Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

This one is an absolute no brainer. I am a software programmer and fortunate enough to work for a company that allows me to work from home, I try my best to make a point of living in a different city every year, I pack light and go. I've gone from southern cali, mid-west to the east coast and NOTHING compares to the mexican food in San Diego! Travel just 60 miles up the coast to Los Angeles and the difference is night and day, doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same category. San Diego is on the border of Mexico, and the mexican food gets exponentially worse the farther you get from it. Ask anyone who has actually tried mexican food in mulitple cities, I will guarantee the same response, San Diego hands down. Anyone who calls them nachos instead of carne asada chips, or taquitos instead of rolled tacos can automatically be discredited in this discussion. Those of you who have lived in San Diego will know what I mean.

Hell YEA I would send it back - I ASKED FOR RAW!

I attended Oakland High School in Oakland California in the late '50's. The lunches in the school cafateria were not really that bad. In particular I liked the hamburgers, they had a very distinct taste, a taste that I have not found in any hamburger I have eaten since. Something was added to the hamburger meat during preparation to give it the distinct taste, I suspect that it was a condiment but to this day I have been unable to recreate the taste. I have been looking for information on a cookbook that the Alameda County public schools may have been using at the time, perhaps it would have the recipe for the hamburgers.

I grew up in Texas and then went to UT Austin for college. Many people think of Austin as the home of migas, and this is where I first fell in love with them. My FAVORITE recipe for migas is from Homesick Texan's blog. It's incredible. Please give the recipe (and her blog) a try!

http://homesicktexan.blogspot.com/2008/05/migas-in-morning.html

Good grief, anyone who says that San Antonio has bad Mexican food and is "touristy" clearly didn't stagger far enough from the Riverwalk to learn anything about this city and its cuisine. People who actually *live* here don't go near the tourist areas, unless they have no choice.

And to say that LA *isn't* touristy but still has good Mexican food is just laughable. I didn't find one decent restaurant in all of California when I lived there. The food was horrible, and the service abominable.

When you get away from the downtown area of San Antonio, that's when you find out just how awesome the Mexican food is here. There are dozens of wonderful mom-and pop joints tucked into unexpected places all over San Antonio. You just have to know how to look.

And if you want the best Mexican food, anywhere, Texas's Lower Rio Grande Valley is the place to go. Until you've had seso or eyeball soup or panchos, until you can lay out the perfect botana platter, you don't know jack about authentic MX food.

I'm with Blogkitten. There are very few restaurants that I will trust with rare/ med-rare ground beef. I generally only eat a bloody burger if it's at home from a butcher where I know they're grinding their own beef on-premises and not getting it pre-ground from an e. coli factory.

I never send anything back. I just don't go back.

I've sent it back 3x unbelievable! I like mine xtra rare so if it's not the way I want it back it goes.....

I agree with @yr momz - I don't trust the restaurants hygiene levels to not give me some illness from the undercooked meat.

If I want a medium rare burger, I'll grind the meat myself and prepare it myself. Otherwise I go for medium well in a restaurant.

I have no doubts or hesitations - send it back!!!!!! You're paying for your food to be prepared to your specifications, and if something you clearly ordered isn't prepared properly and would be truly nauseating to you (as a well done burger is to me), then you are neither obliged to eat it or pay for it. The chefs, restaurant owners or managers should also be aware when something is amiss, as a service establishment, particularly a premium one, that doesn't deliver what customers are paying for is unlikely to survive for long.

I do send badly cooked food, including incinerated burgers, back. I only had one waiter/restaurant give me a hard time - I specifically asked if a fish special was filleted and ended up with a whole fish. The establishment was gone a few months later.

only if it is cooked gray -- i TRULY don't like the flavor of cooked-through ground beef. and i ask for rare, so this would have to be a big misstep in the cooking.

"I bet someone on the wait staff would eat it."

Per this earlier comment, I thought I'd mention that in the over 10 years I waited tables, I never worked anywhere where the servers were allowed to eat anything while they were working, not even if it would otherwise go in the trash. In indie places, the dish dogs were given chances at the food before the trash. In chains, everything had to be thrown out and accounted for on some nutso ledger sheet but nobody was allowed to eat while working.

Sometimes I'll send it back. As a rare meat eater I find too many restaurants have no clue what rare means. If I get one that is still pretty pink in the middle I'll slog through it. If there is barely any pink I will send it back, otherwise what is the point of asking me how I want my burger. Not to mention I make it VERY clear to the waitstaff that I want it rare. I usually tell them to run in through a warm room and bring it to me. That tends to get my point across. On those sporadic occasions where I get a perfectly rare burger I make it a point to complement the kitchen staff on getting it so spot on. Positive reinforcement is said to work better than negative right?