They’re living in the stone age.
Steak can be served food safe at 54.5C (130F, below what most folks think of as medium-rare) so long as you hold it at temperature long enough. Sous vide being the preferred method, steaks can be held at lower temperature throughout service and cooked to a higher doneness as needed.
Hmmm, from my limited experience, I don’t think many restaurants actually hold steaks at 130 for 112+ minutes, though, unless they are a place that is specially advertising its sous vide meat.
This Reddit thread of cooks suggest that most places give it a sear under the broiler and then put it in the oven for a few minutes.
Again I’m not a restaurant kitchen expert, but I would expect the logistics of having to keep many steaks ready to go at 130º for several hours on end would add significantly to the cost and complexity of the operation.
The thing is, burgers are not like other forms of beef. Most of the harmful bacteria on a steak, say, are on the outside, and the dense nature of the meat means less of them get to the middle. So you sear the steak and you kill most of the germs.
When you make a burger you mix the outside with the inside, and so the bacteria get everywhere. A good burger joint (or butcher) will grind meat intended for burgers from large, single cuts to minimize the ratio of outside to inside and thus be able to make relatively safe undercooked burgers. I doubt the Hilton is using such a reputable source though, and no one should be doing it at home with, say, supermarket ground beef, where cuts from all over the place will be used.
The safest way is to use irradiated beef.
When I go to the local greasy spoon, I order my burger well done… they always cook it properly anyways, but ask to keep it on the grill an extra few minutes. At a chain store you get what you get.
A few years ago the local ground beef supplier to many of the mom & pop burger joints in town sent out contaminated meat and several dozen customers got pretty sick.
Some say meat wasn’t cooked long enough, others say it was bad meat to start with and cooking time wouldn’t have mattered.
The joints took a reputational hit, people were hesitant to go back. Not their fault.
I like my steaks fairly rare, but if I am asked for a doneness for burgers I’ll tell them medium well. I don’t actually like the texture of a too rare burger in most cases.
As far as carpaccio or steak tartare, I generally only like a couple bites so I never order the dish for myself.
Canadian Food handling rules are a little different than American ones. I’ve never had a Canadian restaurant ask how I wanted my Burger. By now we should recognize that different countries do things differently (as that seems to be an entire genre of TikToks). The secondary gift of this information is a quiet smugness that your own country is best.
Its all about surface area and how long there is lots of it. (more surface area meaning more places for bacteria to be/grow)
Grinding a large cut shortly before serving involves a lot less surface area than grinding a bunch of end cuts together (very common for “ground beef”. Then leaving that grind for a couple days is even more surface area for that E coli to grow.
So while its not perfectly safe grinding on site its a lot safer than bringing in pre ground.
My no experience at all understanding is that commercial kitchens have been using sous vide for much longer than it’s been a trend for people to know about.
Something that is much easier to organize if you know about how much you’ll sell on any given night. To minimize stuff left over but not sold at the end of the night.
Great for a steak house, or someplace that at least sells a consistent number every night. Even someplace that sells a roughly consistent amount and is willing to run out to avoid the cost of waste.
Not so much for a mostly short order menu with only one random steak option.
I assume this is how steaks at banquet events have been cooked forever. How else would the deliver 50 - 100 plates less than 10 minutes apart.
can’t wait for the back of grocery receipts to carry waivers, indemnifications and all other matter of legal issues they can dodge.
Nope. I’ve only been asked once in Ontario how I’d like my burger done.
And that was at a pretentious place.
It just doesn’t happen here. Your burger comes well done. That’s it.
The waiver came after because the server or manager or chef screwed up. Probably because it never happens.
As a vegan who just read through all these comments I can only say
… was the inedible food any good then 
And the portions, so small!
I understood that reference! And I’m both impressed and a bit concerned that I can still recite most of that song.
That right there. That waiver has a history behind it.
On the other hand, I am also willing to accept that the waiver is something given only to the certain class of customer as a way of saying “I see what you’re up to and won’t play your game.”
Using a Cambro! They are fancy insulated boxes for holding large quantities of food at safe temps. They are very popular in catering.
They are also popular in BBQ and home cooking large items (like a turkey) that needs to be kept warm for an extended period. But most often at home you will hear about a “faux Cambro”, aka a cooler. Popping a pork.butt in a cooler can help a lot when the bbq is done at noon but dinner is 6pm…
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