‘Raw’ footage of local steak tartare encounter sizzles online
Avideo of a restaurant owner reacting to a customer’s startling reason for sending back a dish has gone viral, drawing nearly 4 million views and 5,000 comments in its first day online.
In the 15-second Tiktok video from the joint kitchen of Yono’s and dp: An American Brasserie, posted around 7 p.m. Tuesday, co-owner Dominick Purnomo is seen wordlessly shaking his head, his expression neutral beneath a caption: “When they send back the steak tartare because it’s raw.”
A dish of chopped raw beef mixed with shallots or onions, capers and other seasonings, often topped with a raw egg yolk, steak tartare has been popular in this country since the late 19th century; it was common enough
to be called “steack a l’americaine” by the early 20th century in Europe, and the 1938 edition of the culinary bible “Larousse Gastronomique” defined the dish as essentially the same as it is still served today. Variations including tuna tartare have been popular since the mid-1970s.
In many culinary circles, “tartare” is understood to mean that at least the central ingredient is raw.
But even at a sophisticated restaurant like dp, not everyone knows that. And the menu of Tuesday’s featured items didn’t mention it, simply reading, “Steak tartare: beef tenderloin, shallots, capers, olive oil, sambal, mustard, feather ridge farm hen egg yolk.”
“It would never dawn on me to say on the menu that the steak tartare is raw,” Purnomo said Wednesday morning, adding, “That’s the definition. And, personally, if my server told me, ‘Oh, by the way, you do know the tartare is raw,’ I would feel like they were talking down to me.”
Many commenters on Tiktok agreed, saying things including: “Tartare means raw beef.”
“No different than sending back mashed potatoes because they’re mashed.”
“Waiter, my water is wet. Take it back.”
But a strong contingent was in the customer’s camp, offering comments that either expressed ignorance of
the definition of tartare or questioned the safety of eating it, including:
“So completely raw steak and eggs is a thing?”
“Are you supposed to just eat it like that or do they put a burner on the table or something?”
Although the federal Food Safety Inspection Service holds the official stance that the “safe minimum internal temperature” for beef is 145 degrees, for many that is considered overcooked; as a general guide, rare beef is 120 degrees, and 145 is the beginning of the spectrum for medium well. Experts generally acknowledge that eating quality eggs and cuts of beef (not commercially ground) when raw, as long as it has been properly refrigerated and prepared, carries a small risk but is widely practiced by millions without ill effect.
Eugene Muller, a professor of microbiology, medical microbiology and immunology at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, told Esquire magazine, “You are gambling every time you eat an oyster on the half shell, and there is no other way to eat an oyster in my opinion. And yes, I do eat raw beef.”
Moving beyond the safety question, chefs and restaurateurs said they are long accustomed to having food sent back for what they consider eyerolling reasons.
Someone returned meatballs at Cafe Capriccio in Albany because they contained garlic and were in a tomato sauce with garlic.
“Italian restaurant, meatball, garlic. Most people would understand you can’t have one without the other,” said owner Jim Rua.
Jimmy Vann, who has worked for Bombers Burrito Bar in Albany and Schenectady for more than 20 years and owned it for the past four, recalled a customer who specifically requested crispy chicken wings but sent them back for being too crispy.
Vic Christopher of Clark House Hospitality in Troy, which produces up to 100 pizzas a night at its Donna’s Italian Restaurant, said a small but regular minority of customers complain about charred blisters on the pizza’s leopard-print crust, not understanding they are prized as hallmarks of artisan Neapolitan pizza.
In the video, Purnomo is seen dumping the plate of raw, chopped beef tenderloin, smeared with runny egg yolk as a result of the customer starting to eat the dish, into a hot saute pan.
“This was a first for tartare in my my 28 years in the business,” Purnomo said. “The server said, ‘She wants to know if you can pan-sear this?’ I said, “Yes, I can pan sear that.’ And I did.”
Although a prolific user of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with thousands of followers, Purnomo had only four followers on Tiktok before Tuesday’s video. He said he signed up for the platform primarily so his daughters, ages 4, 7 and 8, could watch videos, and he’d posted only three prior videos himself, the most-viewed of which had been seen by about 5,000 people before Tuesday.
By Wednesday evening, when the tartare video had been online for 24 hours, it had reached 3.8 million views, almost 400,000 likes and 5,000 comments.