Neil Rumbaoa, director of communications at the Shangri-La Hotel in Dubai, told The National that hamburgers served anything less than well-done come with a legal waiver.

“We just want to make sure that we serve the best quality food and the safest. And so if it’s rare, obviously there are factors that will contribute to how safe the food is.”

Levent Tekun, the director of marketing at Shangri-La Hotel in Abu Dhabi, said it is a worldwide policy for the hotel chain.

“As a company, globally, when a burger is ordered and a guest is asking for it to be medium or rare or something along those lines, our verbal phrase on that would be that the hotel prefers for the burgers to be well-done. Then it’s down to the guest to choose whether he wants it well-done or rare or whatever.”

In both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, customers who ask to take prepared food away from the hotel premises or use hotel facilities to store food from outside must sign a disclaimer. That practice is used in other hotel restaurants in the UAE, such as the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

It’s all part of the Shangri-La Hotel’s HACCP plan and has been in place for several years. But I wonder, how are rare and medium defined? Are they using meat thermometers and the right ones?