Review - Texas de Brazil Churrascaria

Brazilian barbeque steak houses or Churrascarias have been around in the United States since the late 1990’s. I had heard of them but had never gone to one, which is strange considering how much I love meat, barbeque and eating in general. That has all changed.

I recently went to Texas de Brazil which is a chain that first opened in Addison Texas in 1998. They now have locations in Texas, Aruba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Florida, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, Virginia, New York, Michigan and of course in my home of Illinois. The particular one I went to is located in Schaumberg and is part of the Woodfield Shopping Center. When you walk in you’re greeted with dark colors everywhere. The walls which are painted a deep, rich, red are bordered by simulated steel metal work supports and arches. Hung on the walls is mirrors of various sizes, quite a few larger than your average sized man. Those arches that border the walls stretch up to meet at center points in the ceiling, which are also painted the same red, where chandeliers which appear to be made of steel hang.

Beautiful hardwood floors, which seem almost too good to walk on, lead you to your table. I wouldn’t think that a restaurant which serves large quantities of meat would choose white table cloths to adorn their tables but that’s exactly what they have. Just for the record the white table cloth was not white too long after we started eating. In the middle of the main dining room there is a huge square salad bar that has a terrific selection of treats. I’ll get back to the salad bar in a minute. Our hostess led us to our table and asked if we wanted menus or did we know what we wanted already. Well neither of us had been there before and told her so much. She started telling us about the menu and what meals they had but it hit both of us, come on now we came here for the meat! I think we may have seemed a bit too anxious to get to the meat as she broke out in a wide grin. I can only imagine we must have looked like two rabid dogs that had not eaten in a week. I think I might have even been frothing at the mouth a bit. After we had settled on the fact that we were going for the meat we set loose upon the place. Salad bar comes with the dinner so we headed over there first.

Just about everything is covered on that salad bar. There was soup, vegetables, fruit, appetizers, cheese, bread, fish and of course salad. But the best part of the salad bar was….the meat. Yep there was even meat on the salad bar. Ok so I’ve seen salad bars with like bacon bits but this salad bar had bacon period! Big ole pieces and so as to not let the bacon get lonely there was a heaping mound of Brazilian sausages. I have never seen a salad bar like this in my life. It was a thing of beauty. It brought a tear to my eye. However we must remember we came here for the meat so whatever we got at the salad bar needed to be light as we had much eating planned and you don’t want to fill up on the little stuff now do you. I grabbed some cheese, mushrooms, shrimp, salmon, bacon and the sausage. I wanted to get so much more but I was afraid I would ruin my ‘eat every dead animal in sight’ ability so I contained myself to just those items. My buddy did the same and we enjoyed out ‘light’ beginnings.

When we finished with our treats from the salad bar our waiter brought over nice clean plates for us and a few side dishes. The sides consisted of; Sweet Fried Bananas-tasty and different for a side, Garlic Mashed Potatoes-always a favorite of mine, House Specialty Meat Sauces-which were not really needed and Brazilian Cheese Bread-which were very yummy. We really wanted to dig into those potatoes and bread but we contained ourselves to smaller portions of the sides so as not to fill up too quickly. Got to keep your eye on the prize and all. By the way all of the sides are endless. Empty the plate and another one is there in a minute. It’s a carbo endless pit. But of course that’s not what we came for and now it was time for the meat!

Let’s start off with what they serve. They have a total of 14 different types of prepared meets that you can choose from. They are:

• Parmesan Chicken
• Chicken Breast Wrapped in Bacon
• Brazilian Sausage
• Lamb Chops
• Leg of Lamb
• Parmesan Pork
• Pork Ribs
• Pork Loin
• Beef Ribs
• Flank Steak
• Filet Mignon
• Filet Mignon Wrapped in Bacon
• Picanha (Rump cover or cap, a cut of beef some consider better than filet mignon)
• And Garlic Picanha

So the way it starts is you have an empty plate in front of you and you are given a small laminated board disk. This disk is green on one side and red on the other. When you want them to bring food you leave the disk facing up to green. A server, with a 2 foot skewer of one of the various meats listed above comes to your table and slices off a portion of that meat onto you plate. If you like/want more of a particular one you can ask for more of it or if you prefer not to have one you can pass on what they have to offer. When you have enough you simply turn you disk over to the red side and they will stop approaching you table until you turn the disk back over to green. It works perfectly.

As I said you can pass on whatever you like but for me I tried everything they had to offer. I’m not sure that I got to try all 14 entrees but I sure gave it a good try. Right after our hostess explained to us the same as I described above she steps away from the table wishing us a good meal. The next instance a server has taken her place and is now slicing off a piece of meat that not only looks delicious but is sending by way of scent a message to your stomach that is making it jump up and down for some attention.

There is a certain amount of competitiveness that sets in and at first (at least for me) you seem to try to want to keep up with your server. As soon as they put some meat on your plate you consume it. I can when I want to be a VERY fast eater but no one, I repeat, no one can consume food as fast as they can bring it. At one point there was a server on either side of me and my buddy and when they finished with each of us they switched sides of the table. Food was coming by me so fast I thought possibly I had be transported to some kind of a meat Shangri-La. Perhaps I was…….. As much as I wanted to keep up with the onslaught of meat that was being thrown at me I was not and finally had to give in. I flipped my disk back to red. For a moment I felt shame. I had been conquered and I was not sure if I could ever show my face again.

I was able to redeem myself a bit as I recovered a bit and was able to continue after a short rest. But alas seeing as it was an all you can eat; ultimately you have to give in which I did. However I know I did my fair share of eating and well got my money’s worth. Although I wasn’t able to weigh how much meat I ate it must have been over a pound and I’m betting on something more in the neighborhood of two. All of the food was delicious but I did have some that I really liked. The Flank Steak, Lamb Chops and Leg of Lamb were exceptionally good but the Picanha and Garlic Picanha were without question my favorites.

After we sat and tried to digest our overdose of meat we decided to try one of their desserts. We both had the Brazilian Papaya Cream as we had heard that an enzyme in the Papaya helps in the digestion of the meat. I honestly can’t say that I could tell the difference. I was hurting before the dessert and I was hurting after it. I was also hurting some six hours later but that’s ok because it was a good kind of hurt.

Texas de Brazil was a terrific place to go eat. You can expect to spend over $50 per person if you go so it’s not an everyday place to go but it was well worth the money. I would go again in a second and it definitely gets a solid 10 from me. However I’ll say this if you’re not into meat or eating a lot, you might not enjoy it as much as me.

If you are……well pull up a chair!