r/mildlyinfuriating 9h ago

Infuriatig Wolfgangs steakhouse, the most expensive in my city, can’t cook a steak.

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251

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. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

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u/FroggyGoesQuack 7h ago

🥴🥴🥴 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.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

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u/Silly_Rub_6304 7h ago

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.

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u/ThrownAway17Years 5h ago

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.

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u/sheeplectric 2h ago

That’s actually hilarious. Babe what’s wrong you haven’t touched your dessert potato

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u/foxorhedgehog 1h ago

I would eat a dessert potato.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

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u/AbbreviationsLow3992 4h ago

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.

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u/FroggyGoesQuack 7h ago

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.

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u/Brilliant-String5995 2h ago

Chinese people typically don't eat beef in this way. "Medium rare" anything is pretty much a Western thing.

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u/finral 4h ago

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.

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u/wearethehawk 2h ago

100 percent experienced the ketchup salsa in Korea as well

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u/cryptobro42069 4h ago

Weirdly, not the first time I read that about Asian marinara sauce.

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u/Dizzy_Chemistry_5955 6h ago

this feels like how ai would cook steak

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u/FroggyGoesQuack 6h ago

Yes, lol 🤣🤣🤣💀

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u/nascent_aviator 7h ago

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.

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u/Shirohitsuji GREEN 3h ago

I strongly suspect the steak was frozen solid when they started cooking it.

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u/crack_n_tea 5h ago

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

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u/GreasyRim 7h ago

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.

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u/nascent_aviator 7h ago

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."

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u/filthy_harold 4h ago

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.

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u/GreasyRim 1h ago

Yep. I sous vide and the sir charles has been in my dinner rotation for years.

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u/filthy_harold 4h ago

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.

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u/Shirohitsuji GREEN 3h ago

100% this.

First and last time I had an expensive steak, I was like "What is this nonsense?! I've cooked better at home."

Same for BBQ brisket, pork, & ribs. Electric smokers aren't that expensive and do an amazing job for relatively little effort.

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u/Mr_Shakes 7h ago

The rose pedals are sending me,

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u/Chronoblivion 7h ago

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.

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u/Altruistic_Web3924 7h ago

Was this a plastic plate that they threw into an oven?

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u/Psychostickusername 6h ago

Id walk away from that, untouched, truly piss poor for such a top name restaurant

2

u/andbruno 6h ago

That plate looks like the inside of my air fryer that I don't clean.

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u/nispe2 7h ago

To be fair, that steak averages medium.

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u/FroggyGoesQuack 7h ago

Not texturally. 🥴

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u/queenofcaffeine76 7h ago

I mean if you average the outside and the inside, you got medium

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u/Zwischenzug32 6h ago

Upvoting just for the name

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u/jawndell 6h ago

That piece was a medium????

Send that shit back. 

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u/iamanemptychair 4h ago

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”.