Brazil

For our Brazilian adventure we took my parents to Rodizio Rico churrascaria Islington, a Brazilian meat buffet where they carve big slices off slabs of meat at your table.

Brazilian buffet

Having been to Brazil, I remember their national dish being perfectly nice beef inexplicably smothered with a sort of inedible grit and then covered in a barely more palatable black bean sauce. All of the unpleasant grit and sauce is made authentically available at Rodizio Rico, but happily it being a buffet means you can simply avoid putting it on your food. So one is left with excellent cuts of succulent meat, plus some sides of vegetables and potatoes. All very nice. Oh, and for some reason also skewers of chicken hearts which I guess everyone should try once.For me the highlights of eating Brazilian in London were threefold. One is that taking my dad to a restaurant that serves unlimited portions of meat was a pretty solid win. Meat plus spuds makes for a very happy Yorkshireman, and the various accompanying salads and sauces he ignored after his habit. The second is that my memories of Brazil are very happy – it is a beautiful country made up in my experience mostly of beaches and anything that recalls the place is fine by me.

Capirinha

Mostly, though, the thing to enjoy about a Brazilian meal is the Caipirinha. While it seems like very little could improve on a day spent sitting on Ipanema beach, the constant coming and going of elderly, itinerant cocktail sellers offering to shake a perfect caipirinha on the spot certainly did the trick. And so for our Brazilian adventure I toyed with the beef, sampled a little chicken heart or too, and paid homage to days of sunshine in Rio with an endless stream of caipirinhas.