Because thick hamburger patties don’t toughen much as they cook, grill cooks cannot apply the finger test to check for doneness as they can with steaks. Most err on the long side, which is why burger lovers from LA to London have grown accustomed to getting medium-rare when they order rare, medium when they order medium-rare and so on. 

The burger I was served at The Counter was that rarity, a rare that’s actually rare (see photo above). They know what rare is and, judging by the waitress’ question, they also know most of us are no longer so sure. I emailed The Counter to find out if the waitress was acting on her own and got this response from Mike Miklos, the Director of Education and Team Development: 

The server probably could have phrased her question better, but what she was trying to say was that “you’re really going to get a rare burger”…Many times our customers order a “medium” thinking it will have no pink, when it arrives they think it’s raw. Since everyone has their own perception of what “medium” or “rare” is we try not to even use those terms and [instead] describe the amount of redness.

Karen Dawn

Caffe Luxxe pulls some of LA’s best espresso shots and, situated amid the casual-chic shops of Santa Monica’s moneyed Montana Ave, it also pulls in a sizable share of holistic mommies and bohemian millionaires.  There were in fact no empty tables for my brother Roy, myself and our weekday afternoon coffees, so we were delighted when Karen Dawn, author of Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals (site here) invited us to sit down at hers. When I asked Karen for permission to take and post her photo she said yes, with one condition: I needed to make it clear that the cappuccino in her hand was made with soy milk.  The animal rights activist could imagine no worse a humiliation than to be mistaken for someone sneaking off to the local coffee bar for a cup two-thirds filled with steamed cow’s milk.