Whether you’re a restaurant chef or a diner you know that a nice cut of steak doesn’t come cheap. Some cuts cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Even at the low end of the market steaks can cost between $20 and $30. With prices this high you’d hope that restaurants would get your steak right but you might relate to finding undercooked meat on your plate. Foodies on Reddit have even discussed this surprisingly common phenomenon with one user writing about a piece of purple-colored beef: “I ordered a fancy steak from a hotel restaurant. I asked for medium rare and this is what I got. Am I wrong to send it back to cook a little longer?”
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Insider Tech | 2016-12-13 22:00:01 |  4,520,997 Views |
Anthony Bourdain on the Biggest Steak Cooking Mistake
If you’ve had a similar experience you might be wondering: Do steakhouses undercook their steaks on purpose? The New York Post claimed so in 2018 citing anecdotal evidence that restaurants “purposely” undercook customers’ steaks. One woman interviewed for the article said her order of medium-rare beef at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse “looked like a regular steak but when we cut into it it was practically raw.” The story alleged that this is done intentionally to reduce costs and inventory losses.
The conventional wisdom is that a restaurant can always cook an underdone steak a little longer but if they overcook it they have to throw the whole thing out. Several chefs and restaurants have since denied in interviews that steakhouses undercook meat on purpose but other professionals offer a different perspective.
Restaurants are tricking your taste buds with their steaks but are they tricking you in other ways? The New York Post claims that steakhouses save more money by undercooking a steak which keeps it out of the trash. Mark Pastore president of distributor Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors said that steakhouses in New York City have started using the terminology “medium rare plus” when they want their steak to sit on the grill a little longer.
