One of the great joys of quitting restaurant work was knowing that I will no longer have to cook steaks to the specific desires of the Irish customer.

When I opened the restaurant first I attempted to avoid steaks altogether but very soon discovered that that was economic suicide as at least half of the population of Ireland (the men) had decided that it was to be percieved as certainly effeminate if not downright screaming queenly to have anything other than steak when they dined out.

Interestingly this rule did not apply when they dined with their wives when they would happily go for lamb or (the very brave) even fish.
(I will omit entirely the culinary disadvantaged men who, when confronted with the horrors of a menu would plead to their wives-“Would I like that dear”)

The male bonding steak was also interesting in that degrees of feminity could be put on to the sliding scale which allied with doneness.
Strangely in Irish culture the man who ate the rare steak was not reckoned to be the most butch, no, the macho man in Ireland would want his piece of cow “cremated”.

Picture then a table of 10 or 12 men dining out together-a quite normal circumstance.
That the order will be nearly all steaks is assumed but then comes the variations.
These are some I have been asked for over the years;
Rare in the middle but well done on the outside.

Very well done but still moist. (a impossibility)

Blue but still hot in the centre. (another oxymoron)

Between medium rare and medium, but more medium than medium rare.

And hundereds of versions of betweens in the same vein.

I remember once being with a non French speaking friend in a smart Michelin starred restaurant in Burgundy.
He decided to go for the steak and asked me to ask for it to be “between medium well and well done”.
I relayed this to the waiter.
He replied (in impeccible French) “Here we cook steaks; Bleu, Sangnant, A Point and Bien Cuit, no other way”

How I wish I had had the courage to instruct my waiting staff so in Ireland.

All this was brought back to mind by a quotation from the previously mentioned (and hilarious) Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations which I am devouring at the moment.
This particular moment came from the lips of Niles Crane , Frasier’s fastidious brother in the eponymous series.

Niles decides to order steak in a restaurant:

“I’d like a petite filet mignon, very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavour, but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate, but I dont want it cooked, just lightly seared on either side, pink in the middle, not a true pink but not a mauve either, something in between, bearing in mind the slightest error either way and it is ruined.”