All You Can Meat

When I took this job, I thought it would be easy to find volunteers willing to join me for free eats. I mean, surely anybody anywhere would welcome a free meal. Wouldn't they?

The reality is that I end up flipping frantically through my address book, calling friends, neighbors, former co-workers. I plead; I wheedle. "Please, please go with me to this new restaurant," I'll beg. "No, no one else has ever heard of it Š No, I don't know if it's any good Š No, I don't know if they serve vegetarianŠ" And so forth.

Last week was even more challenging than usual. I wanted to try the Rodizio Grill, which opened two months ago on Westheimer near Fountainview. My telephone pitch went something like this: "Let's go out to this new Brazilian all-you-can-eat place, okay? Um, yeah, it's a chain Š all you can eat, right, mostly meat Š but it's got a 40-foot salad bar and guys in puffy-sleeved shirts, tooŠ" Click. Dial tone.

Okay, so it doesn't sound promising.

I'll admit even I was worried when I spied the glass case of souvenir T-shirts right inside the front door. Never a good sign, that. What, I should advertise my trip to the land of flat-fee dining? (Although I do like that sporty bull logo, plagiarized from a Lascaux cave painting.)

Nor did the menu encourage me with its painstaking pronunciation guides. I mean, maybe my Portuguese could use a little polish and I need to be told that coxa is properly pronounced "Co-Shah," but I think I could have puzzled out mahimahi ("Ma-He Ma-He") or polenta ("Poe-Lent-A") all by myself.

The room itself is quite handsome, in a Norwegian wood, less-is-more sort of way. I admired the sleek lamps of cobalt blown glass dangling over the bar. I spotted a cluster of puffy-shirted men right away, quite handsome they are, too, but at first I misunderstood their function. I thought they were mariachis grouped around a table, poised to strum weird-looking instruments -- which turned out to be torso-length skewers of meat that the waiters tote from table to table, slicing off whatever tempts the customer.

Thank goodness my friends brave enough to test-drive such a preposterous concept are good sports. As our waitress explained the "green-means-go and red-means-stop" cueing system, I hid behind my huge laminated menu in embarrassment.

The Rodizio cue is a goofy, low-tech gizmo of turned and painted wood, about the size of a large saltshaker. Turn the green end up, and all the wandering meat men stop by the table. Flip it to red, and they leave you in peace. "Ooh, can I take this with me?" asked one of my tablemates. "Do you think it'll work at other restaurants?" It certainly works at Rodizio. We had big fun flipping it on-off-on-off: Those guys are agile!

The real deal here is called the "Full Rodizio" -- you pay $11.95 at lunchtime or $18.95 at dinner, the difference being that more meat, fish and fowl selections are offered in the evenings. For your money, you get four kinds of appetizers and all the meat, cold salads and hot vegetables you can consume. This dining style is somehow based on a tradition of gaucho feasts on the Pampas (I'm not sure I fully grasp the historical linkage). Or you can order lesser stuff, such as sandwiches, $agrave; la carte, but drinks and desserts are always extra. We tried the soft drink made from rain forest guarana nuts ($2.95) and found it tastes just like cream soda; the Brazilian lemonade ($2.75) is served in its own carafe but is basically just lime juice -- and who knew how pallid that would taste without tequila? The caipirinha ($6) though, is worth the trip: a wicked little cocktail of that same fresh lime juice spiked with sugarcane liquor and a pinch of sugar.

We were still twiddling with the cue gizmo when the appetizers arrived. I liked the fried polenta sticks, like seriously textured french fries, golden crisp and served with a mild marinara sauce for dipping. The gobbets of pão de queijo (if you must know, that's "Pow-Gee-Cage-O") were composed of fish-belly white bread dough wrapped around a soft, pale cheese, surprisingly good despite their disconcerting resemblance to little blind eyeballs. There're also pãozinho bread and sweet fried bananas sprinkled with cinnamon. "Oh, I get it!" cried one of my friends, squinting accusingly at his plate. "They're trying to fill us up with the cheap stuff!"