Brazilian barbecue buffet makes it fun to fill up
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
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| Tudo De Bom passador Valdir Candido carves at the table for diners. The serving style borrows from Brazil's gauchos of old, who grilled their meat on skewers and ate right from the blades of their knives.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser Tudo De Bom Brazilian barbecue and buffet 1960 Kapi'olani Blvd., Suite 204; McCully Shopping Center, 2nd floor Lunch: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays Dinner: 5-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; to 11 p.m. Fridays Weekends and holidays: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Liquor license pending; BYOB for now (no corkage fee) Reservations recommended: 942-0267
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The name means "all that is good" or "it's all good," and as a description, it's pretty much accurate: It's all — from the grilled meats to the salad bar to Brazil's beloved black beans and rice — pretty good.
The format is one that was developed in the 1600s or 1700s in Brazil's pampas — the southern grazing lands where gauchos learned to rub hunks of meat with coarse salt, skewer them and anchor the skewers around a pit in which a charcoal fire blazed. Tableware was limited to your own knife, and service took the form of hacking off the still-sizzling meat and eating it right off the blade.
This rough-and-ready idea was adapted and gentled a bit by city dwellers in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in the 1940s, in restaurants called churrascarias. There, a wide range of meats — brined beef as well as marinated pork, lamb, chicken, sausages and such — are grilled and served by waiters dressed in gaucho gear, who brandish swordlike skewers of meat carved right on to your plate at the table.
Each item is brought out as it reaches the desired doneness, giving rise to the term for this eating style: churrasco rodizio, meaning roughly "barbecue served in rotation." ("Rodizio" means "in turn," not "rotisserie," as some have thought from the sound of the word.)
Accompaniment, often served buffet-style, invariably includes farofa (crunchy ground manioc root, also known as yuca, tapioca plant, cassava), feijoa (black beans in a rich broth), rice, potatoes and pasta in various forms, salads and fruit drinks, including the Brazilian favorite guarana soda, and the heady caipirinha, made with lime, sugar and cachaca (a Brazilian sugar-cane liquor that is like rum, only stronger).
Tudo de Bom follows this one-price, all-you-can-eat pattern in a modest fashion with a handful of grilled items at lunch, 10 or so at dinner. Up to 20 meats and seafood items are on the menu, but not all are available at any given time.
Count on alcatra ao alho (garlic steak), alcantra a pimenta (pepper steak), coxa de galinha (chicken), maminha (tri-tip), peru com bacon (turkey with bacon). (Lunch is $12.95; weekday dinner $18.95; weekend dinner $21.95; including everything but drinks and dessert; children 4 to 12 pay half price; those younger than 4 eat free.)
About the farofa (sautÚed yuca "flour") — you're supposed to dip your meat in this mixture that looks like fine, dry breadcrumbs. The result is an enjoyable additional layer of slightly spicy flavor and crunchy texture.
The salad bar is made up of standard offerings: sliced tomatoes, olives, chopped or sliced vegetables, greens, sometimes a seafood or pasta salad. The hot food bar includes beans, Brazilian-style white rice, pasta in an Alfredo-style sauce, mashed potatoes and a rotating group of other dishes.
The fun comes in tending the "yes" or "no" indicator at your table — a length of dowel painted red on one end, green on the other. Turn the green side up, and the passadors (churrasco waiters) stop by on their rounds, presenting whatever's on offer, resting a round metal plate on the table to steady the long skewers and carving away until you beg them to stop. And believe me, at some point, even a sumo wrestler would beg them to stop.
Turn the red side up, and they are supposed to pass you by. Occasionally, they ignore your signals, however. At dinner one night, my girlfriend and I had the red side up and were sitting in a postprandial stupor when the waiter stopped and insisted we try the alcatra (top sirloin). He was soooo right; this was the night's perfect presentation — done just shy of medium, with a rime of salt and crisped fat on the outside, and juicy, fork-tender meat inside.
This was typical of Tudo de Bom as I experienced it in two visits: Occasionally, a dish blows you away. The rest of the time, it's just plain, hearty fare.
One night, I had two helpings of the most delicious potato salad of my life, bar none — and that includes the salad of my grandmother of sainted memory. The aforementioned top sirloin was memorable, as were the lamb and the sausage. But chicken was a bit dry on both occasions, as were most of the beef chunks, and the side dishes were pretty plain, except for a really delicious stroganoff one day, and the soul-food satisfying feijoa, or black beans.
One hint: The better stuff seems to come out later; Brazilians are late diners.
It's kind of silly to talk about dessert at Tudo de Bom because who's got room? However, I did have a lovely slice of cheesecake one day. A dessert cart of more Portuguese-style desserts is in the planning stages.
Tudo de Bom has some things to work out: getting the doneness of the meat just right, and doing a better job of explaining the concept. On both visits, our servers were shy young women who murmured a few words and just sort of waved us toward the buffets. The table greeting is an important opportunity to create the sense of fun and cultural intermingling that ought to be the hallmark of a place like this; a little more talking, smiling and laughing could transport you right to Brazil.
Reach Wanda Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2412.
