"The New York State steak dinner, or 'beefsteak,' is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbeque," wrote Joseph Mitchell in his now-classic New Yorker article (ca. 1939).

Until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, these dinners were strictly male affairs, usually thrown by or in association with political clubs. Like the German-influenced barbeque still found in areas of Texas today (see Insufficient's earlier posting here), the old New York beefsteak would have foregone amenities like knives, forks, napkins and tablecloths.
"The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears," wrote Mitchell.
All of this changed in 1920 when the beefsteaks went co-ed and, in Mitchell's telling, "degenerated into polite banquets" with the forced addition of such things as "Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher."

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Food delivery is, for many New Yorkers, as much a regular routine as opening the refrigerator. It may make economic sense, given the high cost of real
estate, which makes having a stocked kitchen pantry a luxury for most of us. At least we rationalize it that way.

Photo courtesy of newsriffs's flickr photostream
There have been other attempts to explain this ritual. These have ranged from the sociological (the prevalence of two-job families), to the cultural (the hatred of cooking by yuppies), to the geological (the city is relatively flat, hence good for bicycle delivery men). See, for examples, this article from the archives of the New Yorker.
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