Churrascaria!
At last, my opportunity to do the "I'm Right and You're Wrong Dance." It's been two years five months, seventeen days and three hours since the last time I got a chance to tango to that particular tune. In the interim, in her official capacity as the female (I was going to use the adjective 'sensible', but then realized that's just repetitive) in our relationship, Mary on the other hand, has had the opportunity to do the dance approximately eleventy hundred and six times. That, of course, does not count the times when Mary could and has used the devastatingly more powerful, "I'm Right and You're a Blithering Idiot Dance."
In any case the occasion for this happy event was the long delayed visit to the Texas de Brazil churrascaria in
In any case, after the years of whining, Mary ran out of excuses (just to make this perfectly clear, the whining was mine) and decided to make a reservation at one of the fifty seven or so versions of the churrascaria located in
On entering Texas de Brazil, it's apparent that especially on the weekend they do a heck of a lot of business. We had reservations and we were eating earlier - more in line with our Colorado Springs neighbors who firmly believe that dining after 6:00pm is doing Satan's work or something - so we had little wait. I'd guess that arriving later without a handy reservation would probably result in upwards of an hour long wait and possibly loss of one's immortal soul.
The restaurant itself is pretty attractive in one of those men's clubs' type fashions - lots of wood, dark red walls, exposed bolts. An impressively massive glass walled wine cellar dominates the center of the main room. On one side is seating for the hungry hordes and on the other is the buffet.
We decided to start with a traditional caipirinha which is a drink made with cachaca (a Brazilian spirit distilled from sugar cane), sugar, and lime. The caipirinha is supposedly the national cocktail of
I digress. Pleasant cocktails and cheese puffs finished, we consulted the wine list. And were quite pleased. Besides being very extensive and not terribly overpriced, there was quite a selection of half bottles which we appreciate greatly. True we have more often than not taken half full bottles home over the past few years, but it sure is nice to have the option of the half bottle and a selection that extends beyond Beringer.
Other than the cocktails and the wine there is no menu and no need to select what one wants to eat. Dinner includes everything except the drinks and desserts in one price. I believe that one could also order just the buffet and skip the meat if one wants, but why? For god's sake, why?
After the cocktails the next order of business was the buffet for appetizers and salads. There's lots to choose from. Cold meats, marinated veggies and mushrooms, cheeses, various prepared salads, breads, olives, beans, rice, sushi (yeah I don't know what that's doing here either), breads, and soups. Careful, it's really easy to end up filling up on this before getting to the main attraction. Everything we tried ranged from quite good to excellent.
Then the main course - the meat. Basically what happens is you sit at your table and young men in gaucho pants bring you the carnivore bounty on large skewers. They carry a sharp blade to cut pieces off. The gauchos wander the room stopping at tables where the FEED ME marker is flipped over indicating that more meat is required. The offerings include flank steak, filet mignon, leg of lamb, lamb chops, and sausages. In addition there's chicken wrapped with parmesan and pork loin.
There is also one cut called the picanha, which is the specialtie de la maison. According to the intrawebs, this cut is normally referred to in this country as rump cover steak and no I've never seen it served anywhere else, either. It's quite good though I preferred the flank steak and the filet was surprisingly good. So there is a bit of a selection. Though really, if you don't like beef I wouldn't recommend a churrascaria.
We liked everything we tried. In the future I'd probably skip the chicken and the pork - it was all right but nothing special. On the other hand, most of the beef selections were excellent - grilled with just a sprinkling of sea salt. Get some chimichurri sauce from the buffet (or ask a waiter for some - a thought that didn't occur to me while dining, for some reason) and it's a wonderful accompaniment.
Along with the meats the servers bring side dishes of garlic mashed potatoes and grilled bananas to the table. Both were pretty good and I don't even like bananas.
In our case, after a substantial amount of time consuming the beef, we reluctantly concluded that there was no more room for any more and waved the white flag. We were going to just conclude with a nice coffee and port when they exhibited the dessert tray and we fell under its spell. Evil, bad dessert tray! I had the carrot cake which was sinfully rich and tasty while Mary had the key lime pie which she said was okay. Desserts are not included in the meal price.
The list of ports offered was large, befitting a place where big powerful men show off how big and powerful they are by eating large amounts of meat and drinking big expensive wines (usually all on an expense account). It actually was one of the more extensive port lists I've ever seen and I was very happy with my wee dram of the heavenly concoction.
Overall if you want a special occasion just between you and the fatted calf (and the wife if she insists), this is a hell of a place to go. Compared to the big time steak places like Morton's and their ilk I think this is a better deal. For what we paid with wine, desserts, cocktails added in it actually cost less than we've dropped at the major steak houses. And you get quite a bit more selection.
To sum up, Mary has agreed that in this one particular case, and to be clear this is not establishing any type of precedent, that the churrascaria was good and something she might, in the distant future entertain dining at again. I count that as a win.
