But there appears to be broad consensus on the genesis of the New Jersey version: In 1938 a year before Mr.

Mitchell’s account, may be closer in spirit to the beefsteak’s origins). It’s not clear how the beefsteak migrated westward from New York, or how it went from many meat courses to just beef tenderloin (which, according to Mr. It amounts to a remarkable two-way cultural disconnect: The New Jersey events are organized by, catered by and attended by people who are unaware of the beefsteak’s New York pedigree, just as New York’s nostalgic beefsteak historians have been oblivious to the New Jersey beefsteaks taking place right under their noses. Across the Hudson River, just 15 miles from Midtown Manhattan, the Bergen-Passaic beefsteak scene has been continuing without New York attention for the past 70 years. Robert Presutti for The New York TimesĪs it turns out, they’ve been living through it all along. Mitchell told it, the beefsteak came into being in the mid-1800s, became popular as a political fund-raiser and vote-buyer, and began a slow decline when women started taking part after being granted suffrage in 1920.

The ritual was documented by the writer Joseph Mitchell for the New Yorker magazine in his 1939 article “All You Can Hold for Five Bucks.” As Mr. Back in the days before cholesterol testing, beefsteaks boisterous mass feeds featuring unlimited servings of steak, lamb chops, bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, crabmeat, shrimp and beer, all consumed without such niceties as silverware, napkins or women held sway in New York for the better part of a century. That would have come as a surprise to many New Yorkers of generations past. I go to other places and nobody’s heard of it.” “You’ve got the tender beef, butter, salt, French fries, beer all your major food groups. “Once you start going to beefsteaks, it’s an addiction,” said Al Baker, a Hasbrouck Heights policeman who had organized the evening’s festivities to benefit the Special Olympics. Caterers said they put on about 1,000 of them in the region last year. The events, which typically attract crowds of 150 or more, with a ticket price of about $40, are popular as political meet-and-greets, annual dinners for businesses and civic groups, and charity fundraisers.

Nightingale bread