Canada @lemmy.ca sik0fewl @kbin.social 6mo ago

'I lost my appetite': Cheeseburger served with waiver at Toronto restaurant

toronto.ctvnews.ca 'I lost my appetite': Cheeseburger served with waiver at Toronto restaurant

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.

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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.
- Or the restaurant could say "no we dont do this"
  
  Absolutely. One could argue that the restaurant went out of its way to provide a customer food request, but many restaurants refuse to cook ground beef at anything below well-done.
  
  Personally, as a Canadian, I would never eat anything less than that for a hamburger, but I cook my steaks near blue at home.
- 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.
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.
  
  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.
  
  Who eats that fast. Like something doesn’t add up. They brought the food but came back afterwards.
- 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.
  
  I don't know man, I've always been thought ground beef always needs to be cooked well.
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.
  
  At one point Vera's burgers would because they sourced their own beef, but im not sure if that survived them expanding 10+years ago. They did start north shore so maybe it was Vera's
I'm a guy who likes a medium-rare burger and loves mett and I know the risks involved since it's ground meat with tons of surface area and I don't blame the hotel one bit and would have signed the waiver unlike this prima Donna.
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.
  
  It probably does make some people restrain themselves from hurting themselves. It has a use.
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
Waiver should have been brought up when he requested the burger undercooked, but otherwise I see no issue.
Dumb American disgusted by his own stupidity
- What makes him stupid? Cooking a burger to medium is extremely common.
- 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.
  
  you can have undercooked beef because bacteria can’t penetrate that far below the surface (opposed to chicken), if it is ground then that safety net isn’t there
  
  Its 160°F in center mandate, or you would lose your food service license. Why would a hotel risk that for one customer that wants it cooked below standards
  
  It's not a corporate mandate, it's a provincial government mandate that exists in the whole of Canada as far as I know (food safety for restaurants being under provincial jurisdiction) and for good reasons, the risks associated with undercooked ground beef aren't worth it to please the small % of clients who would want it.
  
  You want your patties medium? Buy a whole piece of meat, remove the outer layer, ground it and cook it, don't expect restaurants to do that for you.
  
  Nah, the disgusting part is the consequences of factory farming and humanity's domination of the planet and desire for meat.
  
  Well-done burgers are the band-aid for the deeper problems.
It's weird but only because it's so common to see a disclaimer at the bottom of menus warning people about eating undercooked foods. Why a waiver?
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.
- Also raw ground pork that it safe for raw consumption. I love me some thüringer mett.
  
  How the hell do they manage that? Freezing like sushi or irradiation like fruit?
- 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.
- The waiver should have been produced after ordering and well before any food arrives.
  
  That's probably the intention but it's so rare (haha) to order undercooked patties in Canada that they might not even have known a waiver was necessary.
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.
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.
  
  It's a regulations thing and it changed in the last 30 years (after a bunch of e.coli or mad cow disease cases happened I think)
  
  You will typically find a disclaimer on the menus about undercooked food.
  
  look up a Pittsburgh style burger fuckin nasty
- They asked for meat to be cooked at a lower temp than Health Canada recommends. It makes sense that you need to sign stuff if you tell the kitchen to do something that isn't recommended.
- what necessitated this in the first place
  
  Laws.
Would be nice if they did this for all meat purchased. Except the waiver should indicate the damage being caused to the climate
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
- you want people to be able to sue over everything, this is the result.
  
  Two words : fusioned labias. That's what the too hot coffee from Mc Donald caused to the victim who sued them.
  
  If you actually read about the hot coffee lawsuit you would know there is a lot more to it than just hot coffee.
- 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 suggest you do too.
  
  The whiny guy ordered the burger to be medium done. He got it the way he wanted.
  
  He is literally eating what he ordered, and was shocked when the restaurant tried to cover their ass for letting him order an undercooked burger.
  
  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??

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