A while back my husband and I were in the mood for a nice steak.  If you’ve heard this show before, this will come as no surprise to you.  And there happened to be a nice looking place that we’d driven by a dozen times but for some reason never visited.

Feeling adventurous and rather puckish we found a good parking spot in a spacious lot, so far so good.  Once inside, we discovered a nice modern looking place, which was different from change of pace from the more traditional darkly lit heavy wood steak places we’re used to.  The menu looks classic and moderately priced and like I said we were puckish and we had already parked the car so we felt committed the place.

As we are led to our table by the hostess in the tight pants I begin to feel something a bit out of place.  We walk past a big grilling station in the middle of the room.  Is this like one of those Japanese Teppanyaki grill places where the cook flips knives and food over your head and sets himself on fire right in front of you?  It didn’t look Japanese in here.

But wait…, why are people standing around the grill with tongs?  Where’s the cook?  What kind of restaurant is this?

“Hey, what’s this? I ask pointing to the barbequers…

The hostess clarifies.  “Oh, you cook your own steaks here”

I notice several health code violations.  “ That’s clever” I say to her.  “But that’s OK, we’ll have the food made by your cooks.”

“Oh, no”, she says “This is how it works.  You can choose your cut of meat and we bring it out for you to grill right there.”

“Well how much more is it for you to cook it?

“We don’t do that.”

I can’t really remember what I may have mumbled as we left but I’m thinking it wasn’t complimentary, and I get that, as a chef I am certainly capable of grilling my own steak, but that’s not why we left the house that day.  That’s not why we sat in traffic and parked.  That’s not why we paid for gas.  And I can’t imagine that was what all those poor sweaty tong holders had in mind when they let themselves be conned into burning their own meat for $27.  Meat which they couldn’t send back when they realize there’s a reason they wear a clip on tie for a living.

What, I wonder, could be the thinking behind letting the least qualified people prepare the most important part of the meal, when the experienced and probably well-paid cooks in the back are tasked with the side dish.  And what kind of bored money burning suit would want to pay to cook his own meal? And if you have to cook your own food, shouldn’t it be cheaper?  A steak is worth $27 only when a business with overhead makes an investment into its preparation by hiring skilled staff to prepare it.  Those dumb tong wielding patsies didn’t look skilled, they looked nervous.  And rightly so, one wrong flip, one high leaping flame and they ruin the meat and lose their eyebrows.

You may be thinking to yourself, that’s not too crazy, paying to cook your own food isn’t that ridiculous.  Let me expand then in a way you can relate to:  would you pay $100 to detail your own car?  How about $50 to mow your own lawn.  how does paying $45 to wash your own dog sound?  Starting to get angry?  I know I am.  That’s right:  when you do the work yourself things should be cheaper..  I can make my own steak at home, for a lot less, and I can make a better martini.  And I can be rude to myself, I don’t need a sleazy looking waitress for that.

Next there will be a spa where you can massage yourself for $90, or a cobbler where you can pay to polish your own shoes.  Or a golf course where you pay a ton of money to carry your own clubs around.  Wait, OK  you’ve gotta admit golf is just stupid.

I’m pretty sure that this cook your own steak thing started as a big joke and was just a bunch of chefs feeling unappreciated and they took things a bit too far.  They never expected people to actually fall for it, they just wanted to be loved.  But stupid is as stupid does, and this, my friends, is stupid.   Of course, a little bell may go off when the chef comes out and asks you how everything tastes, and you say “Oh, it’s fine, hey! Wait a sec, I made this” and he just starts laughing his head off.

Worst part is, they’ll still expect a tip.