If you're paying the prices they ask at a top-rated restaurant, you have the right to expect your meal cooked the way you asked for it. Even at a moderately priced restaurant, this is the case.

You shouldn't hesitate to ask them to make it right.

of course, the real question isn't whether you should or shouldn't send it back. you should. the question is: do you?
most of the time, i don't.

I just recently had dinner in a New England restaurant, where I ordered my lamb medium rare and it arrived slightly overdone. However, when the maître d’ came over to inquire how everybody at our table liked the way their food had been prepared that evening, I offered no complaint, not wanting to cause any fuss and, in particular, not wanting to have the rest of our party wait while another dish was prepared that was more to my liking.

However, days later, after thinking it over, on second thought (and prompted by Trabzon's question) perhaps I should have told the maître d’ that my meat had been slightly overcooked but, nevertheless, I wouldn't want to send it back to the kitchen because I didn't want to have my guests wait for a replacement dish to arrive and, in the process, disrupt the timing and flow of the lovely dinner we were having.

If I had followed such an approach, a savvy maître d’ would usually send out some complimentary desserts for the table to compensate for the overdone lamb but, even if he didn't, I would have gotten my point across without disrupting the meal.

I think I'll use that approach the next time a similar thing happens......

One of the problems, especially if you're dining in a restaurant for the first time, is that different restaurants have different definitions for "rare," "medium rare" and "medium." Unfortunately, there is no "standard" that we can hold all these definitions to. In particular, I've been in restaurants where I've ordered a steak "medium rare" and have been confronted with a piece of meat that is literally dripping blood. I've also experienced the opposite, just as in Don Pablo's recent experience, where the meat has been overdone, lacking any pink. So, I guess, unless you keep coming back to the same restaurant until you know what their definition of "medium rare" is, you'll be running into these types of problems on a regular basis.

(Yes, I know that the above doesn't answer the question that was posed. But, one has to take this into account in the overall discussion.)

Rick OShea is right in saying that "...different restaurants have different definitions for 'rare,' 'medium rare' and 'medium'." Continuing with that line of reasoning, if one is dining at a restaurant for the first time, in order to avoid any possible unpleasant surprises, it might be a good idea to inquire of the waiter how that particular restaurant will prepare your order, if you want your meat done "medium rare."

It's understandable that different chefs will have some slightly different interpretations of doneness. But, I have never come across a restaurant that defined "medium rare" meat as being almost devoid of any pink flesh. If that were acceptable to any establishment, there wouldn't be any way to distinguish medium-rare from medium, and subsequently medium from medium-well — or well-done for that matter.

In other words, medium-rare has to have a good amount of pink in it or the rest of the doneness options won't make any sense. (Though, I have been to restaurants that, due to a local law, cannot serve meat cooked to an internal temperature below 150º, and therefore are unable to accommodate any "rare" orders. Surprisingly, the servers will still ask you how you want your meat cooked even though there really isn't a choice.)

If you read my initial comment, I wasn't debating the difference between bloody meat and pink meat. The order was slightly overcooked, period — it wasn't a matter of semantics, and I'm sure the Maître d' wasn't going to tell me that I didn't know what medium rare was if I had spoken up. After all, the customer is always right.

Good chefs know very well what temperatures and textures make an order medium-rare — or they wouldn't have a job. However, the reality is that mistakes happen. Sometimes a cut of meat will continue to cook a little more if left under the heat lamps, or placed onto a piping hot plate right out of the warmer.

Mistakes happen all the time.

The point is, what do you do about it when a mistake happens? Do you nod to the Maître d' and tell him everything is perfect? Or do you tell him that it wasn't exactly what you expected so that he can improve his restaurant's service? My experience is that most people don't say anything out of politeness to the rest of the table and to not offend the hard work of the staff, even though most people would wish to say something in an entirely different setting. It seems in practice that the accepted etiquette is to simply praise a meal to the Maître d' when the errors are forgivable. After all, who wants to dole out a criticism on a special occasion when everyone else is enjoying themselves. I can certainly understand that sentiment. But, I'm very much curious if others feel the same way or disagree.

i am not sure if different restaurants have different definitions for rare/medium rare etc. but i am sure that they shouldn't. this is not subjective, it is objective defined by certain temperatures. while i am someone who almost always smiles and says nothing about 'mistakes', while muttering under my breath, it is my expectation that any good chef has this information...
but as for the real debate, as i said, i sit mute.

Is everyone on this thread American? My husband (English) works with Americans (who meet monthly in Europe or the U.S) and if there is anything wrong when they are out dining, the Americans don't complain.

We are firmly in the camp that if you don't get what you have ordered, esp. when you have been asked how you would like it cooked, you don't wait for anyone to come over, as soon as you see the problem, you beckon someone over. People around you will understand, it may disrupt the meal for a time, but it is unacceptable for a professional chef / kitchen not be able to cook a piece of meat to the customers requirements.

Having worked as a waiter many years ago, I know that if customers linger over their appetizers, rather than serve the main courses before those customers have finished their first courses, the kitchen winds up cooking the main courses a little longer, in an effort to keep them warm. The result is that they sometimes are a little more "well done" than if they had been served when they were originally ready. I've found that this usually affects fish dishes more than meat dishes.

One way of avoiding this tendency is to start off by just ordering your appetizers and telling the waiter that you'll order the main courses later. This not only increases the probability that your fish or meat will not be overdone, but it also will allow you to have a much more leisurely dinner and not have the main courses rushed to the table immediately after you're finished with the appetizers, which will frequently happen if the restaurant is trying to "turn over the table" for the next customer.

I am more inclined to send back if the chef can quickly fix the problem...as in if it is undercooked, I can get that rectified easily. Also, and especially with lamb, we order using a color chart--not "medium rare", but "pink" Or "bloody" or "not a trace of blood" I even order my eggs "looking right at you" (sunny side up). Wine is ordered by taste if I'm not familiar with the list, "melt some butter, crush some grapes and put it a bottle and bring it out" (instead of ordering a chardonnay I am not familiar with)...and for the comment about ordering one course at a time, I really disagree with that. A waiter should not put the entire order in and leave it to the chef to time it. A waiter needs to pay attention to his table and tell the chef to hold off on the main courses if he sees the table are slow eaters. It's absurd that the table should have to control the kitchen by ordering food, one course at a time. If a waiter/chef/whomever decides to give me back to back courses without so much as a breath in between, somebody is going to be unhappy at that restaurant and it's not going to be me.

Nanoose, I couldn't have said it better myself! Thank you.

I recently had an experience that is somewhat related to what we've been talking about in this discussion. My tennis partner and I usually have dinner, after playing tennis, at a local, fairly casual restaurant, where the food is typically quite good. However, one evening last week, after a particularly grueling best-out-of-five-set singles match in the late afternoon, we were a bit disappointed with the main courses that we ordered. Although we had each selected different items from the menu, both were beef dishes and both were overcooked. Having spent virtually all of our energy out on the tennis court, neither of us was in the mood to start complaining, especially because the restaurant had been so reliable in the past. We were also hungry, and so we finished our food without saying anything. (I think that every establishment is entitled to have an off night once in a while.) Well, at the end of our meal, one of the owners of the restaurant came over to chat and asked us if everything had been prepared to our liking that evening. Reluctantly, my tennis partner told our host that we were a little disappointed and why. Without hesitation, and despite our protests to the contrary, she insisted that she was going to instruct her chef to prepare two complimentary main courses of our choosing, to take home with us, and asked us to accept them with her apologies. (This, of course, was AFTER both of us had already finished our meals.) My tennis buddy and I eventually accepted her kind offer and, later on, he and I agreed that this was just another reason why we liked her restaurant so much and why we would be coming back again and again.

DP, what were you supposed to do with the food at that point seeing that you already had eaten? Because you are an excellent customer, why didn't she just comp the meal? I find it a nice gesture in theory but in reality, not brilliant to give you food that you can't eat and that will certainly taste subpar whenever you get around to eating it, if ever.

Hello, Nanoose. As always, it was a pleasure to hear from you.

In and effort to avoid my last post being too lengthy, I left out a few details when I described what happened at the restaurant. Indeed, the restaurant owner DID initially offer to "comp" us on our meals; but my tennis partner, Ron, and I adamantly rejected that offer, especially since we had completely finished our main courses (and they weren't THAT bad). It was actually her SECOND offer that I described in my above post. Also, because, up until that evening, the food that we had ordered at the restaurant had been consistently very good, we had inquired whether there was a different chef in the kitchen that night. The restaurant owner insisted that it was the same chef, and perhaps her offer to give us two new main courses to take home with us was an effort on her part to convince us that the chef had not lost his or her touch. Finally, let me say that, although I'm sure that you're right that the dish that she gave me, when re-heated, couldn't be as good as it would have been if I had eaten it when it was first cooked, it came in very handy as a quickly-prepared dinner during half-time that following Sunday, when I was watching the late-afternoon Sunday NFL football game.

All's well that ends well.

As with most things, this is really an issue of manners. Whether or not you've had your food cooked exactly to your liking is a small thing compared to not making your guests feel uncomfortable (or even more, your host). If the food really is inedible, a quiet word with the maitre 'd (if possible without the rest of the table being aware of it) should produce another dish quickly so that the table isn't inconvenienced.

Just to complete the story, I'm following-up on my posts of October 10th and October 13th, 2010, in this discussion. My tennis partner, Ron, and I, after yet another exciting and exhausting late-afternoon singles match, returned to the same restaurant to have dinner yesterday evening. We found that things had returned to normal. Our friendly co-owner of the restaurant, Alicia, greeted us warmly when we arrived, the food was delicious and, as had typically been the case, we had a very pleasant dining experience there. At the end of the meal, Alicia came over and presented us with the bill, which consisted of just a "smiley face" and a thank you. She had "comp'd" us for the entire meal! Ron and I insisted that that was not necessary; but she wouldn't change her mind. It was my turn to pay last night and, so, I took the opportunity to leave a very large tip, to express our gratitude to her and her staff. Now, that's the way for a restaurant to treat customers when something goes awry in the kitchen!

all's well that ends well.
great story, donpablo