#9 – Brazilian Churrascaria

The Brazilian churrascaria has to be one of my most missed Brazilian eating experiences since I moved back to England.  The barbeque and then some concept …the most delicious steakhouse …and then the added bonus of the rodizio – where the servers bring a potentially never ending stream of meat to your table until you can eat no more and turn the green ‘feed me MEAT’ tag over to the red “I’m about to explode” side!  A truly Brasilian eating experience!  So what better way than with three friends from Brazil, ‘três brasileiras no coração’ even if none of us were actually born Brasilian?

After a day wandering Haarlem we took a train back to Amsterdam and headed for the restaurant Rodizio.nl.  The first important point of the meal was to make sure that the Guarana they served was the one and only Antartica brand.  Our server looked rightly confused that a restaurant would consider serving any other brand!  And so we claimed our plates and went up to the buffet to line the plate with rice, beans, potato etc ahead of the meat onslaught.  Now the trick is not to fill up too much on these items so that you can get your money’s worth / stomach full of MEAT!

Although our servers were friendly they were not exactly quick or plentiful with the meat supply and seemed to keep coming back with the standard stuff over the much awaited picanha.  The place wasn’t that busy and so the atmosphere was limited (though the compulsory TV set was playing brasilian music videos).  Plus many food items normally included in the price we were surprised to discover were charged as extra here.  So the churrascaria itself was not voted as the greatest ever… BUT we did have the token benefit of totally confusing our servers who worked out that we were not Brazilian and yet we somehow all spoke Portuguese! :)   And better yet we got to reminisce and share a Brazilian experience amongst good friends who all know and love Brasil and the churrascaria principle, and who have all now moved away from Brasil and ‘há muito saudade’!