Restaurants Are Cooking Your Steak Too Damn Rare on Purpose
There’s one simple reason why your meat is coming out bloodier than you expect.
Notice something bloody frustrating going on at your favorite steakhouse?
Savvy meat lovers are realizing that restaurants are cooking their steaks more rare than they’re supposed to—even when folks (correctly) order them medium rare. The NY Post did a full-blown investigation into this phenomena, and reason behind the uncooked offerings is simple economics:
While getting an underdone steak has been a possibility for decades, what’s really given the phenomenon traction is that chefs are under bottom-line pressure to reduce throwaways that occur when customers say a steak is too well-done. An under-cooked steak, on the other hand, can always be salvaged with a touch more fire.
Wait a second—they just don’t want to throw away their precious morsels of meat? Yup.
Tony Fortuna, owner of the always-buzzing TBar Steak & Lounge says he spends $34 to buy a 24-ounce, dry-aged cut of rib-eye, and, if one customer finds their steak overcooked, “we lose money on the whole table.”
Perfect #porterhouse every time at @TBARNYC. Sorry, not in the mood to share. #steak #NYCeats pic.twitter.com/nSmU4dCAnt
— Maxim (@MaximMag) June 22, 2017
Ouch. Adding to restaurant owners’ woes is the rising cost of the beef itself. “Right now I’m buying choice rib-eye for around $8 a pound,” Mark Pastore, president of distributor Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors, tells the Post. “It was $6 two years ago.” Prime, the highest grade, now costs him “around $9.50 a pound, versus $8 two years ago.”
So it all makes sense… we suppose. Perhaps the best solution is to just make your steak at home and be done with it.
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