His dream burger is rare indeed

I had too many errands and too little time, so when I stopped at Bristol Farms in South Pasadena to pick up a few duck breasts for dinner on a recent Sunday afternoon, I decided I’d grab a quick lunch in their cafe.

“A bowl of soup and a rare hamburger, please,” I said to the woman behind the counter.

A thick, juicy, rare hamburger is one of God’s great comfort foods, and I was especially eager to sink my teeth into one on a day when I felt so mindlessly harried.

A few minutes later, a waitress came to my table, soup bowl in hand.

“We have a company policy against serving rare hamburgers,” she said. “I’ll bring you a medium hamburger.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “I like my burgers rare. If you won’t give me one that way, I’ll eat elsewhere.”

And with that I got up and left, deeply disappointed and more than mildly annoyed.

This was the third time in the last few months that I’d been turned down when trying to order a rare hamburger. Carl’s Jr. refused to serve its much-ballyhooed “$6 burger” rare, and Coco’s also said rare burgers were “against company policy,” even though I used to order them that way about once a week, many years ago, when I worked down the street from a Coco’s in Orange County.

I won’t be returning to Coco’s or Carl’s Jr. -- any Coco’s or Carl’s Jr. -- ever again.

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Raising the temperature

Yes, yes, I know all about E. coli 0157:H7 and the four people who died and the 700 who got sick after eating undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box outlets in the Pacific Northwest in 1993. But a former Food and Drug Administration official testified before Congress that the meat used for these burgers was so filled with E. coli that the bacteria would have thrived even if the burgers had been fully cooked.

So what are you going to do, avoid hamburgers altogether?

Not me. I love a good, thick, rare, juicy hamburger. It’s one of the best -- and most American -- of all taste treats. I’m no more likely to quit eating hamburgers than I am to give up such pleasures of the palate as barbecue, hot dogs, pastrami, pizza, steak or foie gras.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all burgers be cooked to an interior temperature of 160 degrees to be sure that all E. coli pathogens are killed. At that temperature, of course, you can forget about rare or even medium-rare; the taste and texture of such burgers more closely resemble that of a hiking boot than a piece of ground meat.

After the Jack in the Box scare, every fast-food burger place I know of issued public statements that they would henceforth cook all burgers to either a 155- or 160-degree interior temperature.

Bah!

I’ll bet more people develop heart disease from a steady diet of the trans-fat-laden French fries these places serve than would get E. coli from rare hamburgers.

I almost never eat fast-food hamburgers -- not because they’re unsafe, but because they’re unpalatable. McDonald’s? Burger King? Wendy’s? Jack in the Box? White Castle? I’d rather eat my socks.

I went to Carl’s Jr. that one time because I was intrigued by their “$6 burger” commercial on the radio -- and because there was a Carl’s Jr. (and not much else) near a tire shop where I had to leave my car for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.

Generally, when I want a hamburger, I go to places like Cassell’s, Russell’s, Pie ‘n Burger, the Bucket, Father’s Office -- or, best of all, a good steakhouse. They get good-quality meat, they don’t put so much lettuce and sauce on the burger that you can’t taste the meat and they know how to cook it.

Most important of all, they not only don’t balk at my request for a rare burger, but the smiles I get from the service staff at these places when I say “rare” suggest that they agree that’s the best way to eat a burger. I think they’re proud of their burgers and want their customers to appreciate the full, juicy flavor of the beef.

Not long ago, I asked Eddie Shin, then the chef at Nick & Stef’s Steakhouse in downtown Los Angeles, why he wasn’t worried about customers getting E. coli from his rare burgers -- which just may be the best in town.

“Because we get good-quality meat from a reputable source [Newport Meat Co. in Irvine, where the meat is ground], and we take care of it properly,” said Shin, who’s since left Nick & Stef’s and, the last I heard, was planning to open his own steakhouse.

I think every place that serves hamburgers (or any other food) should closely monitor the quality and care of its meat (and everything else it serves). Maybe every place that serves hamburgers should also have a legal waiver available to customers. You want a rare burger, you get a rare burger. But first you have to sign a form acknowledging that you recognize the potential danger from E. coli and indemnifying the restaurant against any damages should you get sick.

Kids can’t sign legally binding waivers, of course, but I’m not a kid. I’m an adult and I want to be treated as an adult, someone capable of evaluating potential risks and making decisions accordingly.

California state law is on my side. Although the Food Safety Act of 1997 requires that ground meat be “thoroughly cooked” -- which the law defines as a minimum internal temperature of 155 to 157 degrees -- it specifically says that requirement may be bypassed if “the consumer specifically orders that the food be individually prepared less than thoroughly cooked.”

In other words, it’s supposed to be up to the consumer.

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Wrong-headed worries

Burger makers should worry less about minuscule threats to my health and more about impinging on my freedom of choice. We worry too much about the wrong things in this country. We should be banning guns, not rare hamburgers.

In fact, E. coli isn’t really that big a problem. According to the CDC, the incidence of E. coli is actually declining in the United States -- down 42% since 1996. CDC officials estimate that there are 73,000 cases a year in this country, but they can’t explain exactly what that estimate is based on. In 2003, the last year for which they have statistics compiled and available, they say there were 443 “actual reported cases.”

That’s a huge gap -- 443 to 73,000. Their only explanation: “How many people actually go to the doctor after food poisoning? Very few. That’s why we estimate ... based on scientific studies.”

David Ropeik, the director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, says 80 people died from E. coli in 2002, the last year he studied the issue. That means the likelihood of dying from E. coli in a given year is less than the likelihood of dying from being struck by a lightning bolt, or dying in a tornado, or an airliner crash.

I think I’ll print out those statistics -- and copies of the California Food Safety Act and of the CDC report showing the sharp decline in the number of E. coli cases -- and take them all to Bristol Farms. And Coco’s. And Carl’s Jr. And every other fast-food outlet.

On second thought, they’d probably just put the papers on the grill, flip them once and slap them between two halves of a hamburger bun.

It probably wouldn’t taste much different from a 160-degree Whopper or Quarter Pounder.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.