About 45 minutes into the meal, Designer Girlfriend looked up at Actual and shrugged.
"Yum."
That about sums it up.
For my readers not fortunate enough to ever go to a Brazilian steakhouse, it pretty much works like this:
- Sit down (at some places, Fogo in Dallas--I'm glaring at you, this takes a while since these places seem to be really popular.)
- Ignore the salad bar for your own good
- Turn your "serve me" card to green
- Double your cholesterol level as gauchos keep showing up at your table with grilled meats on swords
- Turn your "serve me" card to red when you need a break
- Repeat 3-5 until fullness or guilt convince you to stop eating
Taste of Brazil is inexplicably located in the dark culinary wasteland (and my former area of residence) of North Sacramento/Citrus Heights. I say dark culinary wasteland. What I really mean to say is that it should be a dark culinary wasteland, but somehow many talented chefs have decided that opening in this area is a good idea. I'm not going to argue.
Apologies in advance for the extremely poor quality of the pictures. I didn't bring our usual rig because it's a small place. Also the lighting was super tricky.
Upon entering, we were greeted by the best waiter ever, Brian. This guy was an excellent waiter and on top of that was hilarious as all heck. It's a small place so you don't have to request him, the entire front of house staff consists of Brian. While we were having our meal, a very elderly couple came in wanting to eat at the salad bar. Brian gave them five star service and helped them the entire way, even though their total bill probably came out to what Designer Girlfriend spent by herself. In most restaurants they would have just been ignored.
Protip: buy whichever wine Brian brings with him to the table. It will pair perfectly with the food. Also, their wine markups are really really low, so you won't be paying much over retail. I think they realize that a meal like this absolutely requires wine, and that it would be criminal to extort money from customers through wine prices and force them to choose between having a complete meal and not getting ripped off.
So what do you get for your $35?
To begin, Brian sent us off to the salad/side dish bar. I got about 20 grains of rice. Actual and Designer decided to explore a little more. This is Actual's plate. In the upper right you can see the plate of fried bananas and fried cheese that was brought out. I didn't have either but was told they were both excellent.
First meat course was grilled chicken legs and wings (I say first, but there's only an order because we were the first people in there. As the restaurant fills up, there's meat going around constantly). These had a crazy good char on them and were fantastic.
Next up: giant pork ribs. These were so meaty you had to gnaw on one for at least a minute before you got to the bone. Extremely tender as well while having the same fantastic char that the chicken had. These were almost as good as Daddy Actual's ribs. But I'm not going to declare a winner. We're just going to take him here and let him decide for himself :)
Next course consisted of bacon wrapped chicken and beef. The chicken was amazing, throughly moist and infused with bacon flavor. The beef was just ok as it was overcooked (at least for me). This is going to be an issue at any Brazilian steakhouse. With the larger cuts of meat they can just give people slices from different parts of the piece depending on the doneness they want. For smaller items such as this they can't. So they end up having to make everything medium-medium well for all of the people out there that like eating grilled shoe leather.
Then came the parmesan encrusted pork tenderloin. You don't need a description on this one. Let's just say that it tastes every good as bit as it sounds.
Garlic steak. When they say garlic, they mean it. If you're not a garlic lover or you're on a date, skip this one. I love garlic so it was amazing. For all of the beef dishes, make sure to mention to the guy with the sword what level of doneness you want. Don't make them guess or hope they remember. They are serving the entire dining room, so unless you're particularly memorable just tell them what you want every time.
My favorite dish: the leg of lamb. They're using the good grass-fed stuff here, so it actually tastes like lamb. Absolutely wonderful.
Medium well piece on the left, rare-med rare on the right.
Dessert? People still had room? I guess so. Actual and Designer ordered this concoction of ice cream on top of roasted pineapple. They take a whole pineapple, cover it in cinnamon sugar, then roast it the same way they do the meats. A fabulous way to end the meal.
Wait! The meal isn't over yet! Do we want more roasted pineapple? Of course we do!
WIN
You know what I'm about to say. Run, don't walk, run to Taste of Brazil. You know you want to.
And here's Brian and Designer Girlfriend :)
