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Dining Tips
- Post authorBy Adam Reiner
- Post dateJune 17, 2019
- 17 Comments on There’s No Such Thing as Medium Rare “Plus”
Classic French cooking approaches steak temperatures with a simple elegance. There are four basic ways the French order steak. Bleu means very rare, quickly seared on each side. Saignant, literally meaning bloody, is a bit more cooked than bleu, but still quite rare. À Point implies “perfectly cooked” (the closest to our Medium Rare) and Bien Cuit, well done. The French don’t fuss with superfluous language around ordering meat; you like your steak one way or the other. The behavior is anchored in a tradition of respect for the chef’s expertise and deference to the talent in the kitchen.
Americans aren’t able to speak so abstractly about cooking meat and are more suspicious of the chef’s faculties. To make steak temperatures more scrutable, restaurants (with the blessing of the USDA) devised a vernacular to help diners better understand the different gradations of doneness. The approach is rather dogmatic with five concrete meat temperatures, now ubiquitous: Rare, Medium Rare, Medium, Medium Well and Well Done. Restaurant chefs have adhered to this scale for generations but they are a constant source of headaches for hospitality professionals. No matter how streamlined these guidelines have become, there will always be differences in perception around how we should define them.
Today’s diners are becoming increasingly nuanced about how they like their meat cooked. As palates become more sophisticated, defining proper meat temperatures has evolved into a significantly more complicated conversation. It’s disturbingly common to hear guests request “plus” temperatures, meaning they want their meat cooked a shade in between two standard ones. “Medium Rare Plus” implies they like their steak cooked a little more than Medium Rare but not quite Medium. Unfortunately, most restaurant kitchens are too busy to handle this level of specificity.
Trying to make guests happy who order their meat cooked outside of the standard spectrum can drive servers—and chefs—to madness. If we insist that guests adhere to the accepted scale, we increase the likelihood that they’ll send their food back. If they’re unhappy with the finished product, they’ll blame us for not making enough of an effort to understand their preferences. If we allow them to order fabricated steak temperatures that don’t exist, we must face the rage of an ornery chef who bristles at anything that strays outside of protocol. As with many hospitality conundrums, we’re always caught between a rock and a hard place.
A restaurant kitchen isn’t an artist’s studio; it’s a factory. As a guest, you have a responsibility to understand that not every element of your dining experience is customizable. When you dine in a restaurant, you are enjoying plates or food that were engineered to be efficiently served simultaneously to a dining room full of hungry people. Expecting your initials monogrammed on every dish shows a lack of respect for the orderliness that is necessary for a cohesively functioning kitchen.
If waiters could somehow escort every guest who ordered “Medium Rare Plus” into the sweltering kitchen to explain to the grill cook how they like their steak, not a soul would ever ask for it that way again. The power that many guests feel when it comes to the peculiarities of cooking their food is in the luxury of not having to deal with the shame of facing the sweaty cook who’s making it. Good guests won’t abuse that power.
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DeezLegumes
4 years ago
Exactly. God bless you. I am sick of hearing this BS. One of the occasions the customer is NOT always right :)
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AndyP
4 years ago
I’ll start with, I’ve never sent a steak back. But I don’t see the problem with specifying a cooking temperature from the traditional ones. I don’t expect much from say a Colton’s or Texas Road House but if I’m going to an upscale steak house (Capital Grille, Jeff Ruby’s, The Palm) and paying $90 for a dry aged bone in ribeye I expect them to take their time preparing my steak and they always do even if as the author contends it’s “annoying”. The usual bill for 4 at these steakhouses is in the neighborhood of $500-600. At that price…Read more »
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Mark St thomas
4 years ago
Fantastic information! Your insight of the restaurant industry is great for those who’ve never experienced a kitchen pounding out food on a Saturday night. However, I have to disagree with your thesis here. If you pull a steak and allow it to rest, resulting in a finished temperature of 137.5° what would that be? Water will not boil until 212°, it will not freeze until 32°, not 31°. Small increases affect the end result drarasticly. You probably set your thermostat to a specific temperature every night when you go to sleep. People have they’re personal preferences and you can’t change…Read more »
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Simone Runyan
4 years ago
I understand your point, but I totally disagree. You say these very specific designations “don’t actually exist,” but clearly they do exist, or we wouldn’t be talking about them. Just like language changes over time, so do customs. And just because the French don’t do this doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t. First, I doubt many grill cooks and short order chefs are getting a lot of orders for steak prepared “Medium Rare Plus” and the like. The higher end steak houses probably don’t get many requests for this sort of thing either, but they should be willing to accommodate…Read more »
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Mike Goring
4 years ago
The concept of “I understand you’ve given me 5 options, but it clearly isn’t enough for someone as important as myself” when it comes to steak doneness is so American it should be tattooed onto the side of a bald eagle eating an apple pie.
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Matt
4 years ago
This lacks research. “Medium rare plus” is something that has emerged from cost cutting restaurants trying to save every penny. When people order medium rare, the restaurants are purposely undercooking the steak. If its a little undercooked and the customer complains, it can be refired. If its over cooked, it needs to be tossed. “Medium rare plus” evolved from “just cook my f*cking steak right the first time”.
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The False Promises of the White House Restaurant Roundtable | THE RESTAURANT MANIFESTO
4 years ago
[…] “status wines” to siphon corporate dollars. We charge astronomical sums for grotesquely large cuts of beef, meticulously dry-aged and wrapped in whiskey-soaked bandages. The reward is that we get to live […]
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Charlie
4 years ago
Thank you for these guides. They are so helpful for me
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Allan Mercado
3 years ago
I’ve worked steakhouses as a lead grill cook. Yes, you can grill a steak med rare +. Steak has to be thick enough and you have to know your sh*t. Snooty chefs and traditional (outdated) methods would say otherwise… but its bc they can’t handle the thought of change
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PA
3 years ago
Unless YOU’RE spending the money (and — as a chef or a server, you are RECEIVING money), the customer is still right, sorry. The upside is, chefs and waiters are also sometimes customers themselves: and when they are, guess who’s right, then? As a business owner, I will tell you, if you don’t do it right, the restaurant next door will. And you’ll be out of a job. So … perspective.
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Blu_skool
2 years ago
As a line cook over the past 14 years, I have no problem cooking the standard rare, Mr, medium, mid well, and well. I do have a problem with medium-plus or medium-rare plus. We’re talking about less than 2 degrees of difference in temperature. There’s absolutely no reason to be that picky.
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Chief
1 year ago
Medium Rare Plus is for the person who wants their steak cooked Medium. Translation: Cook it Medium!!! They do not want people to judge them on the Medium so they become an elitist ass and order their steak Medium Rare Plus. They should order the Shrimp Scampi and have their steak at home on their George Forman because the next thing they are going to ask for is the A1. “I am paying” is even more elitist as there are up charges for their custom car and custom home. No up charge for their custom personality though. “PLUS is a…Read more »
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thomas Kettells
2 months ago
Reply to Chief
As a restaurant professional for decades its common knowledge steaks are slightly under cooked on a regular basis on purpose by the chef, far easier and cheaper to “fix” if sent back than to toss it its overdone. Someone in the know asks for medium rare plus to let the chef know that they can cook it legit med rare or a little more and its all good. Its not bullsh*t if you know why you are ordering it that way. Perhaps some heard it was cool and thy are a bit douchy because they dont know why,..whatever it is…Read more »
Last edited 2 months ago by thomas Kettells
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Remy
1 year ago
Medium rare plus is 135-140. Not a huge ask at a premium steakhouse. I ordered a ribeye this way at Elway’s in Denver last night and the waiter didn’t even blink. And, the steak was perfect.
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Fred
1 year ago
If restaurants are so fussy that they cannot accommodate the way someone wants a $50.00 steak cooked then they should close their doors. However, pleasing the chief over pleasing the customer will close their doors for them especially when money is tight and going out dining is a luxury and not a necessity. Get over yourself.
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Crabby Lobster
1 year ago
I pay somebody 20 times what the meat actually costs because of the exact thing you decry in this article… namely the level of specificity and excellence demonstrated in the kitchen. Don’t want to do your job, don’t charge me $100 for a piece of meat. If you’re going to charge me that don’t whine when I ask you to cook it exactly the way I want.
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