All You Can Meat

We're no fools, so we ditched the appetizers and headed for the salad bar. There are 70 different items, a passing puffy shirt told us. The left side is Brazilian stuff, the right side is American, and at the end are hot lidded tins of mashed potatoes and sautéed mushrooms and black beans and rice. The salad bar items are quite good: I was happy to find lots of fresh produce and fun things to try, each dish helpfully labeled, in case you don't recognize five-inch-long hearts of palm. We sampled marinated quail eggs (a little rubbery, but interesting); marinated fresh cheese sprinkled with oregano (we went back for seconds); a leafy green salad tropically dressed with coconut and pineapple (split decision on that, a little too sweet for some, just right for others). I especially liked the "Brazilian salad" of spinach and lettuce and tomatoes and bacon, if I remember correctly, pasted thickly together with sour cream and mayonnaise and mild shredded white cheese; and I was also pleased by a concoction of lump crabmeat and tiny pasta shells perked up with sweet red peppers and onions.

Sternly we reminded each other that our mission was to eat meat, lots of meat. So finally, we flipped over the cue to green-means-go. "You watch, it'll take hours before they notice that silly cue," I told my friends. "Lingui¸a, madame?" asked the waiter at my elbow. Sure enough, there was an enormous flat spiral of sausage coiled and impaled vertically on his skewer. "We call this 'Princess Leia's hair,' " he said, managing to keep a straight face. The firm, rosy sausage was grilled and garlicky and good.

From that moment on, a steady stream of puffy-sleeved shirts stopped by our table bearing a succession of grilled meats, such as the "Peru," moist chunks of turkey breast wrapped in bacon, or the "Assado," a sort of Brazilian brisket identified as pot roast but compressed, like pâté, into a brick. This last was spared the skewer, instead arriving presliced on a platter with comfortingly familiar roasted potatoes, carrots and onions heaped all round.

From the marinated chicken drumsticks, the "Coxa," we learned an important lesson: Not all skewers are evenly cooked. With the thicker cuts of beef, this offers the welcome opportunity to choose rare, medium or well-done portions according to your taste, but when these little chicken haunches come around, watch out for a less-appetizing choice between burned black and raw.

My favorite beef selection was the "Fraldinha," a massive slow-roasted tenderloin. The meat was incredibly tender with a salty, spicy crust, beautifully rare at the core. If I had to choose just one of the meat selections, this would be it; but at Rodizio you never have to choose just one, do you? The "Picanha," a top-sirloin cut, was also good, but not as meltingly tender.

An hour later we were ready to give up, so we turned the cue back to red-means-stop. Apparently the only thing the cue doesn't govern is the dessert tray. Oh, lord. There was cheesecake made with Bailey's Irish Cream ($4.50) and a triple-layered Chocolate Suicide cake ($3.75) and two kinds of flan, one Brazilian, one coconut (either $3.75). If you must have dessert, the Chocolate Suicide is the way to go, rich and velvety and totally excessive. The Brazilian flan was fluffy, while the coconut flan was dense, but alas, both were ultimately forgettable.

So, you know what? I had great fun at "Pampas World." I don't mind admitting it. At lunchtime, it's got to be one of the best deals in town, especially if you exercise restraint when it comes to drinks and desserts. I couldn't, but theoretically, at least, it's possible.