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.
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.
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.
Dumb American disgusted by his own stupidity
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.
I think cleanliness standards for kitchens should be governement ordained to be clean enough but to have to serve a waiver.
If you’re running a kitchen and are to dense to follow health and safety laws you shouldn’t be able to operate.
In his circumstance should the onus be placed on the customer.
The only person that’s too dense here is you buddy.
You’re thick as pudding.
A clean kitchen isn’t enough. If your burger was made of preground beef you can’t eat it medium. If ONE of the pieces of meat that was processed that day in the factory was contaminated all the resulting ground meat is also contaminated. That’s why you cook ground meat to well done.
If a restaurant wants to offer medium burgers, or steak tartare or some other form of undercooked ground beef, they have to grind it themselves, in small batches, and use practices that reduce contamination. They’ll usually still warn you on the menu because there is still a risk. There are restaurants in Japan that serve raw chicken sushi, same concept. If you ask for undercooked chicken at a restaurant, you’re an idiot, unless you’ve gone somewhere that can do it right, which usually starts from raising their own specially vaccinated chickens.
Restaurants that don’t offer undercooked ground beef are just trying to warn you that you’re being an idiot ordering undercooked ground beef. If you make burgers at home from store bought ground beef and cook them to medium, same thing.
Or don’t allow beef with contamination risks at all … Industry standards can be enforced.
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~~~~~~~
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.
look up a Pittsburgh style burger fuckin nasty
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
RTFA
they had already started eating when the server handed them a waiver.
Not to mention, the eater is dumb if they get a hamburger that’s less than well done. Ground beef has much more surface area for pathogens to creep into. So unless you watched them cut up and grind the meat, after watching them properly sterilize their equipment, order that burger well done.
i absolutely read the article.
i read an article about a crybaby who ordered a burger rare, which everyone knows is outside the scope of safety fucking everywhere, and then whined when presented with having to take responsibility for the choice he was already eating.
or are we to believe this is his first experience ordering rare??
And you ignored everything.
Unless proven otherwise, we should believe that this is the first time they received a waiver
and you ignored everything
the waiver is irrelevant here
Irrelevant to whom?
it should be irrelevant to any moron who orders a rare burger, like me.
good for you. your input here is totally irrelevant though, as usual for you.
not that you read it before commenting, but the article specifies that the burger was ordered ‘medium.’
