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Restaurant review

More than just meat on a stick at Brasa Grill

Tampa's Brasa Grill provides an accessible and affordable introduction to Brazilian rotisserie.

By LAURA REILEY
Published March 1, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Atoyia Deans] At Brasa Grill, which serves the South American smorgasboard barbecue called churrasco rodizio, chefs bring skewers of meat to the tables, like this spicy pork sausage. [Times photo: Atoyia Deans] A cod fish platter graces the buffet of Brasa Grill. The Tampa restaurant celebrates the complexities of Brazilian cuisine.

TAMPA

If you flip through any in-flight magazine these days, you might believe that every city in the land is stocked to capacity with Brazilian churrascarias (that's shoo-HOSS-ka-REE-ahs).

Maybe you know the photos: attractive Latin men in gaucho costumes standing tableside, wielding absurdly long skewers dense with rolls of beef in one hand and brandishing a sword in the other.

Many of these all-you-can-eat "rodizio" meat fests are strictly for a splurge. National chains such as Texas de Brazil and Fogo de Chao charge nearly $50 per adult for a salad buffet and 15 or so varieties of meat. Tampa's Brasa Grill tops that, offering 18 cuts of grilled meat, plus the buffet, for $21.99 - a more fiscally prudent and family-friendly way to explore the barbecue of the Gaucha region in the Brazilian highlands.

The meaning of rodizio is unclear to me. One Portuguese speaker says it means "that which goes around," while another insists the translation is "ongoing service or unending hospitality." I don't speak Portuguese, so I'm going to guess it means "skewered, rotisseried meats, and plenty of them." Commit to the meat feast and the carver just keeps coming until you say uncle. In fact, you don't need to say uncle: small laminated tabletop cards have a green side ("go") and a red side ("please, I can't eat more meat"). Flip accordingly.

The long, strip mall restaurant is unassuming, adjacent to a Walgreens and a pool supply store. Inside there's a comfortable, lived-in feel, with black vinyl booths and assorted restaurant chairs. One end of the restaurant is given over to the buffet: a hot line, a salad line and an array of desserts. At the opposite end sits a huge flat-screen TV, broadcasting Brazilian concerts and music videos.

Explore the buffet before succumbing to the parade of meats. One night it featured a piquant cabbage and red onion slaw, another, an equally tangy radish salad. Pan-fried okra, long-simmered pinto and black beans, and a sweet-and-sour braised zucchini dish give one a sense for the complexity of Brazilian cuisine. Ingredients are humble and workhorse, while finished dishes provide a range of textures and flavors.

Appetizers are also offered a la carte, but many are smaller versions or variations on the meat dishes to come. Pass on them, and instead have a pleasant Brazilian Brahma beer or sip a glass of Quinta do Rio Grande white, an uncomplicated Brazilian wine with bracing acidity. Neither will linger in your memory, but it's fun to sample tradition.

Carvers make the rounds of the dining room, first with a passel of spicy pork sausages, next with beef tri-tip or skirt steak. They whack away at whatever is on the skewer, proffering each slice on the end of a long chef's knife. Most meats are flavored simply but lavishly with salt and pepper (with the exception of the thin sirloin with garlic and oil, my least favorite dish).

There are no sauces or marinades - the musky leg of lamb contrasts with a more demure, burnished-skin pork loin, which in turn is juxtaposed with the velvety fat of beef brisket. The crowd-pleasers tend to be the top sirloin or the chicken breast wrapped tight in bacon; people furtively turn their card to red when they see the chicken hearts coming (a little chewy but not bad, although it's disconcerting to see 30 chicken hearts lined up on a skewer).

One final rotisserie item, cinnamon-glazed fresh pineapple, makes a suitable ending, especially when paired with a tangy square of mango paste or a cup of soothing rice pudding from the dessert buffet.

Your card emphatically on red, it's time to pay up and peruse the array of Brazilian candies, CDs and even hair products for sale. The waddle to the parking lot is the final rite of "shoo-HOSS-ka-REE-ah."

Laura Reiley, a former food critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, is a freelance writer in Tampa. Until a replacement for Chris Sherman is named, Weekend is featuring guest restaurant critics.

Review

Brasa Grill

6507 W Waters Ave. (between Twelve Oaks and Hanley), Tampa

Phone: (813) 886-7858

Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 1 to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Details: MasterCard and Visa, reservations accepted, no smoking, beer and wine.

Prices: $12.99 half rodizio, $19.99 full rodizio meat buffet lunch, $21.99 rodizio meat buffet dinner.

[Last modified February 28, 2007, 09:57:42]