This Is How Crappy Steakhouses Fool Their Customers

We know you're obsessed with steak, so we thought you should be warned.

Time Magazine's Josh Ozersky has an awesome piece out called 'The Problem With The American Steakhouse' where he goes on a sophisticated rant on how we're getting screwed out of our ideal steakhouse experience.

From Time:

I don’t write this as a food pundit. I say it as a glutton and as an American. Steakhouses are not really restaurants, in the strictest sense: they are closer in spirit to strip clubs or spas, places to which people repair for rites of costly self-indulgence, Dionysian revels in which stressed businessmen or harried wives vent their hypertension.

That's colorful, but one of the truly awesome parts of this piece is when Ozersky talks about how steakhouses get away with this madness.

There are certain tricks of the trade to make so-so cuts look super:

So steakhouses find ways to trick you into thinking you are getting something precious. They bathe the meat in melted butter, which is good, but as much of a deceit as a padded bra; they buy steaks that have been jabbed with thousands of tiny needles to make them soft; they’ll use MSG or other tenderizers; they’ll call a steak “dry-aged” that has been in their refrigerator for three days (as opposed to a month in a real aging room.)

So keep your eye out everyone, we want you to eat well.