Brazil Grill

[May 10th, 2006] Carnivores rejoice, churrasco has arrived in Portland. The traditional Central and South American meat preparation involves cooking hunks of meat on a rotisserie and serving them in the rodizio style, whereby waiters circulate around the room slicing the roasted meat off of swordlike skewers at your table.

Although it has been open since January, Brazil Grill still feels undiscovered due to its hidden office-building-like locale downtown. The Grill serves everything in an all-you-can-eat style ($28.95), so it's best to eat lightly the day of your visit and pace yourself. I was so taken by the exotic offerings on the salad bar—hearts of palm with pimento, curried sweet potatoes and black beans and rice with farofa, a condiment made of cassava meal—that I was stuffed before the mounds of meat began to arrive.

Being a novice, I didn't fully grasp the importance of using the hockey-puck-like signal on the table, either. Flip your puck to the green side and a waiter dressed in traditional gaucho gear (black vest, billowy white shirt, scarlet scarf) arrives with a skewer loaded with meat. Flip the signal to red and they give you a break.

We were so distracted by the romance of men whisking around the earth-toned dining room with swords of meat that we forgot to flip our puck; they kept coming with more meat, and soon I had more than I could handle.

Around 15 meats were on offer. "Lighter" fare like bacon-wrapped chicken and shrimp came first, then cognac-marinated chicken drumsticks, pork loin and roasted pineapple. A parade of red meat followed, from simple salt-and-pepper-seasoned leg of lamb to mustard-coated sirloin. If you're after rarer-cooked meat, pass on the first few outer slices and wait for medium-rare slices from the center of the roasts.

Once you get the hang of the "go" and "stop" signaling thing and take a few sips from a deliciously tart Caipirinha cocktail ($7.50) made with muddled limes and cachaça (Brazilian rum), the leisurely pace of dining of Brazil is bound to set in.