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.
- Sagifurius ( @Sagifurius@lemm.ee ) 4•5 months ago
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.
- Sagifurius ( @Sagifurius@lemm.ee ) 1•5 months ago
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
What a bad argument. “Some people prepare food unsafely, so it can be consumed safely”…??
No one I know has been hit by a car, that means they are all safe too, right!?
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.
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.
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
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?
It probably does make some people restrain themselves from hurting themselves. It has a use.
In Germany they sell ground beef that is save to eat raw. So either get save meat or, if your ground beef is not safe, bring this up directly when someone orders a medium or rare burger and not after the person already started eating.
Right. If my only choice is well done, I’m getting something else. Don’t bring me a waiver after I’ve started eating it.
Eww, we eat raw pork, not beef.
Ohh so much better and different.
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.
you want people to be able to sue over everything, this is the result.
id have signed, cuz i both enjoy meat and not suin’ people for nonsense i caused.
e: i have in the past ordered ‘as rare as you can legally make it’. most of the time i get stupid looks and they bring it rare, but sometimes they just nod and bring me a brick
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.
Would be nice if they did this for all meat purchased. Except the waiver should indicate the damage being caused to the climate
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?
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.