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| Lots of meat |
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| Dinner time again |
Brazil is definitely "Vegan Hell". But one person's Hell is another person's Heaven! The basic order of the day in Brazil is meat, meat and more meat. The standard and favourite eating out experience, it appears, is the Brazilian Barbecue. These are "eat as much as you like" situations and the meat just keeps on coming! In my previous trip to Brazil I was only treated to the Brazilian Barbecue twice and I was hoping that I would at least go to one of these interesting eating experiences on this trip.I went for this type of meal just about every day! I asked at one of the places how much meat they go through in a day and it was around 90 kg!
My wife normally weighs me "in" after a trip. The first thing she does, is bring out the scale. This time when I go on the scale, it said one at a time please! I did pick up quite a few kilograms on this last trip. But boy, was it an eating experience. Of course my ever loving wife was not very happy!
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| You select the piece you want and he cuts it off. |
Let me explain just how these Brazilian Barbecues work. There are basically two options. In option one, the food is weighed off and you pay per weight. In option two, there is a fixed price. This includes all the dishes in option one, plus the meat. Once you are seated, you can help yourself to the salads, warm food and, in many cases sushi - also as much as you like. At your table each person gets a small set of tongs. Then the fun starts. The waiters appear, each carrying a skewer of a certain cut of meat and a very sharp carving knife. He comes around to you table and you use the small tongs to hold onto the selected piece of meat you want and the waiter cuts this off for you. Before the first piece of meat hits your plate, the next waiter is standing there with a different cut of meat. This goes on and on and on and on until you cannot anymore. They keep coming until you give up!
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| More meat |
After the first one or two times, I learnt an important trick. They first bring out the cheaper cuts of meats. The better quality meat comes out later. So the moral of the story is let a few of the early rounds go and wait for the better meat. You can afford to wait, because they will just keep on bring meat until you quite.
The meat is normally cooked over an open flame and is not normally heavily seasoned. Like I said at the start, Vegan Hell! But having said that, the salads at all of the places were also amazing. There were a lot of palm hearts available on all of the salad bars. If you have never had palm heart before it is difficult to explain what it tastes like. They taste a bit like artichokes. But I guess that this will not help much, because if you have not eaten palm hearts before, you probably have also not eaten artichokes. Artichokes taste a lot like palm hearts! The taste a bit like asparagus (the fresh version, not the tinned ones), but have a slightly more nutty taste. The palm hearts are quite soft and creamer. One of the evening, I could just not face another plate of meat, and I saw grilled palm hearts as a starter on the menu. I had this as my main. I really enjoyed it very much.
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| Salads for the Vegans |
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| Grilled palm hearts |
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| Salads |
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| Amazing Japanese food |
Another unforgettable eating experience was in the most unlikely place. We drove most of the day to get to a small town called Bastos. This was one of the centres of the Japanese immigration into Brazil some three generations ago. This is one of the main poultry layer industry areas. I did my presentation to 15 farmers in a small house. These 15 farmers in this small town somewhere in Brazil (we were still in Sao Paulo State) had about 3 times the total number of layer chickens in South Africa. The room was set up around a dinning room table. After my presentation, the food started to flow. By far, the most amazing Japanese food I have ever eaten. There were a total of 10 dishes, starting from a small salad and ending up with deep fired ice cream. The highlights for me were the very thinly sliced salmon in a ponzu dressing, and the tempura prawns. But having said that, the entire meal was a highlight, all in this most unlikely setting.
Eating in Brazil appears to be a very important past time. Must say, the food was really great. Yes, there was lots and lots of meat, but the display of salads was also really great. Even a vegan could have been happy.
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| Eat as much as you like sushi |
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