A slice of Brazil: Rodizio steakhouses are Carnavales for carnivores
By Deborah S. Hartz
SouthFlorida.com
April 14 2005
There goes the filet mignon. A sword of linguica passes. Now comes the New York strip. Make room for a slice of top sirloin. Hold on for the beef ribs and pork loin. There goes the flank steak and the rack of lamb. A skewer of chicken flies by. And yes, the favorite, picanha, can't be missed. But wait, there's more ...
Welcome to the land of churrasco served rodizio style. Brazilian steakhouses are springing up all over South Florida and nationwide. There are 100 in this country today, but within two years, there will be 600, predicts Edson Teske, restaurant manager of Gaucho Rodizio, a steakhouse in Lighthouse Point.
Churrasco, according to Silvio Schvin, the Portuguese-speaking grill chef at Gaucho Rodizio, means "barbecue" and refers to the way the meat in Brazilian steakhouses is cooked on spits over eucalyptus charcoal. The word "rodizio" is the style of service, he tells us through banquet coordinator Adam Antunes, who is translating.
Long, sword-like skewers of meat are carried through the dining room by servers. They wait for a signal from diners that they want to be given a portion. They approach the table, cut the meat with carving knives and wait for the diner to remove the slice to his or her plate, often with a small set of tongs.
The signal for service might be a nod or smile as it is at the Brazilian Tropicana in Pompano Beach or a chip as it is at Chima in Fort Lauderdale. Turning your chip to the orange side means you want more meat, turning it to the black side means you want to rest.
This way of eating is traditional in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where it is a celebration of the gauchos, the horsemen who work the land of southern South America. Story has it that the ranchers or "gauchos" hosted a feast twice per year when they served beef, chicken, pork and fish seasoned and cooked over an open fire. They served the meat still on skewers and carved it for each diner individually. As the cities grew, restaurants offering this style of barbecue opened and the churrascaria was born.
That's why the waiters traditionally wear the garb of the gauchos including bombachas (baggy trousers), linen shirts and kerchiefs.
"The rodizio has put its roots into the United States," says Michael Liberatore, co-owner of Brazilian Tropicana, where they have not only churrasco but also a Brazilian floor show that turns dinner into a cultural experience. "And it makes sense because the churrasco is so simple yet so good," he adds.
As in Brazil, the meal begins with a salad bar and perhaps complimentary pao de queijo or Cheese Puffs. The puffs are made from cassava flour that goes back to the 1600s when the slaves grated manioc, soaked it in wooden bowls with plenty of water, drained it and dried it in the sun to make manioc flour. The flour was food for the masters. But the slaves were left with a fine white powder in the big bowls, and this is the manioc starch that they dried and baked into small breadlike balls. Only later was cheese and milk added to the batter to make these light flavorful puffs.
On the salad bar, you will find hearts of palm in some form, potato salad, cheeses (often Italian cheeses as there are many Italian immigrants in Brazil) and a selection of other salads from tossed greens to garbanzos with tuna.
At Gaucho Rodizio, there's also a hot pasta bar honoring the Italian influences on the country. And here you can taste that manioc flour in the form of farofoa.
Victor Smirnow of Gaucho Rodizio explains that the manioc flour is toasted to become almost like breadcrumbs and mixed with flavorful crisp bacon to eat alongside the meat. You can also get vinaigrette to eat with the meat. It's colorful with red and green peppers and onions.
Now comes that legendary -- and filling -- parade of meat. If you add up the meat served at Chima, Gaucho Rodizio and Brazilian Tropicana in a typical week, it comes to 10,000 pounds.
Gaucho Rodizio offers 15 different types and cuts of meat including beef, lamb, chicken, salmon and linguica. At Chima, there are 10 meats including five cuts of beef. Brazilian Tropicana offers five types of meat as well as a menu listing a variety of Portuguese specialties such as muqueca, a dish of Bahia. "It's the most famous dish of this coastal area," says chef Joao Carlos Euzebio.
He makes it with mahi-mahi and shrimp in coconut milk flavored with dende or palm oil. Although the recipe we offer requires only 1 teaspoon dende, don't omit it. It adds unique color and flavor.
Most of the cuts of beef on the churrasco are seasoned only with rock salt. A few cuts are marinated in garlic and cayenne, according to chefs such as Andre Oliveira at Brazilian Tropicana who mans the rotisserie. The cuts are cooked to the desired doneness on the outside, served and then salted and returned to the rotisserie to cook again. When the meat is brought to the dining room, it is always hot, fresh from the grill and available at any degree of doneness desired.
Don't miss tasting the picanha.
"Americans on their first visit go for the filet because it's the most tender, but Brazilians prefer the picanha because it's the most flavorful," says Bruno Silva, co-owner of Chima.
It took both Teske showing me on a drawing and Oliveira actually pulling a roast out of the walk-in cooler to help me realize where this cut of meat comes from on the cow.
It's a cut Americans are not familiar with. It's from the sirloin, but in this country, the muscles from that part of the cow are usually cut into steaks. Instead of cutting across the muscles, Brazilians separate the muscles of that area in a process known in Europe as "muscle boning."
One of the muscles they isolate is the cap muscle on the top of the top sirloin butt, also called the round sirloin tip roast, rump steak or culotte. It is a boneless, flat triangle-shaped muscle (biceps femoris) that they cut into three pieces and thread each onto a skewer in a "C" shape with their fat sides outward.
When it is sliced off the skewer in the dining room, it is cut from top to bottom on the lean sides of the roasts so that as long as they are over charcoal, they will have a protective fat layer, explains Oliveira.
This keeps the meat moist and flavorful as it goes on and off the rotisserie. You will recognize this cut by its distinctive shape as it is paraded through the dining room on a skewer. It is also available at Brazilian grocery stores if you'd like to try it at home.
The meat at the churrascaria is traditionally served with black beans and rice, fried bananas, batter-fried onion rings and fried yuca.
And don't forget to savor a caipiriha, the sweet-and-sour Brazilian national drink made with lots of limes and the powerful 42-proof white alcohol called cachacha made from sugar cane. But drinker beware. This is powerful stuff.
