mmmmmm....... MEAT

If anyone ever has the chance to eat at a Brazilian Steakhouse, I highly highly recommend it.

We went to one of these marvelous places called Fago de Chao or something like that in Minneapolis and it was nothing short of a meat-lover's dream come true. I haven't been much of a meat-eater since pre-college, having adopted the habit of spending as little money as possible on food, but I tell you, as of today I am, once again, solidly omnivorous.

So you walk into this fabulous, upscale restaurant with bottles of wine lining the walls, with no indication of the slaughterhouse that MUST be hidden behind its walls to supply you will the mounds and mounds of rare steak you are about to ingest.
A seating hostess takes your coats (I guess only if you look like you will consume lots of meat, because she only took the coats of the tall guys with us...) then a waiter seats you at the table (pulling out the chair for you to sit down, ladies... I don't think I've ever had that before. Then a charming waiter with an authentic, sexy Brazilian accent explains the process to you.

The salad bar is all you can eat. The meat is all you can eat. If you turn your card red side up, it means you don't want to be served anything. If you leave it green-side up, you will have waiters stopping by every 30 seconds or so to offer you slices of any of the 15 different meat varieties they are carrying about on their skewers with giant knives. Medium, Medium rare, or rare. Meat of birds, meat of pigs, meat of cows, meet of sheep, meet of ducks, meat wrapped within meat... oh the bacon. Yes, bacon wrapped everything...Just no seafood. i suppose that these people probably consider shrimp a vegetable.
Watching them all rush around, I thought, surely, there must be at least one casualty a year from a hasty diner who stands up too quickly and is stabbed with one of the giant knives...
But then I quickly realized that as the evening continues, the more difficult it becomes for the diners to stand, or be at all hasty.

As a woman, I thought I would not enjoy this as much, because I'd have to watch the other women eat and make sure I did not eat more and say things like... "oh I just can't anymore... and oh, that's too much... and oh that's too rare for me...." but, thankfully, I was there with a predominantly male group and I could really get into it. A kind of strange transformation took place really... I went from "oh, I'll just have the chicken breast, thank you" to "Do you have a rarer slab of bacon-wrapped sirloin?"

Although, even a vegetarian could feel comfortable. The salad bar was amazing with all kinds of vegetables and cheeses from all over and the meal was served with never ending rolls, mashed potatoes, fried polenta and fried plantains. The atmosphere was very classy; so although you sort of felt like tossing your forks aside and stabbing your lamb chop with your knife and tossing the bone on the floor when you were done... that was only an effect of the flavor and not of the ambiance.

So, Brazilian Steakhouse... big thumbsup from me.

Now I will sink into a delightful meat-induced coma and probably eat vegetarian for the next month to make up for it. :) good night.