Wedding Chefs Wear Rose Colored Glasses

Does that look rare to you? I know wedding catering is a tough job, hundreds of consistent plates that need to go down simultaneously. But it never ceases to amaze me the lengths these caterers seem to go to have their servers say "No, medium rare is really medium rare here" when that temperature is not even in their skill set. With some skepticism I usually specify rare nevertheless in hopes that something that resembles meat will come out but alas, filet a la shoe leather, the cruel joke among the wedding catering underworld.

I'll go a little out of my comfort zone here and make some political commentary in hopes of explaining this age old culinary enigma. Restaurants are the ultimate free market experience where people vote with their wallets. Unapologetically overcook a diner's meat and he is unlikely to return. Wedding catering, on the other hand, bears more resemblance to communism. Diners have no choice but to be there and if the venue is popular they will be forced to come back time after time despite what they know is waiting to mock them under those silver plate covers. Like the USSR was to China, weddings bear a lot of similarity to association dinners and other such events often dubbed "rubber chicken dinners."

Maybe my politicization of wedding food is off base. But if that's the case the only plausible alternate explanation is that wedding catering chefs must always wear rose colored glasses.

Widest part of a "rare" steak from a wedding accompanied by inedible peas and a mystery starch. The flash bestowed a generous amount of additional color to the steak. It mostly looked like that gray part in the lower right hand corner.