Went with a friend to the nearest Brazilian steak house last night. If you've never been to one, the concept will floor you: Basically, you sit at your table while dudes with awesome accents keep showing up with skewers of sizzling cuts of meat, which they slice onto your plate.
The only way to make people stop coming to your table and piling sizzling meat on your plate is to flip a little green cardboard disk over so the red side is turned up, and even that doesn't work 100% of the time, because they'll occasionally stand there and look at you like sad puppies until you feel sorry for them and flip it back over. Except they're looking at you like sad puppies that want to give you steak, instead of eating yours.
Anyhow, this gave me an idea for solving the world's problems.
What we do, is we take all the squizillions of dollars we were going to spend on bailouts, and we use it to buy mobile barbecue vans, hire a whole bunch of awesome Brazilian waiters, and then issue everybody on the planet a little circle of cardboard, red on one side and green on the other. That way, whenever anyone is feeling a little stressed or angry, all they have to do is flip their disc to the green side and a van comes screeching up and this dude hops out with a skewer of sizzling beef and slices them off a piece.
Think about it:
"In the morning, we invade."
"Come here! I'm gonna teach you a lesson you'll never forget!"
"Let's go shoot up some Crips."
"Achmed, let us kill the infidels."
Flip. *screech*. Slice. Yum!
"On second thought, never mind. Let's just have more picanha."
Beef: It's what's for peace.
The holocaust of steers to realize Tam's Peace-Nightmare...
ReplyDeleteThe horror,
the horror...
Never work. Another UN pipe-dream.
ReplyDeleteWe'll all get to arguing about what constitutes Real Southern Barbecue (Brazilians have the geographical advantage--plus, they had Confederates there!--but in Oz they do it with shrimp), and there'll be a five-sided civil war.
Friend of mine, a priest, discovered this phenomenon on a mission trip and predicted it would be rage-of-the-age when it hit here. And he was right.
Yes,
ReplyDeleteCarne Diem.
I'm in, but to make it work we have to make Sam Elliot the General Secretary of the UN. Here's to using the butt of a Colt Buntline as a gavel.
ReplyDeleteDear God Almighty.
ReplyDeleteI think that Picanha photo on Wikipedia's gonna be my wallpaper for a couple weeks.
Mmmmmmm.
WHat's the big deal with whirled peas? [/roseanne roseannadanna]
ReplyDeletePicanha is the original and real " Fillet" of beef and actually there is a better piece in a sirloin butt if you know how to " field strip " one . Most of a sirloin is good steak tho and almost impossible to screw up as long as its cut thick, and not over cooked . In a mom and pop restaurant i owned we used to sell about 450 to 500 lbs of sirloin a week that i hand cut. Tam if i ever meet ya ill get a sirloin butt and show you how to pull the steaks out where the 1.5 to 2" steaks are just about fork tender . There is no waste because anything that isnt great steak is either stew or broth lol .
ReplyDeletei'm all for this.
ReplyDeleteand now i need a side of cow for lunch. durnit!
Coincidentally, the wife and I are heading out to the local Fogo de Chao tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI've been to more than a couple Rodizio and Charrascuria places (including in Brazil and Argentina) and we have a local favorite; but Fogo de Chao is new to our area and we haven't had a chance to try them anywhere else, so we're looking forward to seeing their execution.
Even better...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.africansafariair.com/carnivorerestaurant.html
Didn't much care for the croc but the hartebeast was the best meat I've ever had.Medium rare just off the spit...mmmmmmm!
I wish we had a Brazilian place nearby, but we're unfortunate like that. I was introduced to the concept in Atlanta a little over a year ago and
ReplyDeleteOh. My. God.
did I ever overeat that night. But it was good.
Merry Christmas, Tam. Visit and check out my Christmas Smith. :-)
Back when I was still a captive of the People's Progressive Republic of Marxachusetts, we used to frequent Pampas in Cambridge - $20 all you can eat Brazilian barbecue. And extra $5 got you the big bottle of Xingu to wash it down with.
ReplyDeleteMmmmmmm...meat.
Went to Fogo de Chao when we visited Philadelphia last year. Wonderful place!
ReplyDeleteThe salad bar is a little redundant, eh?
It's not just a Brazilian thing.
ReplyDeleteI was enjoying just such a restaurant during my stays in Caracas, Venezuela during the early 1990s.
I learned to skip the appetizers on the swords, and hold out for the good stuff as it came to the table later.
Someone take my friend Tamara's keys away from her-- she's suffering (?) from meat intoxication.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first symptoms is when you are so sated as to genuinely believe that ALL of the world's problems can be solved with meat.
In Orlando we have Tejas de Brazil. on International Drive.
ReplyDeleteYa'll come down now...ya hea'
Off with some friends to the Big Apple, Tuesday through Friday, for the purpose of staying s--t faced and crazy for a few days.
ReplyDeleteBobby's back from Afganistan, J from Iraq, some great sea stories to tell, and new memories to create.
Brazil Grill on 8th Avenue for Churrascuria at least once, and Rosie O'Grady's Steakhouse on 7th for New Years Eve. The Irish have a good way with beef too, and man can they party. Then, of course, shutting down Broadway Hooter's after the ball drops.
Maybe that Argentine place down in the village for lunch. I hear there's another Argentine place over on the west side that's good and cheap as well. We'll have to drink our way over there and find out.
Look out cows. A quick plug for Argentinian as well as Brazilian beef.
The Brazilian beef is marbled, the Argentine stuff is grassfed, looking and tasting more like buffalo.
Since just about all Argies hail from either northern Spain or Italy, they really know their beans about the marinades and sauces needed to make the lean stuff work.
And yes, that's a pun, as the northern Argies around Cordoba make a seriously spicy analog of feixjoaida.
Also, the German influence up around the wine fields in Cordoba shows in the excellent Iguana and Eisenbeck beers, and some of the ballsiest red wine you will ever wrap your stomach around.
Avoid the Quilmes and Palermo beer from Buenos Aires. Very Italian.
What is it with the Italians anyway?
Their food, northern/Austrian style stuff as well as the southern spicy/tomatoey, is world class. The wines, especially the northern stuff, the Ducale Reservas and such, likewise.
The women? I pray at the shrine of Saint Claudia Cardinale daily, and have you ever seen a 70 year old Grandma who looks as good as Sophia Loren? But their beer is stale horse piss.
And, if you need a change of pace in New York but want to stay carnivore, try Cafe Colonial down on Elizabeth St. They're from the mountains down in Grande do Sul, near the Argy border. The area is entirely settled by people from Bavaria and the Austrian and Italian Tyrol, and it shows in the food.
If you see a bunch of rowdy old Jarheads (and one pretty good sniper from the 10th Mountain) over in the corner embarrasing their escorts, join us.
Damn I need to find one of those places in Vegas. It sounds like heaven.
ReplyDeleteIf anything the Brazilians know beef better than the Texans. Pork, though, is still the ambrosia of the South.
ReplyDeleteMatt,
ReplyDelete"One of the first symptoms is when you are so sated as to genuinely believe that ALL of the world's problems can be solved with meat."
Sounds like true enlightenment to me
Brazilian Steak House's makes one glad to be on top of the food chain.
ReplyDeleteJust sayin'....
Brazilian waiters don't do it for me. Now some of the women from there that I've seen serving the same thing, you have my attetion.
ReplyDeleteJoe R.
I hope you had plenty of Caipirinha's to go with the steaks!
ReplyDeleteHey Tamara, Brad here. We have a Brazilian steak house like that in Chicagoland, and I have felt that joy for meat and how they serve it. It's just a beautiful thing. Once you've been, you only think "everyone should have meat this way - at every meal." I caught your blog a few months back (read some stuff but mostly looked at your picture - very nice! Your boyfriend/husband is a lucky man!), and looking at it now, I just wondered if you knew about the gas piston system for the AR-15. Me and a buddy picked one up at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in October (Hell of a show), and it works great. Cuts down the mess of the gas tube AND hardly any heat. Definitely worth checking out.
ReplyDeleteYum! I hope you ate enough for all of us!
ReplyDelete