12 Things You Should Never Say When Ordering Steak

If you're a meat lover, a big, juicy steak seared to perfection can deliver ultimate satisfaction. With the right equipment and know-how, any home chef can learn expert cooking techniques for large cuts of steak. But if you'd rather let someone else do all the work — let alone the dishes — the steak dinner of your dreams is worth an excursion to somewhere a little (or a lot) fancier than your usual hangouts. 

Even the kind of home cook who has a favorite meat thermometer and can tell a medium-rare steak by touch will happily leave the cooking to an expert for a special meal or celebration. As restaurant customers fall in love with steakhouses all over again, diners are also flocking to trendy bistros and classic white-tablecloth restaurants that offer steaks worth the price tag. 

However, if you don't dine out at The Ritz every night, all this talk of tablecloths and bistros might seem a little intimidating. Never fear — the quick-to-judge servers of legend are largely found only in tales of restaurants past. In modern eateries, customer service is the name of the game. Still, there are several tips, hints, and unspoken rules that are good to know when going out for steak — including things you should never say when ordering it. 

When a server asks how you'd like your steak done, your options are rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, or well done. Each level of doneness is defined by a specific range on a meat thermometer, although only experienced chefs may possess the almost-magical talent for getting it right every time. How long it takes a steak to reach each level depends on the cut of beef, the individual steak's size and thickness, and the heat of the grill. A medium-rare steak, for example, should have an interior temperature of 130 to 135 degrees Fahrenheit; a medium one, between 140 and 145 degrees Fahrenheit. For a 6- to 8-ounce steak, the difference between medium-rare and medium is determined by a minute or so on the grill.

Ordering a steak done "medium plus" doesn't signal to the server that you are a person of such exquisite taste that the difference of 30 seconds' cook time is a deal-breaker. Your server probably hears something more like, "I don't understand how a restaurant kitchen works, and I'd really like to annoy the chef." Chefs and servers tend to concur that any "plus" order will likely be cooked to the higher temperature in the range. If you order a medium plus steak, it will almost certainly be served medium well. And it will be just fine. 

Social media can be a great way of learning about new restaurants or dishes you've never tried. If someone you follow has posted photos of a gorgeous steak from a restaurant where you're dining, go ahead and ask your server about it. If the pic is of a seasonal special or something else that's no longer on the menu, the server can help guide you to something you'll enjoy, and it's worthwhile to follow that advice — because spending big bucks on a steak just for an Instagram post isn't your best dining option.

We're not going to hate on anyone for ordering something just because it looks neat online. However, maybe make it a $7 fancy latte, not a $1,000 filet mignon wrapped in gold leaf at a blingy Vegas restaurant. Without a doubt, photos of a beautiful steak fit for a James Bond villain are eye-catching, and perhaps for a few minutes, eating gold leaf might make you feel like a million bucks. But paying for a chef to apply gold — or any such gimmick — to even the tastiest of steaks will likely result in your receiving insufficient bang for the buck. A properly prepared steak is timelessly delicious, and needs no trendy embellishments. 

Steak tartare is one of the famous French dishes many people only pretend to know about. It's prepared from high-quality raw steak — typically beef tenderloin or top round — that's minced and mixed with capers, shallots, or other flavorings, and scooped onto crusty bread, toast points, or even potato chips. But whatever you scoop it onto, the steak is always raw. Asking for it to be cooked is like telling a sushi chef you'll have your sashimi grilled. Gourmets may mock people who order steak tartare this way, although a server would most likely just be confused, and worried about how you'd react to being gently corrected. 

Here's the thing: No server worth their apron minds helping diners to understand everything on offer. It's good customer service, which pays off in the form of better tips and the satisfaction of helping a fledgling regular find their new favorite dish. The terminally shy or introverted diner may wilt at the idea of asking to have French-cuisine terminology explained, fearing it will make them look foolish if they don't know their boeuf bourguignon from their Chateaubriand — let alone what they're getting into when ordering steak tartare. In fact, boldly ordering something you may not enjoy, particularly at fine-dining prices, is a much worse look. Instead, pregame by checking out menus online. That way, you can look up any unfamiliar terms ahead of time, minimizing awkward surprises at the table. 

You may wonder why asking for A.1. is a faux pas. After all, isn't it a steak sauce? Well ... kind of. In fact, while this iconic product's label called it "steak sauce" for many years, during the past decade the bottle is simply labeled "original sauce" as part of a marketing push to encourage customers to slather it on a wide range of foods. 

Commercial steak sauces were largely formulated to dominate or even disguise the taste of a lackluster cut of meat. Heavy on notes of salt, acid, and sugar, old-school steak sauce could probably make a gym sock palatable, and that's actually part of the problem here. A nice cut of steak has the potential to be truly transcendent when properly aged, seasoned minimally, and cooked over high heat to ideal doneness. Imagine you're the chef who selected this cut for the menu, lovingly prepared it, and sent it out to a diner ... only to have the customer douse it in a store-bought concoction laden with vinegar and corn syrup. Can you see how that might be a little insulting? 

Instead, look for sauce pairings on the evening's menu. Perhaps a velvety peppercorn sauce is offered over a tender filet. Meanwhile, at a Latin–influenced restaurant, the chef may insist that chimichurri is the only sauce worth serving on steak. If you're unsure of what you'd enjoy, ask your server for guidance. 

While not quite eliciting the level of cringe as ordering a broiled tartare, asking to have a blue steak heated through is another sign that you might be following trends rather than your own tastes. In the past couple of years, countless videos have appeared on social media featuring blue steak. One of the first things you'll notice upon viewing such vids is that the steak really isn't blue at all. Which makes sense, because if you think about it for a minute or two (which is also the amount of time a blue steak is cooked per side), raw steak isn't blue. But it can be a deep red-purple, which is the proper color of the cold, almost-raw center of a steak cooked blue.

Guidelines for preparation vary slightly, but many chefs agree that a blue steak should be seared in an extremely hot pan for a minute or two per side, until the outside is nicely browned and the interior barely cooked, shading to raw at the center. This level of doneness equates to an internal temperature of 115 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So, is it safe to eat? The answer is yes ... almost certainly. A high-end restaurant will use only the freshest cuts, and should observe meticulous food safety. A proper sear to all surfaces — including the steak's sides — will kill off bacteria lurking on the meat's exterior. Nonetheless, the USDA recommends serving all steaks cooked medium at minimum. 

Ordering off-menu is one of those things that is supposed to make you sound sophisticated and in-the-know. All too often, though, it can make you sound like you're more accustomed to In-N-Out Burger than fine dining. Which is no dig at secret-menu items at In-N-Out ... but when ordering a $75 steak, you should trust the chef. Whether through years of culinary school, consistent five-star reviews, or likely both, the chef at a fine-dining eatery has developed a crowd-pleasing repertoire.

But what about just a few little tweaks to make something on the menu just absolutely perfect, according to your exacting tastes? Still no. What may seem like small changes to you can be a real hassle for a busy kitchen. A request to substitute capers for peppercorns can throw off a busy line. Many chefs just refuse — but even if they say yes, that dish likely isn't going to get the loving care it deserves. Also, restaurant management may be reluctant to grant this request out of concern that images of off-menu items may be posted online, which can snowball into more orders for the same doctored dish. 

Of course, this doesn't apply to anyone with food allergies, or for very minor changes like having the sauce on the side. Let your server know about any food sensitivities, and ask them to recommend options. 

A good steak dinner should be a luxurious experience, so don't try to rush it. Anyone who's worked in an even slightly fancy restaurant will tell you that behind every "and make it quick" lurks a "prioritize my meal ahead of everyone else's." Making the front end of a restaurant seem calm and effortless takes a lot of effort from servers, bussers, and hosts. Making a busy kitchen run efficiently is equally difficult, it might just involve more yelling, depending on the restaurant. Issuing this kind of prima-donna directive can only result in resentment from every employee in the eatery.  

Cooking a sizable steak to medium takes at least 20 minutes, not counting the time it needs to rest after coming off the heat before plating. Asking for this to be rushed so that you can make a Broadway show is basically an impossibility. If you're in a hurry to catch a flight or a movie, but absolutely must get your beef fix first, stop by one of the fast food chains that serve the highest-quality burgers, and save the upscale steakhouse experience for when you've got the time to fully appreciate it. 

Here's the thing about specials — sometimes they can, in fact, be a truly special experience. Other times, not so much. 

Done right, a special dish is something the chef crafts to take advantage of seasonal produce, or when some unexpected culinary wonder shows up from a trusted supplier. If the kitchen's favorite woodland forager appears with a basket of fresh ramps or rare wild mushrooms, those are going on the menu. Similarly, if the chef can order enough of a less-common cut (like a bavette or hanger steak) to add it to the menu, it'll likely by offered as a one-night-only special and priced accordingly. 

Unfortunately, these are exceptions, and otherwise you should avoid the specials. Why? Well, oftentimes a daily special is meant to move ingredients that have been sitting in the walk-in cooler a little too long, and even in the swankiest of joints, servers are encouraged to push them. The steak might still be delicious, but there's a decent chance that you'll end up eating something that might otherwise have been tossed a day or two later. 

As with steak sauce or (shudder) ketchup, asking for salt can be a rookie move. In restaurants that take pride in serving high-quality steaks, the chefs are going to season your meal to what they consider perfection. One thing to take into account is that in an upscale restaurant, the chef and the sous chefs are tasting and seasoning dishes throughout the cooking process, often using kosher salt that is easier to handle due to its larger grains. Thus, in a well-run kitchen, the meat should come to you perfectly seasoned, with a finished taste that no amount of table salt can deliver after the fact.

In addition, restaurants tend to see salt and pepper shakers as high-maintenance germ vectors. Nonetheless, the temperamental chef who storms out of the kitchen to berate unsophisticated diners as they shake some salt on their meal is largely the stuff of legend. If you have a bite or two and just really won't enjoy your meal without another dash of salt, go ahead and ask for a salt shaker. Better to (very slightly) insult the chef than not enjoy your steak to the fullest. 

The culinary rule of thumb that red wine pairs well with beef and white wine goes with chicken or fish is not wrong ... it's just not the entire story. Indeed, you can rarely go wrong pairing a big, bold red with a big, rich steak. The flavors suit each other, as the red wine's tannins cut the steak's fatty mouthfeel, and the succulent meat mellows the wine's dryness.

However, wine drinkers are more sophisticated than ever, and wine lists tend to carry a more diverse selection of regional and specialty wines than in days gone by. Options for an unusual but sophisticated pairing abound, so in that case, you can safely consider ordering a white wine with your steak. 

White wines can offer their own bold flavor profile, and lend themselves to fine-tuning your pairings. A rich, oaky chardonnay, for example, has an acidity that pairs well with a piquant steak au poivre. With an Argentinian steak, an imported Sémillon's robust body and richness plays well with chimichurri. For a full-flavored white that can stand up to even a dry-aged T-bone, an older bottle of Rioja blanco offers surprisingly nutty, honeyed flavors. If you tend to prefer white wines, or are just looking to try something new, ask the server or sommelier to recommend the right wine for your particular order. Or just lean into the luxury and spring for a nice bottle of Champagne. You'll rarely go wrong with the bubbly. 

The tomahawk cut is a bone-in ribeye, generally a massive steak that's enough to serve at least two people. That bone is a serious chunk of rib, resulting in a presentation that would gain a hearty "yabba-dabba-doo!" from Fred Flintstone. Ribeye has long been a popular cut for its flavor, luxurious marbling, and hefty weight. The tomahawk variant has skyrocketed in popularity with the growth of social media, because whether it's wrapped in gold leaf or served like a weapon on a plate, it just looks cool.

As steak goof-ups go, ordering the biggest size of this is a pretty minor one, provided you know what you're getting. Which is, a steak that's priced by the pound, with much of the usual ribeye meat carved off and the weight of a huge bone chunk jacking up the price. Add the fact that this is a specialty cut that the restaurant probably paid top dollar for, only to pass that cost along to you. 

Even without the bling, you can end up paying $1,000 for an oversized Japanese Wagyu tomahawk steak at a high-end restaurant. A less-exclusive spot may easily still charge $150 for a tomahawk, even when the ribeye without the bone is on their menu for half the price or less. Some insist that a bone-in steak is always more flavorful, but is it flavorful enough to be charged double? We're skeptical.

Ordering a steak well done is one of the few things that's almost universally guaranteed to make you look like an ignoramus. Indeed, this is frequently cited as the biggest mistake you can make ordering a nice cut of beef, so listen up. In fact, listen to Anthony Bourdain, a man who knew his way around a restaurant kitchen. Bourdain repeatedly warned that restaurants reserve their worst cuts of meat for customers who order it well done, because after it's been cooked that thoroughly, the meat's imperfections are imperceptible.

What if you really, really want your steak served the color, texture, and tastiness of shoe leather? As a point of pride, chefs may be disinclined to cook a dish in a way that they feel will ruin it, but in most cases customer service wins out over the desire to outright refuse. To avoid this ethical quandary altogether, compromise by ordering steak medium well. Your steak will only be slightly pink at the center, nobody will mock you behind your back, and the subpar meat that Bourdain warned about will stay in the kitchen. And if you cut into your steak and just really can't handle what you see, it's okay to send it back and ask for the chef to give it another minute or two on the grill.