If you’ve ever gotten flack from your friends for ordering your T-bone well done, we’ve got some more bad news for you. According to professional chefs, your buddies are right. But before you angry-exit this page on your browser, take their arguments under consideration-because your next meal will be a thousand times better for it. Other cuts of meat are designed to be boiled, fried, ground up, braised, sautéed, or even microwaved. But steak is tended to very carefully so that it’s treated well on the grill or stove. “‘Steak,’ throughout the entire chain of procurement-from the raising of the cattle to the basic butchering and aging, to the fine butchering, storage, prepping and cooking-is designed to be medium or less, with medium rare or below being optimal,” one very outspoken chef, Geoff, argued on a now viral Reddit thread. From grazing fields to butcher block, every person involved with quality steaks puts a lot of time and effort into their craft. Order well and you’re undoing all of their hard work. “It is as insulting to a master carpenter to use his finest wood and all of his skill to make a chest that is going to be burnt for fuel,” Chef Geoff points out. “Sure if you want to pay him for it, I suppose that is your prerogative, but it is also his right to feel that his time is being wasted, especially if he feels he could be showcasing his trade instead of simply exchanging his time for money.” Order well and you’re totally drying it out, making the steak tougher and less melt-in-your-mouth tender. Technically, medium rare is considered perfectly cooked because that’s when the proteins haven’t started to break down but the fat has rendered and given it juicy flavour. We’re not saying you need to order a still-bleeding rare filet mignon here, but a nice, just-barely-pink-in-the-middle medium will do the trick. According to one Reddit user and chef, most chefs can’t be bothered to pay attention to steaks that were ordered well done. Why? They look at it this way: whether they mind it on then grill or not, it’s going to get ruined. So either way you get a totally overcooked piece of meat and if you have a problem with that, it’s your own fault. You ordered it that way. Why shell out a lot of bills for a steak that’ll end up tasting the same as the run-of-the-mill grocery version you cooked at home? “The less done it is, the more we can present the uniqueness or quality of a steak. The difference between a really good, small operation local cattle farmer and Peruvian Class D or even USDA select is night and day,” Chef Geoff explains. “But in all reality, after mid-well you can’t really tell the difference. So You will pay up to $20/kg for the privilege of not knowing if this is brahmin meat from Falloutor fancy Wagyu beef from Japan.”