ray's hell burger could stand to ponder this one a little harder.
deceptively angelic:
first of all, let me just say that this burger is delicious. prime beef, aged and ground on site; great cheese selection (epoisse! taleggio! cave-aged amish cheddar!); many free toppings; nice seedy buns. but as much as i'm loving what they're dishing out, they are driving me batshit crazy with their utter inability to cook a burger to order.
i've asked for medium rare and gotten medium-well. i've asked for rare and been handed medium-rare. tonight, i went with rare and it was practically uncooked.
scientists like to talk about accuracy and precision. these are two pretty separate concepts: accuracy tells you how close you are to your target. precision describes a kind of scatter effect; how reproducible are your results?
from what i can tell, the guys at ray's are neither precise, nor accurate. the burgers are way off the mark and there is no consistent bias toward an over or under-done patty. basically, they swing both ways!
this is sad, because if they could just give me what i ordered, they would definitely be serving the best burger in town. on the other hand, has it stopped me from going back multiple days in a row? negatory.
love the atmo, love the high testosterone quotient, love the rootbeer on tap, love the free hot chocolate. maybe we just need a national institute of standards and technology. but for meat.
this is my comment. i am , perhaps only self-proclaimed, but i am, i believe, an expert blog reader. this particular posting is so ingenius that i am richocheted off my chair and propelled to new heights. the accuracy vs. precision illustration is so excellent and the concept of the institute is so outstanding, and this particular rave about the inability to make a simple burger cooked the way it is ordered, is so brilliant and i am most definitely of like-mind. I have noticed, and mentally noted, multiple times in just the last 10 months, that the whole ordering process has changed. It used to be you would order, rare, medium rare, medium, or well-done. Those were the 4 choices. Everyone knew what they meant - no need to elaborate or clarify. Now, not only have they added other levels, like medium-well-done, and sushi-rare, but even after uttering your chosen category (for instance medium -rare), the waitperson will then say, "well, medium rare here, is actually rare, so i am going to place your order as medium. You like a little pink in the middle, right, THAT would definitely be medium". Well, medium used to not be pink in the middle, just cooked through just so, not well-done, just medium. Why must each restaurant have their own definition of these words? It has gotten to the point now that i know longer request any category, and instead give a verbal description of what I want the meet to look like, when presented. I now will just say, "a little pink in the middle, please". Well, words are one of the few things that are still free, we might as well use as many extra ones as we can.
ReplyDelete"national institute of standards and technology. but for meat" = THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!
ReplyDeleteYES why is it that these already subjective, broadly interpreted guidelines are only getting broader? is this just one more circle of postmodern hell??
ReplyDeleteoh hi old man,
ReplyDeletegood entry! pal i feel like i learn something new every time i come here, this whole accuracy and precision thing! well done old man. luckily for me, and as you know, i like everything very overcooked so i dont ever have this problem but my heart goes out to you.
sadly, there are no longer any burger kings doing the grilling, just cooks flippin' patties to get the job done. A little attention to detail--a little focus on the matter at hand--a little pride in chefdom, and we'd have a whole lot of better burgers everywhere.
ReplyDeletehere's what you need to know:
rare is rare
medium is medium
done is done
it ain't rocket science--make the burger for godsake and serve it up to order!!!!!
Haaaaa! You've got mad heart to have eaten that raw burger. I could have sat there and watched them grind that thing out from the finest cut of fillet supplied by a golden kobe cow that was bottle fed its whole life and lived in a hyperbaric Michael Jackson sleep chamber lined with the finest silks it's whole life and I still would have been shook. Would have had to make a pit stop at Walgreens to grab a box of baby wipes before goin home to wait on the thunder. Next time bring a blowtorch and finish cooking it at the table. That being said I would like 2 pleeze!!
ReplyDeleteholy shit that is the funniest thing i have ever read. i am peeing in my pants. can you please move here right now!!!!
ReplyDelete