Tag Archives: brazilian

That New Meat Place with Giant Skewers next to Walmart

How’s that for a title?

Either the Critic was too distracted or never did find out the name of this “Brazilian” rodizio-style meat restaurant located in the City Center mall (Merida not Vegas) , just off the periferico and at the entrance to Walmart. UPDATE: Thanks to the Critics good friend, the intrepid Juanita, the name of this restaurant is ASADO BRASIL.

In any case, he accompanied the always better-looking and better-humored Better Half and another couple there for lunch. As usual, the restaurant was packed with hungry and motivated Yucatecan meat lovers, out to get their money’s worth of the all you can eat menu.

The overall impression is that the place is decent enough, although it is extremely noisy due to an excess of hard surfaces and two televisions (one with sappy telenovelas, the other with a raucous futbol game) and is somewhat charm-challenged. This doesn’t seem to be deterring anyone from having a grand old time however.

The salad bar, a term optimistic at best in this case, is a sparse arrangement of very basic items like lettuce, tomatoes and peppers arranged along one wall with a minimum of grace and fanfare. Just a 12 inch protruding shelf with the smallest of home-made glass acting – not very successfully – as a sneeze guard. The Critic stood in front of this rather sad display for some time before deciding that nothing appealed to him at all, except maybe for a few slices of tomato to offset the meat to come.

The meat, brought out on skewers and carved with a sharp knife in front of your face, is excellent. Everything from chicken and arrachera to pork to sirloin to a truly succulent slice of picaña; and you can eat and repeat as much and as many times as you want. Apparently, the price hovers in the $180 per person range, which is not unreasonable given the amount and quality of meat.

The service was a little lackadaisical at first, but the meat carving specialist, from Argentina apparently, was a joker as was his assistant and made the meal quite entertaining.

For desserts, there is ice cream and some bananas on the salad bar display thing with thick, sweetened Nestle milk to pour over them if you need a real sugar fix after your protein overload.

Would the Critic go back? Sure. Just don’t expect fine dining.