A visitor from the U.S. got more than they asked for at a Toronto hotel restaurant when they ordered a cheeseburger on Monday night that was served with a waiver on the side.
After reading the article, I’m on the hotel’s side.
If someone asks for meat to be prepared in a way that Health Canada says is below the optimal temperature to kill pathogens, then the customer is putting themselves at risk and should bare any liability.
If someone asked for unpasteurized milk, raw eggs, or live seafood, I’d expect them to get the same waiver.
Seems quite sensible.
I would be as well were it not for one small detail, and it’s that the waiver was presented after they started eating.
No, still on the restaurants side. Like yes, it was a mistake and they should have presented it earlier, but asking for a burger to be done medium isn’t a common thing here in Canada. They might not have thought about the waiver until then.
Edit: my point here is that this article is presenting the waiver itself as some kind of wrongdoing or indictment about the restaurant’s quality/safety. To me, this seems wrongheaded and the timing of the waiver being brought out seems more like “whoops we forgor” thing than a “desperately covering our ass” thing – since again, medium burgers aren’t really a thing here.
I’m not going to fault the hotel for trying their best to please customer requests and the customer being Pikachu shock faced when he’s asked to not sue the restaurant for accommodating his McDeath Burger extra value meal.
There’s a literal west coast burger chain that serves medium as standard. Just cause you don’t ask for something doesn’t make it uncommon.
Don’t care it’s still very uncommon here. Order a burger at a restaurant in the states they ask you how you want it like ordering a steak. Order a burger in Canada they do not.
You don’t know shit about Canada.
That was a mistake, I’m sure. Puts the hotel at a greater liability (i.e. the customer refuses to sign), but someone eating undercooked meat would already know the risks, so this wouldn’t stop them from eating it.
Who eats that fast. Like something doesn’t add up. They brought the food but came back afterwards.
Are you trying to blame him for eating too quickly?
I feel bad for y’all food standards
He ordered the burger MEDIUM. In no world should that require a waiver.
Not all ground beef is freshly ground by the restaurant.
Now I’m confused.
Rare has pink in the middle, and so at risk.
Medium is cooked through, no pink, and safe.
Well is just a hockey puck.
Where in the world is “medium” undercooked?
Medium is a temp of 145 and 160 is recommended for food safety, apparently. I’m surprised too, I thought medium was considered safe.
TIL
I don’t know man, I’ve always been thought ground beef always needs to be cooked well.
Title feels a bit click-baity, but truly I think the waiver is reasonable. If you want food prepared outside our food safety standards and laws, you should have to waive the right to sue if you get yourself sick and die. Whether it will actually hold in court is contestable.
Or the restaurant could say “no we dont do this”
Absolutely. One could argue that the restaurant went out of its way to provide a customer food request, but many restaurants refuse to cook ground beef at anything below well-done.
Personally, as a Canadian, I would never eat anything less than that for a hamburger, but I cook my steaks near blue at home.
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I’m an American living in Canada and I think the law and mentality around it are silly.
That said, you’re right. Those are the codified rules, and because they are codified, the hotel has taken the necessary steps to protect themselves, while going out of their way to provide this to their customer. They could have just told them no, just like every other establishment does.
Yeah so we’ve got this thing in Canada called public healthcare and we ended up paying for people getting e.coli and mad cow disease because they decided they knew better, so no these regulations aren’t silly.
This attitude is a very slippery slope, unfortunately.
He’s full of shit too, as the person who gets sick also pays his share for the insurance.
Well you can move across the border if you want to live in a country where governments don’t care about their citizens and where you can just sue the restaurant for not letting you eat the way you want and then sue them for feeding you unsafe for that brought you to the hospital.
Telling everyone you’re a fascist in a burger cooking thread is extra special.
Here in BC, anything but well done burgers are illegal in restaurants. We have steak tartar, but you need to cut the exterior layer of meat away and grind it right before serving. You might get away with doing the same for burgers, but no one does it that I know of.
I’ve heard of a restaurant in North van that does it, I can’t recall its name though.
At one point Vera’s burgers would because they sourced their own beef, but im not sure if that survived them expanding 10+years ago. They did start north shore so maybe it was Vera’s
It absolutely was Vera’s that’s why I liked to go there. They used to have a sign that warned you you had to ask for well done.
Thanks for confirming for me friend!
I worked at Outback Steakhouse (outside the US) and we were never allowed to serve burgers that weren’t well done. I’ve had to explain many times that it is due to the risk of illness from uncooked/processed meat and people still choose to be upset.
I thought the science says a steak can safely be rare, but not hamburger? Still a weird thing to get upset about. Although I’ve been to dinner with people I thought were reasonable only for them to turn into fuckheads with waiters. I think some people just get really dickish when they are customers. Fuck em.
Its any ground meat. Bacteria cant penetrate a steak to contaminate it, so as long as the outside is cooked enough its safe. When you grind up meat to expose all of the meat to outside conditions, plus any bacteria left on the grinders themselves, so it has to be fully cooked.
Except there are raw ground meat dishes. Beef tartare is raw ground beef and the Mettbrötchen is raw ground pork. So it certainly can be consumed safely.
The USDA guidelines for food safety are extremely conservative when it comes to spoiling. On one hand it makes sense because we don’t want businesses to gamble with their customers health for higher profits. But it also means people are quick to dismiss them because so many of the guidelines are broken daily without incident.
Except there are raw ground meat dishes. Beef tartare is raw ground beef and the Mettbrötchen is raw ground pork. So it certainly can be consumed safely.
Mett, along with other raw meat products, have been found to cause quite a few food born illnesses in Germany, so it’s really not that safe.
Same goes for eating unpasteurized dairy, handling raw chicken,
I mean, would you really want to consume some raw that causes butchers to develop HPV warts?
True, except that in Canada we don’t follow the USDA. Canada has very strict safety regulations, food service and production is no exception. There are ways to serve raw food dishes like this,but you have to follow certain procedures to do it, such as grinding your own meats and having separate work areas for everything, warning customers of the dangersm, and I would imagine you have even more frequent food inspections then usual. In Ontario we have a card system on any place that serves or prepares food that has to be displayed on the door or customer counter. Green, yellow, or red. Getting a yellow card is damn near a death sentence for alot of places since restaurants are so competitive.
That doesn’t mean that regulations aren’t broken, its just that its a risk. After 15 years of being a chef, I have always refused to undercook food even if I know it would be fine. I was not willing to take the risk.
I’m a guy who likes a medium-rare burger and loves mett and I know the risks involved since it’s ground meat with tons of surface area and I don’t blame the hotel one bit and would have signed the waiver unlike this prima Donna.
Why has this been making some of the “news” recently?
Some corporation wanted to cover it’s ass in the same my my work cafeteria warns about raw eggs when they serve Tiramisu.
I had to sign a waiver to try some hot sauce that was 2.5M+ on the Scoville scale.
None of these waivers hold up in court here in Canada, like, at all.
The hot sauce ones are generally just trying to make things feel “more extreme”, trying to add theatrics to the experience.
It wouldn’t even hold up in this case: the waiver holds Hilton not liable when the guest eats food not prepared by the restaurant, when the guest is clearly eating food prepared by the restaurant.
I was wondering about that! I thought I didn’t understand legalese.
Did they let him cook it himself?
The meat wasn’t ground by the restaurant, I would think that’s what they’re talking about.
It probably does make some people restrain themselves from hurting themselves. It has a use.
Oh fuck off, your stupid and unsafe eating habits are your own fucked up problems, the hotel has nothing to do with this. Of course it’s a Redditor too, fucking weirdos, holy hell
Waiver should have been brought up when he requested the burger undercooked, but otherwise I see no issue.
Dumb American disgusted by his own stupidity
He’s stupid because he ordered a burger how he likes it (and probably normally orders it), starts eating it, then they ask him to sign a waiver after he’s taken a few bites?
Sorry friend, I’m not sure he’s the stupid one here. If the waiter had told him that he needs to sign a waiver before they put the order in, that’s one thing. Doing it after they cooked it to order and he started eating is where the real stupidity occurs.
Dude is incredibly stupid, because he’s been ordering under-cooked burgers without any conception of what he’s requesting for “Bob”-know-how-long.
He might like medium-cooked burgers, but he has no idea what that even means. The food at the hotel isn’t less-safe than other places. They just didn’t assume he read the fine-print at the bottom of the menu and were the first to inform him that it’s not safe.
Yeah, they delivered the waiver at the wrong time, but dude should’ve already known what he was ordering wasn’t safe. I order over-easy, soft-boiled, and sometimes sunny-side-up eggs. I know the risks, and I accept them.
Unless you put an a ton of effort into it, ground beef is only safe well-done. To get safe under-cooked ground beef, you need to discuss your intentions with your butcher and grind the beef yourself. Even with grinding a single, quality cut of beef, you’re still gambling.
Also, fuck you, I’m not your friend guy, here’s a rocket ship ().():::::::::::::::::D~~~~~~~
I’ve been eating burgers cooked medium (145 degrees F) for 30 years, and never get sick. Is it a Canadian beef problem? If the hotel is that worried, just refuse to cook it less than 160 and let them order something else. But no, capitalism says that Hilton must take their money and make them sign a waiver that probably has zero chance of holding up in court.
You actually just need to get your ground beef from reputable places, and well, I sincerely doubt Hilton Hotels cares enough to do that. My butcher grounds his own beef from chuck, sourced locally, and I don’t have to cook my burgers to sawdust to feel safe about eating them.
I’m not your guy, pal.
To be clear, please continue to enjoy your food the way you want it. Just know what the words that exit your mouth mean. Life shouldn’t be safe, and many of life’s greatest pleasures are not safe.
Is it a Canadian beef problem? Nah, it’s just a problem with the definition of “safe food”. If the food is not cooked to 165F, then any bacteria, fungi, and parasites that are present could still be alive. There are no guarantees that the beef didn’t have tapeworms, and since ground beef is usually from multiple cuts, there’s a larger chance that a tapeworm has been ground up and spread throughout. It’s a tiny chance, but it’s still a chance. Steaks are less of a risk, because it’s a single cut, and the chef can visually inspect it.
The waiver is stupid, but it has less to do with capitalism and more to do with the legal system. People sue for anything and everything, and I don’t blame companies for trying to defend themselves from that. They asked the dude to sign a waiver, because they’re afraid he doesn’t understand the risks and might sue if he gets sick.
Funny thing is: in this case the guy didn’t understand the risks. He thought they were saying their beef is sketchy. What they were really saying is: all ground beef not cooked to 165F could be sketchy. I think he’s dumb, because he doesn’t know that a medium cooked burger involves risk but has been requesting it everywhere he goes. If he had known what a medium burger is, he would’ve just said “yeah yeah yeah”, signed, and ate the burger like an adult.
I’m not you pal, buddy. (but we might be friends now)
They just want an excuse to spread hate.
What makes him stupid? Cooking a burger to medium is extremely common.
Reit007 said the server explained that because the kitchen at the Hilton Toronto Airport Hotel & Suites always cooks their burgers well-done, they should sign the waiver first.
The disgusting part of this story is a corporate mandate on well-done burgers.
You can have ground beef below well done, but it has to be fresh ground in clean equipment. Most restaurants that don’t specialize in burgers/beef aren’t fresh grinding mean on order. If you eat medium at a place that doesn’t offer it you’re responsible for your own decisions.
you can have undercooked beef because bacteria can’t penetrate that far below the surface (opposed to chicken), if it is ground then that safety net isn’t there
Its 160°F in center mandate, or you would lose your food service license. Why would a hotel risk that for one customer that wants it cooked below standards
It’s not a corporate mandate, it’s a provincial government mandate that exists in the whole of Canada as far as I know (food safety for restaurants being under provincial jurisdiction) and for good reasons, the risks associated with undercooked ground beef aren’t worth it to please the small % of clients who would want it.
You want your patties medium? Buy a whole piece of meat, remove the outer layer, ground it and cook it, don’t expect restaurants to do that for you.
What constitutes a small % to you?
Eating burgers cooked medium is very common. Well done beef is no different than eating leather.
Ground beef isn’t a steak and restaurants have health guidelines to follow because they don’t want to make you sick, what you do at home is your problem (until it becomes ours because you get e.coli from undercooking ground beef that you didn’t prepare yourself).
I cook store bought ground beef burgers to medium rare multiple times a year and not once has there been an issue
Yeah and some people smoke their whole life and never get lung cancer, it doesn’t make it safe to smoke.
There’s e.coli recalls every year, but hey, don’t let that stop you, not as if it could kill you or handicap you long term to catch it (need an /s on that or you’re good?)
Do yourself a favor, get a meat grinder and make your own ground beef if you want to eat it medium. It’s cheaper and much more delicious.
Nah, the disgusting part is the consequences of factory farming and humanity’s domination of the planet and desire for meat.
Well-done burgers are the band-aid for the deeper problems.
The only thing is why not get the waiver with the appetizer, before it’s served or together? That’s the negligence on the Hilton Restaurant’s part and really doesn’t have meaning if this user did happen to get E.Coli. Ordering medium ground beef at a non-specialty venue is kind of stupid to begin with.
The waiver should have been produced after ordering and well before any food arrives.
That’s probably the intention but it’s so rare (haha) to order undercooked patties in Canada that they might not even have known a waiver was necessary.
First, the waiver should have been provided prior to serving the meal.
Second, and off topic, Toronto Pearson area seems fraught with problems. From second-hand experience of a family member, they got delayed by 11 hours after the 3 hour layover, simply because the airport apparently doesn’t know what electric surge protection is (that was their excuse, that a surge occurred in the airport grounding their plane).
Last, anyone who wants less-than-well-done meat should expect a semblance of risk and expect the restaurant will want to legally protect themselves. But it’s pretty shitty to get the waiver after being served.
So as a throwback to the AITA subreddit…ESH.
Technically you can cook a hamburger to medium and have it be safe to eat, but I really don’t see most restaurants doing sous vide for hamburgers.
Yeah, this isn’t like the hotel thinks its food is unsafe to eat, this is just acknowledging that the customer wanted their beef cooked below safe standards.
Isn’t this usually covered by a disclaimer on the menu though?
As a consumer, I would see the presence of such a waiver as a prompt to think about what necessitated this in the first place. Perhaps this kitchen isn’t as clean as it could be, and something happened to prompt this level of (legal) caution. Yeah, it could have been an overzealous patron looking for a payday, but maybe someone had a legit case?
Nah it’s a cultural thing. Burgers done to not well done is common in the US. It definitely isn’t in Canada. They’re almost always well done.
First time in the U.S. being asked how I like my burger was actually confusing to me.
You will typically find a disclaimer on the menus about undercooked food.
Yep, you’ll see asterisks by eggs, too, since they need to be cooked to 165 °C to be safe from salmonella, but over easy and sunny side up are obviously quite common.
It’s a regulations thing and it changed in the last 30 years (after a bunch of e.coli or mad cow disease cases happened I think)
look up a Pittsburgh style burger fuckin nasty
That’s not a Pittsburgh style burger.
If you come to a place and ask for a burger done Pittsburger style they will hard hard hard sear the outside, for a single second and then leave the inside as raw as possible.
@deft Okay, that’s an “ew” from me, then. 🤷♂️😅
They asked for meat to be cooked at a lower temp than Health Canada recommends. It makes sense that you need to sign stuff if you tell the kitchen to do something that isn’t recommended.
what necessitated this in the first placeLaws.
Would be nice if they did this for all meat purchased. Except the waiver should indicate the damage being caused to the climate
