This is a great way to cook a steak. However, I doubt this is the way the big steak houses cook them. It is just not practical:
The different cuts of meat vary in cooking times to get them to the desired doness - and can even vary from one ribeye to the next. For a grillman to keep track of the all the steaks cooking at the same time in ovens is a nightmare, and will result in steaks being over cooked.
Commercial grills run much hotter than home models, and can be set to have a hot side to sear, and a slightly cooler side to finish on. All there in front of the grillman to keep an eye on.
I tried to point this out already...
A bit of mixed info here with every one being correct to some degree. This is indeed not the way most big steak houses work. They are usually set up to specifically deal with and cook steak so they often have at least two double stack infrared swing broilers. Infrared broilers are often referred to as "grills". Techniclly speaking very few steak houses use grills, however infrared broilers leave grill marks.
The flip side is that most restaurants only have a single swing broiler or a small grill so at peak times it is completly impractical to cook fully on the "grill". It is also easier for an inexperienced line cook to work with Mickey's method of using the oven as the temps are lower than an 1850 degree infrared broiler. Thus a bit more forgiving. For an experienced line cook it will not make any difference if they use the oven, broiler or a combination. Steaks are cooked by touch and an accomplished cook can tell just by a quick look and a light touch if the steak is cooked properly. The typical restaurant line not only has oven space underneath all of the stove top burners but at least one double stack convection oven. So it becomes impractical not to use that space.
This same method is used by saute cooks. Chicken for example would be seared, the inredients for the dish hit the pan and then it's in the oven. This way the saute cook can utilize all of the available burners plus have several more pans in the oven.
The Living Seas restaurant at Disney actually utilizes a conveyer belt sautee station.
The bottom line is that you have to work with what you have and Mickey's method, save for the cook time, is very common. A 12 ounce fillet is going to need a lot more cook time than a 12 ounce strip. I'm betting a lot of steaks got cooked this way long before infrared or modern kitchens.
