Meat Me Downtown: Neal Fraser's Beefsteak Dinner Returns

Last year's Beefsteak dinner at Vibiana's downtown was a pretty epic affair. An ode to old-timey New York, it was boisterous, use-your-hands, all-you-can-eat steak and beer drinking party based on the famous 1939 New Yorker story by Joseph Mitchell.

Our former food critic Jonathan Gold even chronicled it, describing such wondrous sights as, “[a] fat man, dressed in an old-fashioned bathing suit appliqued with fabric pork chops, danced up the length of the long tables, then down again, flouncing, jiggling, representing the abandon most of us would have aspired to if it hadn't been so much work.”

Good news for history and meat buffs, the re-enactment will commence again this year on Dec. 1 (7 p.m. cocktails, 8 p.m. dinner), again at Vibiana, and hosted by chef Neal Fraser and comedians Aziz Ansari and Eric Wareheim, The Simpsons' Matt Selman and TV executive Cort Cass. The $150 ticket will allow you an unlimited, gout-inducing helping of meat and libations, as well as entertainment from DJ Divemaster Electron and a few other local bands. The menu hasn't been revealed yet, but the website promises, “Vegetarians will leave hungry. Nobody else will.”

Proceeds from the dinner will be donated to the L.A. Food Bank. RSVP's must be made by Nov. 20 on the event's website.