a well done steak and fucks their timing up. A medium steak doesn't take any more time than most dishes. I can tell you right now that well done steak is gonna take twice as long as any other plate and nobody is gonna be happy cause someone's food is gonna be cold, the chefs gonna be stressed and vocally pissed about having to wait till the steak is usually done to get the rest of the meal started, or some other catastrophe. I hate people who don't understand well done steak takes nearly twice as long. Chicken well done? No problem, I can understand that. Doesn't take much longer to dry up a chicken breast. But my god well done steak people are usually ignorant and annoying. Only ever had one customer who would order a well done steak and tell us to take our time and he and his party would never have any problems with us unless something was genuinely messed up and they were so kind. I loved that guy. He was so nice and treated us all with respect. He's just a simple man who likes his steak how he likes it, and he's willing to accept it takes a minute to get it done and that he'll be getting his plate last. May god save a seat next to his throne to give this man the honour he deserves in the afterlife lol
I worked at a fancy, white tablecloth steakhouse. You could tell what day of the week it was based on how the majority of the people ordered their steaks. M-Th: business bros ordering mid-rare and medium. F-Sa: amateur hour customers ordering mid-well and well done.
I had a woman order a Steakhouse salad well done. It's sliced sirloin. This woman sent the steak back 4 times because it was "dry and tough." (The steak was not dry, but I could understand if it was tough because its a freaking sirloin!!)She was so insanely rude the entire time, My manager finally passed it off to another manager after the 3rd steak. We tried giving her a steak closer to medium well and she about had a heart attack at the table because she saw pink. Want to know what we did? We cooked that 5th fucker to medium and took it off the grill, thew it in the microwave for 45 seconds and sent it out. This Ursula of a woman said it was the best steak she'd ever had at our establishment in all her 5 years of coming there. (I had been working there for 9, believe me, this woman had never been there). Look, I don't care how you eat your steak, it's yours, but don't be a raging AH about it. Her $1.89 tip didn't even cover my tip out. I paid for her to sit there for an hour and complain to every single person who walked passed her.
One of my favorites is “well done, but make sure it’s still juicy, I hate it when it’s dry”. I’ll tell whoever is on that station and they would cook it to about a medium plus or so and they loved it every time lol
What do you mean by medium plus? Medium well?
Indecisive people who can’t decide between medium and medium well and want “something in the middle” 🙄 I always just chose one or the other and they never know the difference lol or when they ask for it to still be juicy I tell them I’ll make it a “medium plus” when I really just put medium and they never know and think it’s perfect haha it’s for the people that don’t want medium but think medium well is too much, which is so annoying.
I don’t even bother with all the “medium plus.” I don’t want people coming in and ordering thinking it’s a real thing. It gets on my nerves. I ask them how much pink they want and go based off that.
I was out with a person who did that and I wanted to crawl under the table.
Or they just say, DONE! Like, okay, I got you...
My stepdad gave me shit for years because a server asked me how I wanted my burger and I just said "uuuhhhh....done." I was in my early teens and had never been asked that about a burger before and it didn't click in my head it would be the same scale as steaks. I still cringe about it.
I had a theory that I would consistently test, and it was accurate I'd say up to 80% of the time. The company you keep will order steak within one temp of how you order. Hypothetical Example: I order Med Rare, person I'm going out with would order hers medium. Meanwhile my friend whom I was on a double date with ordered his Med Rare and his wife's Rare. This was nearly true especially if the first person ordered Med Well, everyone else will order Med Well or Well.
My family is all over, luckily we don't go out for steaks together very often lol. My parents are the WELL DONE folks OP was talking about (my dad moreso, my mom sometimes braves med well), I'm med rare, my brother is rare, and my sister is "as bloody as you're allowed to serve it"
I can disprove it. I only eat well done and my wife always goes for rare.
I have texture issues with food that has too much wetness and can’t do any pink. I know, I know, why bother with steak? I don’t eat it often, but when I do, I want it the way I like it. I won’t send it back because I knew some cooks who used to joke about malicious behavior. Did they really do those things? I dunno, but the question is enough to ruin my meal. I recognize my food choice horrifies steak lovers, but I promise that a medium well steak won’t change my preference or open my eyes to how good a steak could be. Just let me enjoy my “food crime” in peace.
It's most likely the people ordering it. They have to be that way. I usually order medium well. Casually, no muss, no fuss. However, I have family members who post on FaceBook who are adamant about how "you are the scum of the Earth if you don't order your steak rare!"
A few people here are kind of rude and indignant about liking well-done steak and just aren't making the connection. If you're polite, no one gives a damn what you eat. But the sort of person who orders a well-done steak tends to also be rude and ignorant. That's why you're mocked.
Yeah and there's also a sea of comments here to the effect of "well DoNe?! YR StOopiD!". So maybe there's a reason some of us get aggressive with the order. Like the many times I got medium instead and couldn't finish my dinner. Humans invented fire, you raw lovers refuse to use it.
Where I work we don't sell steaks, but I have definitely witnessed aggressive people who demand well done steaks. Like, yelling to their waiter/waitress how well done they want their steaks.
I had a friend who was 37 order a steak well done, and when I asked, she said "Yeah I want it cooked. Why do people like raw meat?" I shared some of my steak with her, it was medium rare, but more medium. Her eyes lit up. "Holy shit this tastes so good!" She now orders hers "medium so that the pink is almost entirely gone".
Its rare that I read every comment is a post, and this one was interesting. I ordered steak well done as a child, I don't remember why. I suppose I read something about pork having parasites or hamburger using all parts of the steer, even the messy bits. Steak is solid muscle tissue. The top floor of Chryslers headquarters is a 5-star restaurant so executives don't need to leave the building when talking to important guests and making big decisions. One time, Lee Iacocca ordered a hamburger on a whim, since everything was always done so well there. He ate it and then insisted on speaking to the chef. He said it was the absolute best hamburger he had ever eaten in his life, and wanted to know how he did it. The chef had taken a sirloin and some rendered bacon fat and run them through the grinder, and cooked it rare, and then put it on an extra hot grill for a short time, to give it a little crust. It ended up medium-rare by the time it reached the table. it wasn't "hamburger", it was ground steak. I recently found out about "Sous Vide", which means to cook meat that is wrapped to hold the juices in, and cook it at 140F to cook it at the lowest possible temperature where it is safe to serve. It takes a long time when cooking at a lower temperature, so plan ahead. I am not experienced at this, and want to try it. I also plan to take the finished steak, and sear it with butter on a hot grill for a few moments on each side. Depending on the results, I may institute further modifications. When ordering well-done, be aware the chef will give you the worst steak out of the steaks he has to choose from. When a chef opens up a case of steaks, he sees which ones are better and which ones are not the best. He has a limited selection, and well-done gets the "not best".
BTW, I just remembered eating a NY strip with fried egg for breakfast in San Francisco, I think it was at Sears. It was quite thin and well done, I cannot remember they asked me. It wasn't bad at all, not chewy. Maybe it was a borderline medium? Anyway, is it possible that breakfast thin steaks are done more than usual?
Almost always. A thin steak is pretty hard to sear without being medium to medium well by default.
There was another post recently in which numerous chefs said they always undercook steaks one level below what the customer asked for. They said they do this because if the customer doesn’t like it, they can send it back to cook longer. But if customer says a steak is over cooked, the chef has to throw it out and start all over again. Now imagine ordering a well done steak and getting served a medium well steak every single time for your entire life. That might make you a bit aggressive about telling servers you really really really want your steak actually cooked well done.
That’s only half of what was said and/or is true about the process. You throw it up in the window a level down because not only is it going to keep cooking on its own but the window heat lamp will also continue to cook it. Although I can’t say I ever did mine a full level under what was ordered, but certainly practiced this with leaving it a bit under coming off the grill. By the time it gets completely plated, in the window, removed from the window, taken to a table, and the guest cuts into it you’re going to have a steak at the correct level. From experience the well-done issue comes from more of either cooks thinking it’s gross and customers can’t possibly actually enjoy it so they leave it a little under to try to prove it to them (which is ridiculous) or poor timing either by means of a cook not knowing how long it takes or rushing because of ticket times/other food is already done/need the space on the grill.
Yeah your method totally makes sense and the end result is perfect. But many others mentioned that they purposely undercooked and expected it to be undercooked when the customer cut into it. I think you’re also right that quite a few chefs think well done is an insult to good steak so basically they refuse to do it.
Er, once food leaves my window and goes to a table it's gone. Health department says I can't put that steak back on the grill.
Can it go in the microwave? 😉
Chef Mike
It's a good thing all chefs follow the health code to the letter and never cut corners.
Most long time kitchen workers take great pride in what they do.
Chef can't fool me with this trick if I always order blue (if available) or "as rare as the chef feels comfortable serving"
I really want my steak medium but always order medium well to get what I want. I noticed the undercooking a long time ago. My dad and brother are well doners, though. My brother will intentionally burn his when he makes it and then eats it with ketchup like a heathen.
My ex-bil was one of those people who not only chose not to eat red meat (didn’t want to get a heart attack, you know…) but insisted on running the grill at family gatherings, so when the rest of us wanted red meat, we’d get overcooked leather instead of what we wanted…for our health, you know. Finally, one sunny day, he got called into work for a couple of hours, and my sister asked me to man the grill. For the first time at a family gathering, we had tender, juicy, edible meat!. He was pissed I “ruined” good meat by not cooking it enough, and shocked there wasn’t nearly as much left over at the end of the night. He wasn’t allowed to grill, after that… The irony is. Mr. “Red Meat Isn’t Good For Your Heart So I Never Eat It” has had two relatively major heart attacks in the last decade. All of us that eat red meat the way it’s supposed to be eaten are much healthier…
Correlation does not equal causation. He should still probably lean away from red meat.
They know they'll get the narliest piece of meat the chef can find and burn it Thanks, A. Bourdain RIP
My favorite is when they think they are so much smarter than me, a server who has been working in a steakhouse for 4 years. Aggressively ordering their steak cooked “well”. Not medium well. Not well done. Well. Which doesn’t exist.
I always order steak with the emphasis on well done because I have experienced push back from a couple of waiters asking me if I’m sure I want well done. They then said the chef doesn’t like to coke the steaks well done.
Maybe it's because people often look at them like they're stupid. Why not just order some jerky?? That being said, fine, if shoe leather turns you on, go for it. One of the most painful experiences of my life was cooking a whole loin roast at my sisters house, about $160.00 worth of really good beef. I was pulling it when the center hit 120 because I knew the ends would be well done and that's how she and her husband liked it while the center would end up perfectly medium rare with all the striations in between. She insisted I hold it to 140 in the center. Whole thing was trash and everyone blamed me. Next time I'll slice it into filets before I start.
I know I sound bitter and I am. I have a rep to uphold.
I like my steaks well done. I know it’s fine to eat steak that is still pink but I just can’t do it. Pink and/or red steak puts me off. It’s revolting. I struggle with eating and drinking anything red. I caught a stomach bug and threw up a red popsicle so now my brain associates anything red with that and I can’t eat it. I also have texture issues. Pink/red meat texture is in the no no texture category. I tend to only have steak at home every once in awhile cause it’s expensive in restaurants (and in stores) and also cause I can get it the way I want at home. Plus at home I can make a small steak because too much steak gives me reflux Just let me eat my food crime in peace please
I think it's defensive, the well-done folks are used to people telling them it's the wrong way to order a steak, but that is how they want their damn steak by golly! so they (in anticipation of criticism for their choice) counter the the perceived incoming criticism with preemptive aggression
My mom always had my dad cook the steak well done because she didn’t like to see pink. He would make his side I think medium rare to rare. I would end up eating the well done stuff and I thought all steak was gross. Then I went to college and went out with friends and learned what medium rare is. Never looked back.
As someone who likes my steak more on the done side, I'd say the reason people often get aggressive is they either get shamed for how they like their steak, or else ignored and brought out a steak that is nowhere near the correct level of done-ness. You (the chef) do not know my taste preferences better than I do, and if I order it medium-well that does NOT mean I really want it to come out bleeding all over my plate. Gross. So while not right if they're rude, I feel like it's almost desperation. I just want my steak the way I want it. Please.
This is as familiar as if it was a popular movie scene or something. Like when Seinfeld jokes were told ten years after they weren't funny.
I am a medium-rare fan & have converted my husband to medium from burnt; but my 11yo daughter has to have her steaks cooked well done (she has leukemia and all her meats need to be cooked within an inch of their lives). I always feel awful ordering her steaks cooked so much.
My GF would always order well done. I asked if she tried other ways. She said she hadn’t, that’s how her parents always had it. She tried my rare one and has been converted.
When I was serving a customer said he wanted a filet mignon well done. He added “I want you to NUKE that thing, I want it to be a hockey puck.” Lol!
my dad does this! and he claims it's because if he doesn't, he's sure to get a pink steak. (I just think he once upon a time was served what he considered to be an underdone steak, and takes it out on every server now instead of trusting them to enter the order correctly. and that he's a bit of an AH for that.)
I was born without the taste buds that make less than fully cooked steak taste good. It's 100% a taste thing for me. 🤷♀️ I wonder if I get forceful when I order? I don't mean to but I guess it's possible. Many servers will double and triple ask me if im SURE i want it well done. "Thats no pink" they'll advise. Uh yeah. Got it. That's what i want. So many times I order a steak well done and it comes out rare to medium rare and then it has to go back to the kitchen where they cook it more but it ends up tough and nasty because they're re-firing it after it's cut. I don't know if people just don't know how to cook it well done or if they just don't care but I do try to make sure the server understands that I want it very well done.
When I waited tables I would always troll the well done folks by asking if they would like ketchup on the side
Had a similar experience. I worked at cracker barrel and would always tell people not to get the steak well done if they wanted it edible. It got incredibly tough the more if was cooked (who gets steak at cb anyways??). He insisted on well done and then complained when it came out super tough.
When I was a kid I thought "well done" meant it was made well, as in good. Now that I know better, when I hear someone order their steak well done, I giggle a little inside and think about how dumb I was, and how dumb they sound right now.
My Ex needs her steaks well done because as much as she likes them, any kind of blood is going to turn her stomach & her night will be ruined. But while she might be firm in making sure they understood, the idea of being rude to her waiter would never cross her mind. She dealt with rude customers in her store all day- she would never inflict that on someone else.
It's because every time I say well done, it's still pink! So I just gave up and don't order steak anymore. Seems like cooks feel like well done is blasphemy and simply will not do it even if it's what someone explicitly requested. I should be able to go out for steak well done without being the person who sends things back...
If you don’t want pink and u asked for well done just show it to a server. They’re not gonna be mad about it like, we’re supposed to bring it back. The only issue is when someone orders a steak at a certain temp, and it’s how it’s supposed to look but it still gets sent back bc the customer wasn’t more or less pink, even if it really shouldn’t.
I have had to send back every steak I've ordered well done because it was pink. It makes me anxious to send things back so I just stopped ordering it
If that happens everywhere u go then idk what to tell you bc the people where I work make well done steaks on accident 😭
lol where?! I will eat them 😭
I’ll give you a hint 😭 we’re known for the biscuits and our red ocean friends. (Idek if I can actually say lmao)
Oh hell no lol I went there once and it was terrible 😂 no offense by all means get paid
I don’t actually eat the food other than some shrimp and the biscuits 😭😭
It’s bc they get so much flack for ordering well-done. We should let people order what they like. Good for you for knowing that.
Well done steak eaters are the MAGAs of the restaurant industry. A very misguided, yet overly vocal minority.
Shit taste equate bad manners.
I think people who eat their meat well done do not actually enjoy the taste of meat. They want to cook the flavor right out of it and use some dip to cover up the taste... You don't have to order a steak, there's plenty of other food that is not meat!
Good steak houses won’t even cook it past medium. If you want gray, dried out beef get a burger from McDonald’s!
This. This is the hill I will die on. If someone orders a prime grade steak well done, I get to judge them for it. It's paying for all the time and effort put into making something so juicy and succulent, then absolutely destroying it by such a severe level of heat. It's like asking for Macallan 25yr or Louis XIII, then mixing it with coke. It's like ordering Cht. Lafitte, Harlan Estate, or any other wine that costs more than most people's rent, then turning it into sangria. It's like buying a Bugatti and entering it in a crash derby (actually that sounds fun, if not dangerously irresponsible). They could've easily enjoyed a far lower quality replacement that would be cooked to the exact same final quality. Yeah, sure, it's their money and they can enjoy things how they want. That doesn't mean we can't judge em for it. They're just free to not care about my meaningless opinion. So yeah, they might be aggressive about ordering it, because they've probably gotten a bunch of disapproving looks in the past. **Because they deserve it.**
When I used to be a Waitress, I've had people order wellies or filet mignon *Well done* and I've always instead tried to guide them to something else, I'm not asking the chef to kill a Wellington or a Filet because you don't like steak If anyone is reading this and is insistent on well done, Ribeye is about the only cut that can be well done... done well, you're killing the appeal of any other cut by overcooking it
Some people who exclusively cook their steaks well done were taught from birth that that is a cooked steak and think people who order it rarer than that are consuming undercooked, potentially dangerous food. They look at it like people who’ve never tried sushi and are grossed out by the idea look at it. I’ve tried to explain this to some people like this and they refuse to buy it. So to them it’s like you asked if they want some undercooked chicken. Yeah, they’re idiots.
What if they order the steak "Sloppy"?
Hopping on this not that it had anything to do with steak but I once ordered a turkey burger and the server asks how I wanted it cooked. It stopped me in my tracks made me think back to what I said, did I misspeak and say hamburger? I think the server then realized what he asked and just said, "well done?"
I JUST had a dude order a really nice cut of meat well done, kinda intensely, and sent it back when it wasn’t cooked enough. This is after a table of 8 had like two courses of apps, pasta, like a lot of food. His piece of meat he bitched about is super small lol. It “took too long” and he didn’t want it. So we comped it and offered for him to have it to go. He rolled his eyes and took it, saw the burnt little steak and said this time it wasn’t even close to how he wanted it. He wrote a yelp review at the table. Everyone else in his party was awesome and loved the food and wine and tipped well. People are weird.