The Steak-Ordering Trend That May Cause More Problems Than It Solves

For a long time, the worst thing you could ever ask for in a fancy steakhouse was a well-done steak. Cooks and chefs have long complained about overcooking expensive steaks because the meat becomes tough and dry, but these days they have an entirely new problem on their hands: people ordering steaks by temperature and adding the word "plus." 

It's not clear when or where this ordering trend originated, but chefs in Reddit's r/Chefit, a subreddit for professional chefs, report on a thread that customers have requested this order in restaurants from Chicago to Hawaii. Perhaps the most common variation is a request for "medium rare plus", but diners have started using it for all the different temperatures to denote that they want their meat cooked just a tiny bit more or less than the standard rare, medium rare, and so on. Essentially it's asking for the steak to be cooked in between temperatures, which isn't as easy for cooks as it sounds. 

The problem with asking for meat cooked with the word "plus" attached is that there's not a lot of wiggle room between each meat temperature, and it's a challenge for the kitchen staff to accommodate this. People may think that ordering this way is helpful because it seems more specific, but It's actually better to just stick to the commonly accepted five categories: rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, and well done. In fact, most of the time when someone is describing a steak with the word plus, they're simply asking for it to be cooked at the next higher temperature level.

If you've ever been to a fancy steakhouse like Delmonico's, you're probably already aware of what each level of doneness looks like (if not, we have a helpful cheat sheet on steak temperatures). Most diners picture a certain color when the steak is sliced open; however, each category of doneness corresponds to an actual temperature. Medium rare, for instance, is around 130 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and medium is 135 to 145 degrees. 

So there's not much space for interpretation for the people ordering "plus". Ordering a medium-rare "plus" steak would mean cooking the steak to around 137 degrees without going over 140, which is more or less impossible when a cook is grilling multiple steaks at a time. Consider that a steak can cook to medium rare in as little as four minutes on each side on a hot grill, so it's pretty hard to thread the needle between 135 and 140 degrees. This is perhaps why some restaurants purposely undercook steaks; it's easier and cheaper to cook them for longer if they're sent back, rather than start over with a new steak if the first was overcooked.

It's likely when a customer orders a steak with plus as a qualifier, the server will simply enter it as the next-highest temperature. This cuts down on the kitchen trying to figure out what plus means, and really most of the time, the doneness and color are what a customer had in mind in the first place.