I love going places and eating their food, but in the rare cases where I’ve been away from home for more than 3 weeks the cravings for the good food from home start to set in.

If I can’t cook for myself, I start to want The Things I’m Good At Cooking like white people tacos and breakfast waffles and spaghetti and meatballs.

If I’m in a place far away from the pacific rim I start to miss Korean and Japanese and Chinese and Thai and Malaysian and Vietnamese and Singaporean and good seafood in general. You can get this stuff in lots of places but it’s very good in Vancouver: all it takes is one Saskatchewan sushi restaurant to scare you straight.

wherever I go I want burgers and hot dogs but they’re generally widely available at a pretty high quality bar, so that, at least, is usually not a problem, although Americans have a weird tendency to deliver hamburger meat to you at unsafe temperatures, which is usually fine but you are kinda rolling the dice every time you eat there

The reason it’s not generally safe for ground meat to be served below 165F (well done) is that the grinding process pushes surface bacteria deep into the grind, it’s the same reason you have to cook mechanically tenderized meat to 165F (and why I avoid buying mechanically tenderized steaks, because the added tenderness is not worth having to overcook them).

There’s an argument that can be made for the safety of the restaurant grinding a good piece of meat for you in-house, but that calls for a lot of trust between you and the restaurant.

The local health authority WILL fail you for this in Canada, which is why Americans often complain that our hamburgers are dry, and places where you can actually get a pink hamburger here are expensive and… rare.

basically, you only want medium rare ground beef if it’s well done, which is rare, if it’s not well done you want it well done