Rewind: Rodizio Grill

(Another Rewind from the food reviews, same as this one ---JB).

Some time ago, I was driving an ex-girlfriend to dinner when she asked, with studied and entirely inauthentic nonchalance, “Would you like to see a picture of the boy who took my virginity?”

“I could take it or leave it,” was my studied and entirely inauthentic response, but what I was really thinking was: only if it’s a picture of him about to be dropped into a junkyard steel shredder. Whether we like to admit it or not, being the first person to do a particular thing matters in this world.

In the past decade or so, I’ve dined at any number of so-called Brazilian steakhouses, from “Fogo de Chao” to “Texas de Brazil”. If the owners of Rodizio Grill are to be believed, however, these guys are all just playing Kevin Federline to their Justin Timberlake, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. (If you don't: Rodizio Grill was the first Brazilian steakhouse to open in the United States, although the hugely superior Fogo De Chao actually popularized the concept here when it opened a year later to much greater acclaim.) Let’s check it out and see how much being first past the post matters in this Brazilian business.

Jill and I met for lunch on a day where the breath froze in the air ahead of us and the unclouded sun shone with a distance and dimness more appropriate to Alpha Centauri. We started early, walking to the restaurant from our respective downtown employers at eleven so we could be seated by 11:15. The place was nearly empty. That’s a bit worrying in an area where the better restaurants are all quoting wait times by 11:30 every morning.

Jill took just the salad and received the “tablemat of shame” as a result. I chose to pay twenty bucks for a full lunch option.

A plate of depressing-looking cheese things (I don’t know what else to call them besides things) and some glazed bananas appeared. Jill eyed them critically. “The purpose of those cheese puffs is to fill you up before the meat appears,” she informed me. “Although they’re ready to start serving you now, they’ll give you some time to lose your appetite.”

“They don’t know with whom they’re fucking,” I replied, and attempted to eat a cheese puff thing. It had the taste, and texture, of packing foam. As a result, I only ate two of them before giving up. Before long I saw the waiters parading their skewered meat options around the mostly empty tables. First was chicken, which I waved off. Then steak, which I also waved off.

“What are you waiting for?” inquired Jill.

“The bacon-wrapped filet, which is the highlight of any Brazilian steakhouse experience.”

“It’s not coming,” she predicted, and when I saw the return of the chicken after an offer of sirloin, I realized that she was correct. There were just three different meats available.

“You just paid twenty dollars to get three pieces of that sirloin,” Jill chuckled.

“Well, um, I, uh, am really enjoying the sirloin.”

“Good, because you just paid twenty dollars to get three pieces of it.” We had that precise conversation three times over the next half hour. The only highlight of the meal was when a snobby little waiter corrected me on my meat-grabbing technique and then implied that I wasn’t much of a foodie. This gave me a chance to brag to Jill about how I was an internationally famous writer and could easily forgive snobbishness on the part of a lunchtime waiter at what had quickly become my least favorite Brazilian steakhouse, ever.

Our lunch was exactly fifty bucks with a tip. That’s a lot of money to pay to eat three pieces of Ponderosa-quality sirloin. Later in the day, as I sat at my desk fuming over the lack of bacon-wrapped filet in my lunch, I got a call from that same old ex-girlfriend, telling me that she missed me and that I’d done a terrible thing by terminating our relationship when I did.

“I can’t have this conversation right now,” I whined, “I’m suffering from a very disappointing lunch.” As a daytime proposition, Rodizio Grill is Not Recommended. Take it from me and from my erstwhile companion in Stubborn Love: while it’s important to be the first at what you do, it’s even more important to be good at it.