rumjungle Meat Fest

For our last dinner, our CEO came down and took us to rumjungle. It is a restaurant and club. It is rather outrageously decorate. Strange, yet cool. It is a rodizio type place, so if you choose to do so, you can do the whole all-you-can-eat meat thing. We all ended up doing that. When in Rome! In addition to the meats, you get a "peruvian" chopped salad. Our CEO happens to have grown up in Peru, and he confirmed that there was nothing peruvian about this salad. Ha. But it was good nonetheless. Black beans, pineapple-coconut rice, and corn on the cob. All of these things were delicious. I love me some corn on the cob, and I was stuffing myself silly with these. The "gaucho platter" which has various cold salads and cold cuts and cheeses. Good, but what was annoying about this was that they didn't leave it at the table. This chick comes around and you have to tell her what you want. So not exactly all-you-can-eat. And then the meat started coming around, including sirloin, turkey breast, pork and pineapple, bacon wrapped jerk chicken, chorizo, lamb, and tri-tip. All the meat was quite good, but my favorite by far, was the bacon wrapped jerk chicken. I'm not sure what they put on it (it says bacon wrapped jerk-spiced chicken with guava-chipotle bbq sauce) but it was like crack to me. I could have eaten this all night. They also have some fancy and strong cocktails, and some desserts. I was too stuffed from all the meat to eat dessert, but M ordered the doughnuts, which were unbelievable. They were like heavenly donut holes, freshly made, light, fluffy, and addictive. Service was ok. They try really hard but are perhaps a bit too overeager. The ambiance is a little too much too. For the price, it's actually not that bad. You get a lot more choices at fogo de chao, but that's also more expensive. I actually thought this was a pretty good value for the quality of food. And if you hang out after you eat, you can shake your moneymaker!

Brazilian Fine Dining In Dublin

When I went to Green Nineteen, I had actually wanted to go to Sabor Brazil, but it was closed. So when I got back to Dublin, that's where I headed. The weather was a bit warm for hot stew, but I didn't care. My body wanted feijoada!

The place is really small and tucked away on a side street. It looks really crappy from the outside, but on the inside, it's really fancy. Or at least they try to be. It was almost too fancified that it borderlined cheesy, but that kind of made it charming. The tablecloths and the chair covers were a bit too much for me. And fine fancy dining when it comes to brazilian food is kind of an oxymoron. I was literally the only diner there. Which is a shame, but apparently, sundays are really slow in Dublin. It was fine with me, at least I knew I would have their full attention.
While waiting for my feijoada to come out, they gave me a little amuse bouche. This was like a shaved iced type of thing, made with cachaca, lime, and other goodies. Kind of like a frozen shaved caipirinha served in a cute little glass with a spoon. Whatever it was, I liked it.
The menu isn't too big, but boy, is it expensive. I ordered the feijoada, and here's everything it came with. My bowl of piping hot feijoada, a heaping of buttery rice, hot greens, sliced oranges, some spicy oil, farofa, and a veggie vinaigrette. Despite the freakishly inflated price, everything was delicious, and quite authentic. I did not finish everything and I was beyond stuffed. I guess for "fine dining" in Dublin it was not necessarily expensive, but for brazilian food and feijoada, it was ridiculous. If you order feijoada in brazil, it would probably cost a couple of bucks. This was well over 20 euros. And when you translate that to dollars... well, it ends up being about $30 overpriced. But whatever, it was still good, and the service was excellent. After all, I had the server all to myself!

Sabor Brazil
50 Pleasant Street
Dublin
01 4750 304

Cafe Brasil

For my last dinner in LA, I kept looking around and found a few things. Then I was watching Take Home Chef and he picked up someone from a brazilian market in LA. Then I realized that there would be brazilian restaurants here! So that's how we ended up at Cafe Brasil. It also helped that it was only a few miles from the apartment.

The place is casual. You order up front and take a number and wait. Then you pick up your food when called. It's super cute inside, with mismatched tables and chairs in all kinds of colorful primary colors. Everything is bright and colorful. Maybe a bit too colorful. There's outside seating too, but that's probably only recommended when it's daylight out.
J got the red snapper. That came with rice, salad, beans, salsa, and plantains. It's a good thing he ordered this and not me. For whatever reason, everything came with a mustard base. The snapper had a mustard crust. The salad had mustard dressing. Even the salsa had some mustard in it. It was bizarre. I don't remember any of the food that I had in brazil having any kind of mustard slant to it.
I was feeling nostalgic so I got the feijoada. That was served with rice, farofa, collard greens, and oranges. We also got an additional side of plantains, which I gobbled up quickly. We also got a couple of pao de de quiejo (cheese bread), but these were not fresh at all and therefore cold, crunchy, and not that good. I enjoyed my feijoada very much. It had big hunks of meat in it, including fall off the bone pork. I'm not usually a fan of greens, but these were pretty good and nice and garlicky. The farofa? I dunno about this stuff. When I was in brazil, we always called it sawdust. Not because it tasted like sawdust, but just because it looks like sawdust. Well, this particular farofa tasted like bacon. Like bacon sawdust. I guess I just don't get farofa. I also got a guarana by Antarctica. That was the brand we always had in brazil. I was very happy to get my brazilian food fix!

I Heart Brazil!

I can't believe you don't know this already, but I love me some brazilian food. Like LOVE LOVE LOVE it. It's one of my absolute favorites. I was lucky enough to go to brazil for 3 weeks a few years back, and I fell in love with everything about the place, especially their food. The whole country has a slightly obsessive relationship with gastronomy, and boasts so many different types of foods, from traditional to borrowed ethnic. Seriously folks, some of the best sushi I've ever had in my life was from brazil.

When I came back, I had to find brazilian food around here. Luckily, we have a slightly brazilian area of neighborhood in the northeast. I found this little grocery store on Castor that had some food, buffet and weigh-your-plate style. Soon after, Picanha Brazilian Grill opened, further down the street on Castor. And now, philly has super chain Fogo de Chao. If you don't want to pay an arm and a leg for all you can eat brazilian buffet and bbq, then head over to Picanha, the non-expense account alternative.

Like the big chain counterparts, the concept is simple, but the choices are large. There is a large buffet, with a slew of different food selections, from various salads, fruits and veggies, traditional brazilian foods, meats and pountry, and some sides. Brazil boasts an incredible selection of fresh fruits and vegetables and their food reflects this. They're big fans of heart of palm and also strangely fascinated with beets.

One of my favorite foods in the world is feijoada, which is a traditional brazilian beef stew. It is something that takes hours to cook and was developed by slaves, using whatever cheap and crappy ingredients they had. Eventually it became the national dish of brazil, and on wednesdays in brazil, most restaurants serve feijoada as a special. Serve this over rice, and it's perfection on a plate. Oh, and it's not a veggie dish, as there's all kinds of pork products in it. Yum!

There was some delicious stewed meat in this buffet, as well as my staple favorite, fried plantains. Brazilians are also crazy about fresh fruit juices, so you can find pretty much anything here. While it's not always of the fresh kind at Picanha, in brazil, it's all about fresh squeezed juices everywhere. And it's so damn cheap! Here at Picanha, it only costs about a dollar or two.

You can also get the meat here, which is cooked on a rotating grill. There's no flavorings put on the meat, except for some coarse salt. The variety of meats is large, including filet, brisket, sausage, chicken, sirloin, etc. For dinner, the gauchos come around with the meats on a stick and cut off pieces for you, and you take the pieces with tongs. This place isn't fancy, so there's no green light red light stuff going on, but they'll just ask you if you want some. You can also just go up and get meat yourself without waitingn for the meat stick men to come around.

There's two ways to eat her: all-you-can-eat or weigh your plate by the pound. If you want to gorge, certainly go for the all-you-can. I usually do not. I usually do the weigh by the pound and get two full plates. And it only ends up costing $10 or so. Picanha is also a BYOB. If you bring your own cachaca, they will provide the caipirinha mix, which is pretty handy. They're big huge glasses and they only charge a buck. That's a bargain! Sure, Fogo de Chao is fancy and expensive, but for a more down-to-earth option, head over to Picanha in the northeast.