Hollywood’s Wildest Meat Party Is Back — and This Time Everyone’s Invited

More than a decade ago, The Hollywood Reporter ventured inside one of Los Angeles’ strangest and most decadent industry traditions: Beefsteak, a sprawling, carnivorous feast where Hollywood comedy writers and their friends gathered to eat enormous quantities of meat with their bare hands.

Eleven Beefsteaks and one pandemic later, the party is still going. And according to longtime host and The Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman, this year’s edition — held, like the others, at Vibiana (a cathedral turned event space), under the watchful eye of chef Neal Fraser — may be the most over-the-top yet.

“I hate to say the phrase ‘best Beefsteak yet,’” Selman says. “But the fact that we have Dario Cecchini, the ultimate king, the most famous butcher in all of Tuscany, slicing and preparing and providing the beef as only he can is kind of a huge deal.”

Cecchini is the mustachioed Italian butcher and restaurateur whose theatrical approach to meat has made him an international culinary celebrity. He will descend on Los Angeles for the 11th edition of Beefsteak, bringing a bit of Tuscany to a tradition with roots considerably closer to Tammany Hall than the Tuscan hills.

Historically, beefsteaks were communal meat feasts that flourished in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York, where politicians and working men gathered to consume alarming quantities of beef, traditionally without utensils. The Los Angeles incarnation revived that spirit for an entirely different constituency: comedy writers, actors, producers and assorted Hollywood hangers-on looking to spend one night behaving as though cholesterol had never been discovered.

Over the years, it became something of an unofficial annual reunion for the comedy business.

“It is a comedy prom,” Selman says.

But he pushes back on the idea that Beefsteak remains some impenetrable Hollywood clubhouse. This year, for the first time, tickets are available to the public — meaning civilians can enter the meat-scented inner sanctum themselves.

“It’s not an elite or exclusive event, which is kind of cool,” Selman says. “Maybe for a couple years in the beginning, when the agents and managers discovered it, it became a little bit of a Hollywood thing. But now it is really a bacchanal for anyone who wants to go to the best party of the year, hands down, for a good cause.”

Still, those hoping to observe comedy writers in their natural habitat should not be disappointed.

“There could definitely be rub potential,” Selman says when asked whether ticket buyers might find themselves rubbing shoulders with familiar faces.

Beefsteak has also developed its own constituency of obsessives. Selman says some attendees have made nearly every edition, turning the event into a kind of annual pilgrimage.

“There’s a certain point, it’s like people come together and see people they only see once a year at this magical night,” he says. “And it’s almost like they’re in a club — a once-a-year supper club.”

The pilgrimage is becoming literal. Attendees now travel from around the country and, increasingly, overseas. Selman himself is flying in relatives and says a group of his high school friends is coming to Los Angeles for the occasion.

“People should be inviting their friend groups from other cities because life is short,” he says.

This is where Selman’s pitch for Beefsteak takes an unexpectedly existential turn.

“This is something you would need to experience,” he says. “I feel like I can say that without exaggeration. I know life is short. You can’t argue that. But the idea that this is the type of party you really should experience before you die, I can say that without hesitation.

Selman has never slipped Beefsteak into an episode of The Simpsons, although writers have pitched the idea.

“It’s certainly something Mr. Burns would like,” he says, imagining that Springfield’s resident billionaire would probably prefer “the old-timey version, not the modern, cool, elevated, fancy, over-the-top version.”

For now, the real-life version may be sufficiently cartoonish.

Much of that comes down to Cecchini, whose restaurants in the tiny Tuscan town of Panzano have turned butchery into theater. Even Selman, who professes not to know exactly what Cecchini has planned, sounds slightly awed by the possibilities.

“This guy, Dario, is so bananas,” he says. “He doesn’t do a lot of L.A. stuff. So even if you’ve been to other Beefsteaks, this guy’s going to be on display.”