Brazilian Churrascarias are not new on our sunny little island. Well at least there is one place out in Bukit Timah which I've heard so much about but have yet to go.
Churrascarias, for the
bodohs, are Brazilian or Portugese steakhouses where waiters come to your table with different meats on giant skewers and they slice the chunks off with equally giant knives directly onto your plate =)) The meat is roasted 'rotisserie' style, that is skewered and then revolved around a heat source.
Anyway yesterday, we were feeling particularly carnivorous (not that I am usually herbivorous or anything) and so we mossied down to the very aptly-named Carnivore down at VivoCity.
OK so it was a pretty tastefully-decorated restaurant. And for 34 bucks, you can eat all the skewered meat you could stuff yourself with till kingdom come. Fantastic proposition really, beef is not cheap you know! Except that we did not count on an endless onslaught of animal flesh! =))
Beef (every blardy cut), Lamb, Chicken, Pork, Ham, Sausages, Ribs, Fish..blah blah blah. By my fourth slice of Hump steak, I wanted to call it quits and go home and do some humping of my own instead =))
Jelak lah! (Gosh what is the English equivalent for
jelak...bloated?) Its a feeling you get when you've overdosed on a particular type of taste. Wadever! =))
It came to a point where for every chunk of meat I put in my mouth, I had to take a sip of my Chilean Santa Helena Cabernet Sauvignon =)) Either that or I had to have a slice of rotisserie pineapple to cleanse the palate abit. You know how sour things are a good remedy for
jelak-ness =)) What to do no Sorbet what!
Don't get me wrong, there were good stuff on offer. The beef in particular was well-marinated, albeit simply in sea-salt I reckon, to bring out the full flavor of the many cows who had to die for this. But you know I am squeamish about blood and some skewers were literally dripping the red stuff onto my plate. Ewww =)) Too rare for comfort. Medium-well for me thanks.
There were misses too. Like the Butterfish which tasted, err, weird. And the chicken which a friend commented tasted too 'chickeny' =)) You see we
bodohs are so used to commercial grain-fed chicken. Apparently free-range chickens taste different. 'Free-range' as in the birds are allowed to run all over the shop to look for their own stuff to eat and are not fed from a conveyor belt. Does Carnivore use FRCs? We forgot to ask =))
Service was good though with the Brazilian born-and-bred wait-staff prompt and polite. But I mean they were brandishing big knives and skewers, we really didn't want to complain about bad service =)) In my pathetic attempt to show I knew alittle about Brazil, I asked a short fella from Sao Paulo if he knew Rubens Barichello. He said he was already driving when good ole Rubens was on a tri-cycle =))
Anyway,
Food 6/10
Ambience 7/10
Service 7.5/10
So go figger out what the average score is for the experience =))
Menu
BEEF:
Rump/Hump/Rib/Tenderloin with bacon/Thick skirt
LAMB:
Fillet/Leg
CHICKEN:
Thigh/Heart/Breast with bacon/Drumstick with Cheese
FISH:
Butterfish
PORK:
Sausage/Rib/Shoulder/Honey Ham
OTHERS
Pineapple/Garlic Bread
Plus a decent Salad Bar with Soups and Sauces.