Vern.
I consider Brazilian BBQ - also known as “all-you-can-eat-meat”,
“meatfest”, or “meat-a-thon”- to be one of the true pleasures of being a
non-vegetarian. (With apologies to my
vegetarian and vegan friends.)
For any that have not experienced this phenomenon, the
premise is simple: You walk in, sit down
and are provided with some kind of “go/no-go” token – perhaps a small flag or a
coaster that is red on one side, green on the other. As long as you have the “go” side showing, servers
will periodically come by your table with huge hunks of meat on a spit, and
offer you any or all of it. (It’s bad
form to ask for the whole skewer, at least all at the same time.) This eating marathon continues until you put
on the “stop” symbol, feeling several kilos heavier.
A visit to Brazil would clearly be incomplete without at
least one meal at a BBQ abode. In Rio,
we chose Fogo de Chao, a highly-recommended Brazilian BBQ establishment. We were not disappointed. The ongoing selection included pork, chicken
and over a dozen different cuts of beef.
Patrons are provided with a map of the different cuts, in Portuguese,
English and German.
Fogo de Chao also includes a generous salad bar, as do most
Brazilian BBQ restaurants. Here’s a tip
for the uninitiated: go easy on the
salad bar and focus on the meat. If you
want leafy things, go someplace else. The
same goes for the tasty appies and delicious-smelling bread rolls that the
tricky servers bring you to fill you up.
Ignore them. It is your responsibility as a diner to
maximize your meat consumption. If your
chair does not creak from your newly-acquired kilos by the end of your meal,
you’re doing something wrong. And, hey,
it’s mostly protein anyhow, low on carbs.
An interesting side note: As soon as I entered Fogo de Chao, I had the feeling I’d
been there before. It brought to mind a memorable meal in Minneapolis. I checked the back of the menu, and sure enough,
one of the restaurant’s locations is Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. So:
you don’t have to come all the way to Brazil for the experience. Now get on out there and eat!
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