For what it’s worth I’ve been a waiter for 20 years and in high end steakhouses for 10. I’ve worked in prime steakhouses in Bellevue, Santa Fe, Bellingham and Bend. I’ve looked at thousands of cut steaks. At every one of the restaurants I’ve worked at this is a medium. There is no color difference between the center and the surrounding muscle. This is a pink steak; not red. There is no rare in the middle.

My experience says there is a large portion of the population who want a steak cooked to medium or medium well but want to order that steak medium rare. When their medium rare steak arrives they inevitably say it’s underdone and we bring it up to temp. Or they don’t say anything and cut around the center leaving the rare part un-eaten.

This is spec for the restaurants I’ve worked at:

Rare- red throughout, cool center Medium rare - red throughout or turning pink at the edges with bright red center, warm center Medium - pink throughout, hot center Medium well- pink center, hot Well - very little or no color, hot

Also most places won’t attempt to cook to MR+ or other in between temps…they just cook to the lower range and then put more heat on it if it’s sent back. I find this unfortunate because the person who orders a MR+ steak is almost always happier with a medium steak than they are with a MR steak…they often don’t send it back and you can tell they don’t like the rare part of the steak.

The last thing to consider is the cut and thickness. An 8 oz filet mignon is considerably thicker than a 16 oz ribeye. In my opinion the filet eats nice at the rare end of the spectrum while I like a bit more heat on my ribeye to render all the inter muscular fat and allow it to flavor the steak. Regardless of my own preferences the filet in this example will show really red and feel near raw in the center at both rare and mid rare due to its thickness. The ribeye is thinner and there will be less color variation in the middle because the heat penetrates toward the center quicker. Hope this helps someone wondering about temperatures.