Techman said:
If a customer was to become sick due to eating an undercooked hamburger, a restaurant could have some serious problems.
I have seen people get very sick eating poorly prepared and cooked burgers and it isn't something to scoff at.
Techman,
I don't disagree with what you have said, but it should be noted that in the USA, which is infinitely more litigious than Canada and where the restaurants have a lot more to lose from a products liability lawsuit, you can go almost anywhere and get a medium rare burger with no hassle, whereas in Canada you must seek and find a resto that grinds their own meat in house (which restos apparently get a pass under Canadian law if they are doing that). Or you must find the rare place (like Winnies) where the staff can be coerced into cooking your burger at least reasonably close to your order - which is why I posted about Winnies. As you know I live in the USA but have spent a great deal of time in Canada, and there is a decided difference on how a medium rare burger order is typically handled in the two countries if you are at a resto that does not grind their meat in house.
For what it's worth, I have been eating rare/medium rare burgers my whole life, from the time of family cookouts on a Weber charcoal grill in my grandma's backyard when I was 5 years old. I never got sick once eating thousands of undercooked burgers. On the other hand, I have gotten sick/food poisoning from eating prepared supermarket salads (like antipasto, potato salad, tunafish etc.) As long as you are eating at a well established resto, the chances of getting e coli or other food poisoning, while possible, is slim. Children are more at risk from the types of food poisoning appearing in undercooked burgers; in adults, if you do get food poisoning from an undercooked burger the likely result will be abdominal pain and diarrhea for a few days.
You can see that a number of American tourists have posted to relate the same experience as me, and the reason why is that it is not a hassle to get a medium rare burger in the USA. And I think the main reason why is most Americans like their burgers that way, and if the American restos started hassling them and telling them "we have to cook the fucking shit out of your burger", they would start losing those customers. The Canadians, on the other hand, have been raised to believe that this is how burgers should be cooked, and apparently it is not as much of a customer service issue in a Canadian restaurant - unless you make it one. Which is what I have learned from experience I must do, in order to get my burger cooked properly to my order. So the "burger culture" between the two countries is really quite different.
