How do you like your steak? Doneness? How prepared? Etc.
 

How do you like your steak cooked?

Watching people feasting on a piece of raw cold meat they call "rare" is not appealing. Neither is watching someone eat a grey piece of leather they call "Well-Done". Medum to Medium-Well for me. Cooked on the outside, and pinkish on the inside. Yumm.

Have you ever sent back a steak because it was rare enough to your liking? Meaning a wasted steak.

I prefer my steaks somewhat charred on the outside with a cool dark red to purple center.

I'll give the restaurant a little leeway in cooking my steak. If I order it as above, I'll take it rare or medium rare. Anything more than that and it's going back to the kitchen.

Don't like steak at all--I'm a vegan.

Medium-rare. Not the medium-rare that's pink in the middle, which is what you get in the US a lot. I'm talking France medium-rare, Paris cafe steak au maison medium rare, where there's some red in that thing. Yummm.

100% totally and uttterly well done. Not a spot of red inside. Amazing that some of the high-class steak joints don't seem to be able to perfom that simple task.

Medium Rare, leaning towards the rare side. It has the most taste, yet still charred on the outside. Makes me salivate just thinking about it!

Raw
 

I prefer to eat my food as close to nature intended as possible. Raw veggies, raw meat, raw food. Big fan of sushi, Steak Tartare and also when I do order a steak, I prefer it to be "rare" or "bleu."

cheers,

If I'm in a place like Georgia (I know generalizing here) and they consider rare just greyed on the outside and not even warm throughout then I'll order it medium rare.

Everywhere else I'll order it rare.

I don't mind it bleeding a bit when it's cooked as long as it's not still ice cold in the center.

That may be caused by the chef in such restaurants not being able to get their heads around what they think is destroying fine steaks by so much cooking. Once you're going to cook a steak well-done, the quality of what you started with declines to almost no importance.
As may be guessed by the above, I like my steak with the center still cool and the quality of what they start with is crucial.

- For a strip steak or filet - charred on the outside and pink but very warm in the center, with the filet being butterflied if it's more than 10 oz. At the recent FT IND St. Elmo's Dinner, they did the filet perfectly.
- For a rib-eye, pan fried on a lower heat setting and cooked more evenly throughout, a little more well done than the strip steak because of the extra fat.
- For a top sirloin, a butt, or a flank steak, please give it to somebody else and find me a rib-eye or some nice lamb chops.

Rare. A good filet is also good black and blue...seared crisp on the outside, nice and rare throughout.

"I'd like my steak to graze on my salad..." ;)

Same here. Nothing beats a bleu steak.

Although my local steak restaurant, Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon now refuse to cook it that way as they feel it's a health and safety issue.

Depends on the amount of marbling
 

For Choice meat, blue rare to raw
For Prime meat, rare
For Wagyu and so on, medium rare to rare.

Medium Rare for me. I will occasionally order it rare, depending on my mood. I'm also amazed at the number of restaurants that are now refusing to serve anything less than an almost overdone medium-rare.

Rare for me. I could be wrong on this but is well done on the outside and rare on the inside, also know as "Pittsburgh"?