This was my first time trying a Churrascaria – a Brazilian-style barbeque – an I must say, I was a little disappointed.

First, let me describe the basic premise – you have a little wheel on your table, which you turn to green when you want them to start serving you meat, or red when you’re done or want a break. When it’s green, waiters carrying skewers of 14 different preparations / types of meat will stop by and slice you off some.

Sounds good in concept, but the actual execution fell far short. The biggest problem, by far, was that the majority of the 14 different varieties were simply not that good. I don’t remember exactly what all the 14 different meats were, but at a rough estimate I would say only about 4 were genuinely tasty. The rest were either unremarkable or just plain bad. Of particular note in the latter category were several of the pork cuts (totally dry and overcooked – though some mentioned that they had one good, juicy bite, though the rest was dry) and the sausage (everyone agreed this was their least favorite). On the positive side, most of the actual steak cuts were very tasty, with the star of the show clearly being the filet mignon – supposedly not the most flavorful cut, but in this crowd, I thought it was head and shoulders above the rest. (Oh, and the beef rib wasn’t bad either.)

At this point, you probably think it doesn’t sound so bad – just fill up on the good cuts, right? Well, unfortunately, it isn’t so easy. The time interval between waiters coming by your table, while not huge, is long enough that if you’re a fast eater (like me), you can easily finish what the last server brought, and have “down-time” spent NOT EATING (gasp!) between every server. This is assuming you are getting something from every guy that stops by – if you are waiting for a specific cut – or even, say, any of the steaks – you would be playing a pretty loooong waiting game.

Compounding this is the problem that the majority of the waiters were VERY stingy with their portions. I always felt like I was somehow being an incredible glutton any time I meekly asked the servers for TWO slices of meat. Ok… so, I was, but hey – it’s all you can eat, you’re supposed to be, right? Even then, however, the amount of meat they’d place on my plate would often look pitiful, since the vast majority of servers were VERY stingy with the amount that they’d shave off.

At the end, I left full, but not enough of it felt like it really deserved the precious space it was subletting in my stomach. I think if they pared down the selection that they offered to the 4 or 5 actually tasty items they had (or heck, just served the filet!), and then rotated those around frequently, with generous portions, I would have been quite happy. As it was, I definitely did not feel it was worth the $35 we paid.

(One last note – I thought the fried banana appetizers they served were quite yummy!)