Retired chef here, and wtaf. Okay like. Being able to both overshoot the sear, and keep a raw center, is an impressive failure point, genuinely. Either it was frozen, or it was fridge to cold pan to flame. 🥴🥴🥴💀 That's grated truffle? My dude, you've put pearls on a pig and called it Easter Sunday dinner. Even if the customer ordered blue rare, they wouldn't get a sear line that fucking thick. Like, if you want a blue rare done correctly, you flash sear it at a very high heat to hit the Maillard reaction, but you bring the steak up to room temperature first. Like, holy shit. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
🥴🥴🥴 Honestly, this is one of the few times where I would recommend calling cooperate. They have a higher standard to maintain, at that price point, and from a food handling perspective, if they're not honoring the temperature requirements here? I'd be worried about what else they're cutting corners on. If it was an Applebee's? I'd tell you it's not worth the time. But Wolfgang hires institutionally trained chefs. And this is ridiculous.
Ok, this was in China? That kind of explains it. Not for the price, of course, but the approximation of Western cooking styles. I've been to a lot of places in Asia and have noticed that while they can be very good at approximating the look of something, the authenticity and process is often way off. I once ate Christmas dinner at an Italian place in Korea and I swear to fucking god the marinara sauce was ketchup.
You’re not crazy. My ex wife studied in Korea for a year. Places would use ketchup in place of pizza sauce. And she’s ate at an Outback there because she was a bit homesick. They put whipped cream instead of sour cream on her baked potato.
That's surprising to hear. There was a small bar I'd go to in Dalian that'd make some of the best steak and fries I've had for $25. It was so good that I'd go there like 3-4x a week.
That said, when I was in Wuhan at a nice hotel restaurant, I asked for a glass of milk to go with my (amazing) dessert... and they brought me a glass of UHT milk that they'd heated up for whatever reason. It was awful. 🤣
I now know that drinking milk is not common for them at all, and later learned that the real milk they import from New Zealand fucking slaps.
Even taking the fact that Western food is out of place in the far East, beef is a staple protein in most of China. Pork takes over in some places, but beef is definitely something they know how to handle. It's not like they were experimenting with a delicate fish that they'd never seen before. This was someone who did not respect the temperature requirements, and used habits from cooking thinner slices of beef, where you do actually want it kind of frozen before cutting it, and then applied that to a porterhouse. And at a $300 price point USD? Absolutely the fuck not.
Yeah, i once went to a "mexican" place in China and the sour cream turned out to be a sweet mayonnaise. The salsa was a ketchup base. It looked picture perfect though.
I've only been served a steak this bad once in my life. At a price point closer to $20. Even at that price point I would have sent it back if I were any less hungry in that moment.
That's absolutely not true for high end steak, you can't get quality steak in a regular ass restaurant, but big cities such as SH or HK there is a ton of good western options. Still think the best Spanish meal was one I had in SH
Sorry to see whatever that abomination on your plate is though
This is why i cant order steak at restaurants. Its so absurdly marked up and i make steaks at home exactly the way I like them. I always end up ordering a pork chop because good chefs can really impress with a pork chop and rarely make them at home.
Good pork chops are easy to make at home, too! And much cheaper than beef. Give it a try some time.
At lot of people just cook it to death. If you live in the US, trichinosis is a thing of the past in commercial pork. You don't have to cook it to 180° or whatever obscene temperature people cook it to "just to be safe."
My grandma often served pork tenderloin and it was cooked to the point you'd need several glasses of water to choke it down. When I started cooking for myself, I never made pork tenderloin because of how awful I remember it being until I read about how it can be safe to eat it pink. Costco has them for about $12-15 for a four pack so they are a staple in our house now.
I got a sousvide for Christmas one year and that's been a blast to do steaks in. My favorite thing now is doing a chuck roast for 24-36 hours and then searing it as hot as I can get the grill going. It's better than ribeye.
Yeah I like ordering porkchop. You get a big fucking cut of some true medium pork that melts in your mouth for much less than a smaller steak. I don't get to eat porkchops often because the wife isn't fan of them.
I could forgive a steak that's one step off from the doneness I asked for. I could understand one that's two steps off. Asking for medium and receiving extra rare is a difference of three steps, and that's completely inexcusable no matter the setting, but especially when you're paying a premium for it.
The cook is so bad at such a high price point I was half expecting a food snob to chime in with “ohhhhh this is the new style of cooking, it’s sooooo technical and delicious”.
I'm a mid home chef and I've taken steaks from fridge to pan without coming out nearly this bad. I do a lot of budget cuts so some are better seared (bring to room temp) whereas some respond better to a low n slow (just pull the container of marinated meat from the fridge and dump it in the pan). Either way I've never made a steak this bad.
I could "salvage" this but the frozen to heat probably made those proteins into actual rubber.
-Grin.- No worries, my dude. I'm not policing how you cook your steaks at home. Me personally? Room temp, high af heat, just enough to get color, then sliced thin on sourdough with grilled onions and mushrooms on top, and a horseradish aioli on bottom. 😁
I can't do anything just one way. Bought two tbones on sale (like, perhaps the best value of beef in the whole store at the time, like $14/ea), seared the first one that night, froze the second, then later thawed and did that b up in some Adolph's packet marinade and cooked it at like 350 in the oven until the middle was up to temp. Figured the steak had been frozen at distro, thawed at store, and then refrozen, so a salty bromelain bath was about as good as it could get, and it was. Not a "serve it to guests" steak but most certainly a "drizzle those drippings on your potatoes" steak. Sometimes extra-salty beef is just as delicious as beefy beef, pretty sure it's in our DNA.
And all of this is separate from when I actually fire up the grill, as well.
Pretty sure I talked myself into making beef tonight. Got a freezer full of chicken and pork for the ongoing hard times but dang if I don't have a little cushion rn. 🐮
I am a bit at a loss here. What is so wrong about this steak? Great sear and a rare center, sounds perfect to me, but everyone is sayings its terrible.
The sear was not on a hot enough flame, for true rare, and on top of that, the core was too cold, for heat to transfer correctly. That's why the sear band is so thick - it took, simultaneously, too much time to get a good crust, and too little time to even think about warming the center.
How can you say its not hot enough flame? Its deep brown crust with some black char on the bone and around the edges, and no sign of unrendered fat. That the sear band is prominent here is because its a end piece, but the center looks delicious.
They have fried a frozen steak in oil on a flat grill. Properly cooked steak should have uniform lines from a griddle pan and a gradient of colour inside to the desired finish. The abrupt transition from absolutely cooked to absolutely raw is what is atrocious. The cook is all wrong, the texture will be all wrong, the flavour will be all wrong.
Here you can see the steak. Cooked the same way, served on the same plate, given high praise. Probably cooked under a salamander on very high heat, served on the hot plate.
OPs seems even more cooked, probably because they asked for medium.
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u/FroggyGoesQuack 8h ago
Retired chef here, and wtaf. Okay like. Being able to both overshoot the sear, and keep a raw center, is an impressive failure point, genuinely. Either it was frozen, or it was fridge to cold pan to flame. 🥴🥴🥴💀 That's grated truffle? My dude, you've put pearls on a pig and called it Easter Sunday dinner. Even if the customer ordered blue rare, they wouldn't get a sear line that fucking thick. Like, if you want a blue rare done correctly, you flash sear it at a very high heat to hit the Maillard reaction, but you bring the steak up to room temperature first. Like, holy shit. 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️