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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

I witnessed something similar a few years ago at a conference in Ottawa. We had gathered at a local pub, and a Parisian friend asked for a hamburger "cooked rare". The waitress responded "I don't think we can do that", which elicited the obvious reply "of course you can, just take it off the grill sooner".

At this point we stepped in to explain that it was a matter of food safety laws, and the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked... and that, contrary to stereotypes about North American cuisine, we all understood that good quality meat shouldn't be ruined by overcooking.

He agreed to have a legal hamburger, but only on the condition that it was overcooked as little as possible.

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I witnessed the opposite in a restaurant in Switzerland. A friend ordered a steak but asked for it well done. The waitress asked if he was sure. He said yes.

A couple of minutes later the French chef came out and remonstrated with my friend for about 10 mins. The essence of the conversation (neither spoke the other's language and the rest of us translating probably wasn't helping much) was whether it ought to be a crime to cook well done steak versus how far the human rights act applied to restaurant choices.

In the end we negotiated an agreement whereby the trainee would cook it and the chef wouldn't watch.

Similar. Utah. BBQ place. Woman orders her bison well done.

The cook owner comes out, says he will not do that, she will have dust in her plate, not meat. Bison is just too dry. She insists. He says no. This goes back and forth just a bit, then he offers to cook her something else well done.

IIRC, she accepted that offer. I really respected him for that (and agreed): Sometimes the customer is completely wrong and it is better for the owner for the customer to either change their mind or leave.

There's a similar crime going on in Florence - people order a well done "bistecca alla fiorentina", not knowing that the meat has been dry-cured for at least 2 weeks in special refrigerators just so the proteins break on their own, making the meat perfectly digestible when cooked rare.

There are no hygiene issues either, so people ruining that expensive dish with their foolish requests don't have any excuse.

I knew a guy in Vancouver that frequented a hotel restaurant with particularly good burgers, and went through such extensive discussions with the manager on this issue that they eventually had him sign a waiver and agreed to cook burgers rare only for him.

Hamburger meat in Canada doesn't have to be overcooked to be safe of course. Food safety laws are just very conservative compared to europe. A few years ago BC passed a law that made it really hard for people to continue selling home-baked goods at farmers market, or for farmers to self-butcher without doing it in expensive approved facilities.

Yeah, home baked goods shouldn't be a problem with basic hygiene (it's usually the frosting that is problematic though)

> the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked

This is an exaggeration. The law originates from 1974 after a prominent TV news investigation found a few cases of contaminated beef that made no one sick. Rather than institute a new set of nation-wide inspections, the government thought it was easier to just tell people they had to cook burgers medium-well at restaurants. Several US states have recently added these laws too, but it doesn't mean US beef suddenly became unsafe.

Unless you're in a high risk category (very ill, very young, or very old), you'll be just fine with a medium rare burger.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medium-rare-burgers...

I notice you stopped short of rare.

The distinction between medium-rare and medium-well is a lot more important than rare and medium-rare. First, very few people want truly rare burgers. Second, it's not particularly smart to eat rare burgers anywhere. Unless you're in an at-risk category you'll still be very unlikely to die from eating rare burgers, but your rate of getting ill will be much higher than it's worth.

(To be clear, I was responding to the commenter's claim that burgers in Canada need to be "well cooked", not to the original story about a parisian ordering a rare burger.)

Given that it's anecdote hour, I'd like to share that the reverse works too: You can prank unwitting foreigners into believing you have all kinds of weird local culinary habits.

In my student days, I helped run a local Dutch branch of an international student association. We made it a habit to tell visiting foreigners that the Dutch, in the winter, like to heat up their beer, add whipped cream and a whiff of cacao powder, and drink it all from mug. Especially popular after ice skating. Rude to refuse.

Over the years i think we got over 200 people to drink warm beer with whipped cream voluntarily.

You are evil.

It has long been law in Canada that hamburgers be cooked well done for food safety reasons . . . Canadian restaurants will never give you the choice; it surprised me to be asked how I wanted it cooked when I was in the US and other countries. However, I take issue with the idea that the beef is unsafe. It may be slightly riskier than say a steak (which you can order rare), but if there was any suspicion about the beef, it would never be sold.

> and the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked

Well.... except it would be amongst the safest in the world.

These countries that eat different food are not safer. Just different. This is the excuse we make to excuse why we won't do it.

Sashimi chicken in Japan is not different to raw chicken in the US for instance. This is the cultural divide I think the article is about.

Both Japan and the US have requirements on what temperature and for what duration meat for raw consumption is stored. Most chicken in the US isn't meant for raw consumption, so it isn't handled that way; so Sashimi chicken in Japan is safer than most raw chicken in the US. You certainly can buy safe raw chicken in the US, but that's not what most of it is. It's not a matter of the animal itself, it's a matter of how it's handled.

For years, I've just asked for my beef to be cooked "As rare as the chef is willing to", or some similar formulation.

FWIW, In most places in the UK it is unusual to get a burger that's even slightly pink. In fact several times I've seen people send pink burgers back. I believe this is due to the uncertainty as to whether it's deliberately pink or simply.

Depends on the place, most pubs default to well done yes but dedicated burger places that seem to have been popping up all over London in the last few years seem to mostly default to medium rare.

If they ask you how you want it cooked then its fine to ask for it rare. If they dont ask, its not worth trying as its probably not good quality. Lots of places in UK do ask.

I had a similar conversation at YYZ, interestingly enough it was on the side that is considered "US soil" (leaving Canada for the US, post customs).

It was burnt to a crisp, worst burger I've ever paid more than $2 for.

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