They Just Kept on Bringing Meat...
My wife and I went to Texas de Brazil on Sunday, for their special (read: needlessly expensive) Easter Brunch. We had never been there before, and were wholly unprepared for the amount of meat involved.
Let's start at the beginning. We left church on a specific mission: go out to eat. We hadn't gone out after church for the entire Lenten season, and were anxious to gorge ourselves once again on our favorite Sunday Brunch Death Buffet. Of course, it was closed on Easter. So, what did we do? Well, we did what every smart person in need of a restaurant would do -- we drove to Addison.
Our first thought was the so-called "Blue Mesa Grille." It was slightly more expensive than our usual spot, and had slightly less yummy food, but it would have to do. We drove through the maze/strip mall to the restaurant, and were dismayed to find oodles of white people sitting outside in the heat, waiting to be seated.
I don't do waiting.
Plan C was Texas de Brazil, which we've always wanted to check out but never had the guts and/or money needed to make it work. Today, we had both. It was Easter, and we wanted some animal muscles.
We got into the parking lot and saw the valet parking, which was bad sign number one. Bad sign two was the hostess asking us if we had a reservation. Thankfully, that was pretty much the end of the bad signs. We were seated, and directed to the buffet for the first part of our meal. We were told by the extremely fake waiter that we were sitting in a "currascaria," which is a Portugese word that apparently means, "kill you with meat." They gave us a "meat pog" to turn over to the green side when we wanted the meats to start rolling in. We had no idea what all this meant, but we strode over to the buffet and marveled at the 30-some pretentious foods there were to choose from. Artichoke this. Lobster that. Unlabeled crustacean-looking things this. Pound cake that. And so on. We filled up a plate and sat down, still unaware of what was about to assault us.
The biggest decision in any churrascaria is when to turn over the meat pog. We ate our pretentious foods for a while, cleaning our plates so they could give us fresh ones. Then, we looked at each other and turned the pogs to green. Nothing happened. And then it started...
"Chicken wrapped in bacon?" said the man with the mexican accent, holding a giant skewer with said chicken/bacon combos. "Sure," we said. Then, in intervals of about 30 seconds:
"Flank steak?"
"Top sirloin in garlic butter?"
"Leg O' lamb?"
"Lamb chops?"
"Parmesan pork?"
Parmesan chicken?
"Filet mignon?"
"Filet mignon wrapped in bacon?"
"Barbeque ribs?"
"Portugese sausage?"
And then they started all over from the top, although for a while there every other one seemed to be "flank steak." Must be in season. Anyway, as long as our meat pog was "green-side up," people in mexican accents kept showing up at our table. It was like we were the king and queen of Portugal in the 1400's. Now I know why they declined to send Columbus to America -- they were too busy eating flank steak.
When we were finally tired of stuffing our faces with animal flesh, we turned our pogs to red, sat back, and rubbed our bellies. It was 1pm, and I wouldn't have to eat anything the rest of the day. We waddled out to our car and went home, wondering in our hearts at the meat we had just seen.
2 Bonus Points:
1) This is the place to go if you're one of those Atkins people. Holy cow -- literally!
2) Leg O' Lamb was the only one of the meats I was disappointed by in any way. Is it supposed to taste like fish? Are lambs amphibians? The mind boggles.
Let's start at the beginning. We left church on a specific mission: go out to eat. We hadn't gone out after church for the entire Lenten season, and were anxious to gorge ourselves once again on our favorite Sunday Brunch Death Buffet. Of course, it was closed on Easter. So, what did we do? Well, we did what every smart person in need of a restaurant would do -- we drove to Addison.
Our first thought was the so-called "Blue Mesa Grille." It was slightly more expensive than our usual spot, and had slightly less yummy food, but it would have to do. We drove through the maze/strip mall to the restaurant, and were dismayed to find oodles of white people sitting outside in the heat, waiting to be seated.
I don't do waiting.
Plan C was Texas de Brazil, which we've always wanted to check out but never had the guts and/or money needed to make it work. Today, we had both. It was Easter, and we wanted some animal muscles.
We got into the parking lot and saw the valet parking, which was bad sign number one. Bad sign two was the hostess asking us if we had a reservation. Thankfully, that was pretty much the end of the bad signs. We were seated, and directed to the buffet for the first part of our meal. We were told by the extremely fake waiter that we were sitting in a "currascaria," which is a Portugese word that apparently means, "kill you with meat." They gave us a "meat pog" to turn over to the green side when we wanted the meats to start rolling in. We had no idea what all this meant, but we strode over to the buffet and marveled at the 30-some pretentious foods there were to choose from. Artichoke this. Lobster that. Unlabeled crustacean-looking things this. Pound cake that. And so on. We filled up a plate and sat down, still unaware of what was about to assault us.
The biggest decision in any churrascaria is when to turn over the meat pog. We ate our pretentious foods for a while, cleaning our plates so they could give us fresh ones. Then, we looked at each other and turned the pogs to green. Nothing happened. And then it started...
"Chicken wrapped in bacon?" said the man with the mexican accent, holding a giant skewer with said chicken/bacon combos. "Sure," we said. Then, in intervals of about 30 seconds:
"Flank steak?"
"Top sirloin in garlic butter?"
"Leg O' lamb?"
"Lamb chops?"
"Parmesan pork?"
Parmesan chicken?
"Filet mignon?"
"Filet mignon wrapped in bacon?"
"Barbeque ribs?"
"Portugese sausage?"
And then they started all over from the top, although for a while there every other one seemed to be "flank steak." Must be in season. Anyway, as long as our meat pog was "green-side up," people in mexican accents kept showing up at our table. It was like we were the king and queen of Portugal in the 1400's. Now I know why they declined to send Columbus to America -- they were too busy eating flank steak.
When we were finally tired of stuffing our faces with animal flesh, we turned our pogs to red, sat back, and rubbed our bellies. It was 1pm, and I wouldn't have to eat anything the rest of the day. We waddled out to our car and went home, wondering in our hearts at the meat we had just seen.
2 Bonus Points:
1) This is the place to go if you're one of those Atkins people. Holy cow -- literally!
2) Leg O' Lamb was the only one of the meats I was disappointed by in any way. Is it supposed to taste like fish? Are lambs amphibians? The mind boggles.
posted by Mike Pape @ 11:33 AM
1 Comments:
At 1:34 PM,
drew said…
so funny.
two weekends ago, chuck randles and his brazilian roommate eduardo came to denver for the weekend (and to celebrate chuck's birthday). we went to Rodizio Grill (http://www.rodiziogrill.com) in downtown denver for the first time and had pretty much the same wtf experience. we first did the buffet thing and by the time we sat down with our plates, chuck had put the thing on green, and we had 5 dudes at a time hoarding our table. once our plates were full we threw it on red, ate, threw it on green, filled, threw it on red, ate, and so on and on and on WAY too many times. our exotic meats were slightly different -- buffalo, elk, bison, snake (!) -- but everything else sounds exactly the same.
it was fun and ridiculously delicious, but too expensive ($30 per before drinks and tips) to go very often.
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