A few years ago, we were in Orlando and visited a restaurant called Texas de Brazil -- a Brazilian steakhouse. The refer to their cooking style as "The Gaucho Way" of cooking meat. As we remembered it, the restaurant has a killer salad bar. The main event is just about every type of meat that you can imagine delivered to your table. There are a bunch of guys walking around with different cuts of meat: filet mignon, sirloin, leg of lamb, lamb chops, bacon wrapped filet, etc. It's all hot and all good.
About six months ago, we had heard that one of Texas de Brazil's competitors, Fogo de Chao, would be opening in Baltimore. The restaurant isn't open yet, but there is one in Washington. With the kids at my folks for the night, we booked a reservation and started salivating for the meal.
Deb and I ate very little throughout the day, awaiting the big meal. When we arrived, we were shown the salad bar and the server suggested that we not go too crazy so that we save room for the main course. We did not heed his advice. We are both suckers for a good salad bar and this had really fresh and different items that you certainly wouldn't find at your local Ruby Tuesday salad bar. We had roasted peppers, hearts of palm, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, cucumber salad, fresh asparagus and on and on.
After we downed our plates, we were served the sides of mashed potato, fried polenta and fried banana. Next, bring on the meat.
Between the two of us, we had: filet mignon, leg of lamb, sirloin, rib eye, pork ribs, bacon wrapped chicken, bacon wrapped filet, lamb chops. It may sound like a lot, but each cut was only an ounce or two of meat and we didn't each have all of the above. For the most part, the meats were really good.
What we realized, though, was that we left feeling extremely full, much more so that we're used to and we also didn't eat like we had several years before. For what we paid -- about fifty bucks each just for the food -- we could have done better, much better. We'd navigated buffet's before, most notably in Vegas, where we ate well, ate light, and felt like we got a good deal. In this case, the richness of the meat really overwhelmed us very quickly. We enjoyed it and we ate a lot, but next time around, "The Gaucho Way" won't be our way.
L'Chaim!
1 comment:
Just so you'll know, while you and Deb were feasting at Texas de Brazil your baby sitters, and "babies", were feasting at Texas de Pikesville, a rather charming local steakhouse. Burgers and dogs fresh from BJ's, garnished with that special French's Spicy Brown Mustard. Price of the meal for 5? About $8.00. Including tip.
It's amazing, isn't it, how your tastes and expectations change along with your lifestyle? Maybe it's just that, in the past, the most important thing about the food at T de B just might have been the volume available. Now that you're both "normal" it might just be the quality of the meal that matters most. And the fact that, if you're going to pig out, it had better be worth it.
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