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How to order steak at a restaurant to ensure an enjoyable experience that won’t leave you with a headache, indigestion, or worse the next day.
I went out to eat at a local steakhouse recently with my extended family for a celebratory dinner. We had a lovely time – good conversation, lots of laughing, and enjoyment of each other’s company.
Unfortunately, the next day I felt pretty rotten for the experience.
While I had made every effort to order food that wouldn’t make me feel lousy or fatigued later, my attempts to dodge the chain restaurant food land mines had failed.
I even had to use my go-to natural headache remedies or I would have had to resort to painkillers to get through the day.
I knew exactly what had gone wrong, and I silently chided myself for wimping out and not saying something to the waiter at the time when the steak I ordered did not arrive as I had carefully instructed.
You know how it goes, though. Sending back your food because it is not served as specified is such an annoyance. At the time, I was having such a good time with my family that I decided to just suck it up and eat the food even though I knew it was going to do a number on me the next day.
This is truly one of the biggest downsides of eating clean, whole foods the vast majority of the time.
When you do eat something that is overly processed or laden with toxic additives, it tends to sucker punch the life out of you for about 24-48 hours afterward.
The optimal digestion and improved health and vitality experienced by eating a traditional diet on a daily basis make the occasional negative event of eating factory foods very, very noticeable.
Those who eat processed foods most of the time don’t seem to suffer from this reality possibly because their bodies are so “used to” getting beaten up by chemicals, additives, and GMOs all the time that their nervous system has stopped even registering the experience.
Does this mean that eating processed foods and apparently not suffering from them is not dangerous?
Definitely not!
I compare the experience to that of an alcoholic who can drink a bottle of whiskey and still appear sober.
Just because the alcoholic can “handle” the whiskey doesn’t mean it isn’t doing tremendous biological damage.
On the positive side, my dinner at Outback Steakhouse provided some good material for this article, so here are the pointers I would suggest next time you go to a restaurant and are trying to order steak in such a way that won’t give you a headache or worse in the coming hours and days.
Skip the Chain Restaurants
The first suggestion I would make if you are going out for steak is to avoid chain restaurants if at all possible.
Chains are cheaper than a locally owned steakhouse and that is why they are popular. That budget-friendly menu comes with a price, however, and that is lower-quality food.
Big companies have significant buying power within the industrialized food distribution system because they buy in huge quantities which allows for big price breaks. This is then passed along to the consumer.
However, food that comes in huge quantities is typically lower quality and processed in a highly industrialized setting.
It would be better to choose a restaurant that only has one or two locations where the owner lives within the same community and is also eating there!
A small restaurant tends to more carefully source its ingredients. For example, at least one steak restaurant in Tampa sources its beef locally from grassfed farms.
Not only would steak from this restaurant taste better than one from a corporate chain, but it would also contain more nutrition too.
Tell the Waiter “No Seasonings”
Another problem with ordering steak out is that when the meat sourced is of low quality, it correspondingly has little to no flavor.
Restaurants, particularly chains or franchises, typically compensate for flavorless meat by brushing steaks with seasonings before grilling.
This makes them taste more like the natural, mouthwatering flavor of grassfed steaks.
The problem with these “seasonings” is that they contain neurotoxic MSG, which will likely give you a headache, nausea, or worse for up to 48 hours afterward.
This is what happened to me at Outback Steakhouse. I ordered my steak without the seasonings (grill only) and yet when the steak arrived and I took a bite, I realized the mistake.
Weirdly, my nose often itches slightly when a bite of food with MSG in it comes near my mouth.
If this happens to you, be sure to send it back and request what you originally ordered. You will be happy you did in the morning.
Order Sauces on the Side
Sometimes steaks are served with some sort of sauce brushed on top. Again, this is typically to enhance the taste of low-quality, flavorless beef.
These sauces usually contain GMO corn syrup, GMO corn starch (thickener), chemicals, additives, and MSG.
It is a good idea to request any sauces (brown sauces, gravy, etc) that come with the steak be served on the side. Then, you can take a small taste first to see if it is made from scratch and might be safe to eat.
Most likely, it will be from a bottle, jug, or packet and not worth consuming.
In that case, just get some butter and garlic on the side to melt over your steak when it arrives, use some salt and pepper and you will be good to go.
Rare or Well Done?
While it is true that a rare steak is easier to digest and more nutritious than a steak with the life cooked out of it, if you are eating steak at a restaurant where the quality of the steak may be questionable, I would suggest ordering it well done. This will avoid the potential for pathogens or parasites in the meat.
If you are ordering steak at a quality restaurant in your community that sources from local, grassfed farms, however, ordering the steak seared or rare to medium would be fine and certainly a more enjoyable and digestive-friendly experience.
Do you have other tips to order steak safely at a restaurant? Please share your experience or knowledge with us in the comments section.
If you’d rather just prepare steak at home instead of ordering out, here is an MSG-free, homemade steak sauce recipe to try!
Another issue I haven’t been able to get away from is that most steaks are marinated. So even when I ask for no seasonings, unless I specifically ask, I am getting a steak soaked in some chemical slurry first. Our local steakhouse told me they could give me a “plain grilled steak” with no seed oils but they had no steak that hadn’t been marinating in the same.
This is new information for me! I did not realize that even a simple steak like a ribeye would be marinated before grilling? That is terrible!!! I will look into this further.
I recently discovered the app seed oil scout which lets you know if a restaurant uses vegetable oils/high pufa oils. Surprisingly Outback still uses tallow in some of their dishes including the bloomin’ onion. But according to the app they it also uses the seed oils in other stuff unsurprisingly. I’ll try these tips next time, thanks!
I’m curious to know what restaurants in the Tampa area serve grass fed beef. The Weston A Price Foundation 12 Spoons rating system lists no rated restaurants in the Bay Area.
In December, on a trip to Asheville, I ate at Bone and Broth, rated 11/12 Spoons. It’s only deficiency was the lack of fermented beverages on the menu, like kombucha or beet kvass. While the advertising for the restaurant tauted its “Elevated Southern Classics,” I recognized this statement as a euphemism for “Traditional French Cuisine,” a label that would attract fewer patrons. Located between a bakery and a butcher shop, both of which offer real food, the meal I had was superb. The steak, labelled a “Bavette,” was a flank steak prepared so it tasted like a filet mignon. It came with a choice of sauces. I passed on the Herb Cream and went with the Tallow Butter. No headache the next day, and I noticed that the restaurant’s prices were in line with other local, independent establishments.
Bottom line: Please contribute to the 12 Spoons rating system. It’s the best way to find a good meal for a special occasion. So far, there are very few restaurants listed, but in time I hope there will be more.
The Boozy Pig serves local grassfed beef, pork and chicken as well as locally grown vegetables. That is the first one that came to my mind.