There’s nothing wrong with a gimmick, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it’s a good gimmick – especially if that gimmick involves steak.

I recently had the good fortune to partake of two evenings of steak-related gimmickry, both of which were as entertaining as they were filling. The first was at Beacon (25 W. 56th St., 212-332-0500), which in recent years has revived the old-school New York tradition of the “beefsteak,” a mass feed that’s a cross between a vegetarian’s worst nightmare and a glutton’s fondest dream.

In this context, the term “beefsteak” refers not just to the meat but also to the event at which it’s served, as in, “Are you going to the beefsteak?” or “No lunch for me – I’m going to a beefsteak tonight!” The typical old-fashioned beefsteak featured not just copious amounts of steak but also hamburgers, lamb chops, bacon-wrapped kidneys, and other meaty delights, all presented banquet-style, with unlimited beer. Cigars and live music were common; silverware and napkins were not (customers ate with their hands and wore aprons).

The beefsteak format was popular in New York saloons and restaurants from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, and was immortalized in a 1939 New Yorker essay by Joseph Mitchell, entitled “All You Can Hold for Five Bucks,” the complete text of which is available on Beacon’s web site (go to www.beaconnyc.com, click on “Beefsteak,” and then click on “For more beefsteak information”).

Beacon revived the beefsteak in 2001, and it was such a hit that the restaurant made it an annual event. This year’s edition, held on February 8, cost $95 a person, plus tax and tip – a far cry from Mitchell’s titular five bucks, but still quite reasonable, given the quantity and quality of the food.

Patrons were given aprons and paper hats, the latter of which quickly became billboards for advancing the carnivorous agenda: One group of men all wrote “Die, Cow, Die!” on their hats; the fellow next to me simply drew a plant with a circle-slash through it, signifying his steadfast opposition to vegetables. Meanwhile, waiters roamed from table to table with pitchers of Brooklyn Brewery Pre-Prohibition Ale and a six-piece Dixieland band played old-timey tunes from a ledge on the restaurant’s balcony. The air was boisterous and festive – quite the raucous caucus, as it were.

After a half-hour or so of drinking and chatting, the parade of food began, starting with large bowls of chilled shrimp. As we gobbled them up, I heard someone say, “Easy, people, easy! Gotta pace yourselves!” Yeah, right – as if moderation had any place at a beefsteak! The very notion filled me with such contempt that I helped myself to an extra-large portion of lump crabmeat with Russian dressing, several platters of which had just arrived at the table.

Next came a seemingly endless supply of tiny hamburgers served on Italian bread, which turned out to be the surprise hit of the evening. Initially roasted in Beacon’s wood-burning oven and then finished on the grill, they were juicy, extremely flavorful, and just the right size for popping down the hatch – irresistible. I started having just a twinge of buyer’s remorse about the shrimp and crabmeat.

From there, the evening became a protein blur. Next came bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, then double-thick lamb chops garnished with sprigs of fresh rosemary, and then, finally, the steak – huge roasted Certified Angus shell loins that had been cut into thick slabs and doused with melted butter. By the time each table received slices of chocolate cake and a bottle of Maker’s Mark, it was clear why Beacon only does this once a year – anything more would be too much to bear.

But there’s another steak gimmick that you can sample while waiting for next year’s beefsteak, and it’s a doozy: “Beef & Guns.”

Beef & Guns is a deal dreamed up by the online travel packager Site59 (www.site59.com; 800-845-0192). For $98 plus tax, you get a 90-minute session of target practice at the West Side Rifle and Pistol Range in Chelsea, followed by a three-course dinner at Frank’s, a steakhouse in the Meatpacking district.

Now that’s a gimmick. They might as well call it the Testosterone Special. As my friend Rob put it, “Man, if they’d just let you shoot the steer that you’d be eating later on, it’d be perfect!”

That type of incisive analysis made Rob – who, like me, had never fired a real gun before – the ideal sidekick for my visit to West Side Rifle. The place’s mere existence is a bit of a surprise: How many people strolling along the sidewalk on West 20th Street even know there’s a firearms range in the basement of one of the buildings? We arrived and found gun enthusiasts sitting at a table, chatting about ammo, holsters, ballistics – you know, gun stuff.

Our group included several other Beef & Guns participants. We were all given a quick lesson in safety procedures and informed that we’d be shooting .22 caliber rifles – puny by firearms standards (a .22 has virtually no recoil and feels a lot like a BB gun), but still plenty dangerous, and the only thing that novices are allowed to shoot without a license. After the safety lesson, we were given ammo, earmuffs, eye goggles, and paper targets to shoot at.

One hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition later, I had a stack of obliterated targets, a blister on my trigger finger (really), and a serious appetite. We made the 15-minute walk to Frank’s (85 10th Ave., 212-243-1349), where I hadn’t eaten since about 1990. In those days, Frank’s was located on 14th Street and was famous for serving a cafeteria-style breakfast to the neighborhood’s bloody-aproned meat packers in the early morning hours and then morphing into a white-tablecloth steakhouse in the evenings.

A fire in 1994 forced Frank’s to move around the corner to its current location, and its approach is now more straightforward. The brick-walled dining room is a pleasant place to unwind after a firing range session, and presumably at other times, too. “We’ve got the Beef & Guns deal,” we told the waiter, who explained that we could each choose anything from the appetizer and entree listings. As Site59 had already explained when I booked the package, drinks and sides would be extra.

Rob began with a salad – not the most masculine choice, but maybe he needed to come down from his firearms high. I chose shrimp marinara with fettuccine, which was excellent. Then came the meat: My shell steak was just okay, but Rob’s skirt steak was sensational, full of mineral-driven flavor – a meal fit for a rifleman, or something like that. Onion rings ($7 extra) were dynamite, steak fries ($6.50) just adequate.

Don’t tell this to the guy at the beefsteak who drew the anti-plant symbol on his hat, but we also got some asparagus ($10), which was very nice. Perhaps ordering a vegetable was a symptom of our weakening gluttonous resolve, because we were too stuffed to finish dessert. The nibble of cheesecake that I tasted was very good, however.

The lesson: Don’t attend a beefsteak and Beef & Guns in the same week. Maybe the two ideas should be combined – Beefsteak & Guns. A great gimmick waiting to happen.