Brews & Eats

Giving diners a choice on ‘steak doneness’ is a really stupid idea, and it’s about time we stopped it.

By Ocelot Food Columnist Dave Stewart

I like steak. I may go so far as to say I love steak. Sod it, I will. I love steak. If my wife, parents, siblings, friends, family photos, pets, Xbox, Fender Strat and completed World Cup ’94 Panini sticker albums were all completely safe and accounted for, then the prized piece of flat iron I had chilling in the fridge would probably be the next thing I rescued if my house was burning down (And for some reason everyone I knew was visiting).

For despite all the fashion food trends that come and go, and all the fun of new tastes and exotic cuisines I still find that a classic, charred-edges and bloody-centred steak, served with an aggressively fired peppercorn sauce and a pile of chips far bigger than any man should reasonably be tackling, one of life’s absolute joys. To me, ordering a steak unfailingly signals that I am ‘eating out’, with all the bells and whistles that entails. And, as steak is often one of the pricier things on restaurant menus – something I reserve for myself as an exceptionally rare treat. I believe it should be just this way –  we cannot remain ignorant to the staggering environmental costs of getting that slice of sirloin to our plate, nor forget all the expertise and care that has gone into producing it. A steak dinner fully deserves to be something of an event, to be enjoyed and to be savoured.

It is crucial then, after all that pomp and steakumstance, that the piece of meat you are served is perfect, because it may well be a while until the next one. To many, the ‘perfect steak’ means having their rib-eye or rump cooked just to their liking. It’s an established dining routine almost as old as modern dining itself – ‘how would you like your steak cooked, sir?’, to which there are of course, a well-rehearsed set of answers which one responds with, and then that’s exactly what the chef does and everyone goes home happy.

Except that’s not how it is, is it?

Because even though we all give our set ‘answer’ it’s almost certainly never what we get. And even giving that answer can be subject to countless culinary neuroses, which can cause the cautious diner to second, third and even fourth-guess the restaurant, the chef, the waiter, hell- even judge the people around them - depending how deep they want to descend down the rabbit hole of steak madness. Because if you’re in a chain restaurant, and you like your steaks medium rare, well, you might consider ‘transposing’ a level and asking for ‘rare’ this time instead, because you just fully bloody well know they’re going to overdo it. Except then you think, no wait, that’s crazy – the way to get what I want is just to be straight up and honest. The best policy and all that. ‘Medium Rare’, you say, proudly thinking you’ve outwitted the system. And what comes back? A charred piece of chewy gristly leather, obviously, because you shouldn’t be eating steaks in a chain restaurant and expecting much else, silly.

But this doesn’t mean a smug bit of restaurant snobbery can cure this problem. Oh no. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that a ‘rare’ steak in a Michelin-starred restaurant will be far, far, rarer than that very same cut cooked in a friendly country pub. But does this mean that the chef with the shiny star to their name is infinitely more skilled than their pub counterpart down the road? No, not necessarily. It is merely a reflection of the fact that the less famous kitchen chef will often, through a mix of tradition and perceived market expectation, keep a steak on the grill ‘just a few seconds more’ than that very same chef (and they do indeed get Michelin-starred chefs in pubs these days) would do in a swanky West Street London restaurant (mentioning no names).

The point is, the ‘international steak scale’ is so utterly inconsistent, that the diner seeking the perfect steak is disproportionately likely to be disappointed. Everybody is second guessing everyone else. And because we have such radically different levels of expectations, and the level of diner scrutiny is raised that much more because the diner feels somehow involved in the whole process, it’s a recipe for nothing but bad steaks.

Diners are forced to draw from their own entirely unique memories of previous steak-dining experiences, and try to make a judgement call accordingly, based on how they think they remember they ordered the steak that time it was really good at that place they like in that city they used to live in. (Or, they’re just saying ‘well done’ because they find the thought of blood too ‘icky’ to contemplate and, quite frankly, aren’t really deserving of having a living animal slaughtered for their suspicious and joyless chewing. Because no one loves a well-done steak, even the people who order it, for the same reason people don’t enjoy burnt toast).

The Solution

But it doesn’t have to be this way. A solution is staring us all in the face. Because there is someone who can ‘second guess’ absolutely everything and cook the steak just how it should be cooked. The chef. The chef knows the cut. They know the grill. They can tell by feel and sight and supplier and ambient temperature and thickness of cut and marbling of fat and all manner of other instinctive judgements just how long your steak will need to be on the heat, and just how long it will need to rest afterwards to be as tender and juicy as possible, but still warm when served. They know, more than the diners, more than the waiters, more than anybody else on this green earth, exactly how the piece of meat destined for your mouth should best be enjoyed. They know that a sliver of onglet needs to be charred on the edges but absolutely rare in the middle, they know that the rump needs a little longer, they know the fillet should barely see the heat at all, and be blushing in the middle. They know all this because it is their job to be an expert on such matters.

So why the hell would we, the public, with little-to-sod-all knowledge of what’s going on back there, be given a choice as to how to cook a piece of steak we haven’t even seen yet? Does the chef come out and ask you how you would like your bread cooked? Doughy, soft crumb or shrapnel-black? Does he ask you what diameter of carrot baton best suits your individual preference? Does he ask you if you want your chicken with or without campylobacter? No he doesn’t, because that would be bloody stupid. So why-oh-why, other than because tradition tells us to, do we all insist on playing along with this tired old pantomime?

Perhaps in the early days of restaurant dining, when the average Brit’s palate was only marginally more discerning than iron-age man’s, this sort of thing did indeed serve a purpose. Because no matter what anyone said, the steak was sure as hell going to suck anyway. And everybody was fine with that. And we won two world wars, and never locked our front doors, and everyone rode bicycles with bells on and laughed at casually racist jokes and that was great too.

But things have changed. The dining scene in Britain is now amongst the most varied and vibrant in the world. We have absorbed food and cultures and cuisines and ingredients from all over the world. It has enriched our national palate.

We have new markets and food halls and cooking shows and dinner parties and cooking shows about dinner parties and we relish the new and are finally celebrating British produce in our restaurants. In a culinary sense, we’ve grown up. So let’s start acting like it with our steaks, and ditch the whole ‘choice’ rigmarole. Until then, the next time the waiter asks you how you’d like your steak cooked, just simply say ‘however the chef recommends it be cooked’. You might just find it’s the best steak you’ve ever had.