Steak Row
In her sophomore year at NYU Mimi Sheraton sometimes went with her boyfriend to Printers Row on East 45th Street to put the NYU humor magazine to bed. Afterwards he took her to the Pen & Pencil (aka Bruno's Pen & Pencil) where newsmen and cartoonists hung out. Steakhouses were so numerous and popular along East 45th Street between Lexington and First and on the surrounding streets that the neighborhood was known as Steak Row. The slaughterhouses then were located nearby along the East River, where the UN now stands.
Steak restaurants sprang up in the area in the 1920s and the many of the first ones were Italian, including Christ Cella, Columbo's, the Palm and Pietro's, although steak soon overshadowed pasta on their menus. Most began as speakeasies. Newsmen were among their earliest habitues and a number of them had journalistic names like Editorial, Pressbox, Fourth Estate, Late Edition and Front Page. Manny Wolf's on Third and 49th Street was another popular choice for hearty eaters. The steakhouses ranged in price from moderate to expensive. The higher the price, the more they were frequented by businessmen with expense accounts rather than working journalists. People went to them as much for the booze as for the red meat.
Arthur Schwartz in New York City Food writes that the steakhouses all had similar menus, still familiar at steakhouses today. The meal began with a salad with the house dressing often served on the side in a boat. The steak usually was accompanied by creamed spinach and hash browns, cottage fries or German fried potatoes, which were French fries that had been broken up and then re-cooked with onions. The portions were huge. At most of them you could get other things, mostly chops, fish and sometimes Italian or French dishes, but the steak from aged prime beef was the main attraction. Other popular steakhouses included the Old Homestead, which had been in operation since 1868 in the Gansevoort meat packing area of the West Village, Peter Luger's in Williamsburg and Gallagher's on West 52nd Street.
Wartime meat rationing and postwar shortages were a daunting challenge to the steakhouses. The restaurants were allotted ration points based on the number of customers they served. In October 1945, the meat allotments for the Pen & Pencil had been suspended for the duration of rationing on the grounds that the restaurant had falsified its reports of the number of patrons it served in order to get more than its allotted share of meat. The OPA granted a stay on the suspension and luckily for the Pen & Pencil rationing ended before the penalty went into effect. A lot of steakhouses got into trouble for overdrawing their meat rations including Toots Shor, Gallaghers, Christ Cella, and Manny Wolf's. There were internal disputes within the OPA over how severely to punish the violators who argued that draconian suspensions would put them out of business. Generally the rule was that the meat rations for the violators were suspended until they had made up their deficits. Gallagher's vigorously fought the suspensions in court, effectively running out the clock until rationing ended. In 1944 the OPA temporarily suspended operations of a meat distributor accused of diverting choice meats to steak houses and restaurants. A number of steakhouses were among the long list of restaurants fined for overcharging during the war.
In April 1946 the OPA announced that it was targeting restaurants that were buying meat on the black market. Retail butchers and consumers complained bitterly that steakhouses were serving steak while meat virtually had disappeared at the legal wholesale and retail level. However restaurant and hotel dining room operators complained that they also were having trouble finding meat. However when price controls were lifted temporarily in the fall to alleviate the shortages and meat prices quickly skyrocketed, The Times reported that the "chi-chi" places had been able to put aside meat in storage, when meat was supposedly unavailable, before the prices rose. The article also reported that some of these places were selling steaks at a loss, more than making up the difference in liquor sales.