If you don’t speak Portuguese, here’s a little vocabulary list:
- Brasa – hot coal that is ready for roasting.
- Churrascueira – a restaurant serving wood-char grilled meat; servers come to the table with meat on a skewer.
- Rodizio – a style of restaurant service, where diners pay a fixed price and waiters bring food several times during the meal until the diner says enough.
Put them all together and you have , a serving grilled meat cooked on hot coal brought to the table.
Here meat is all-you-can-eat; waiters bring skewers to the table and you pick what you want: pork loin, skirt steak, top sirloin, beef cubes, beef ribs, chicken, chicken drumstick, turkey with bacon and Brazilian sausage. When you’ve had enough, you just say “no” when the meats are brought around.
That’s one route to follow.
The other is to order individual dishes from the menu. The food is served family style.
The salad of lettuce, onions and tomatoes is served deliciously cold and vinegary. In addition to the meats named above there are hot sandwiches and fish dishes such as grilled cod fish and grilled swordfish, soup. Sides include beans, bananas, collard greens and farofa (toasted cassava flour).
The barbecued chicken is Brasa’s most popular dish. Entrees are served with an assortment of carbs: white rice, French fries, boiled potato, delicious homemade potato chips, plus steamed vegetables.
On the table is the piri piri sauce of red pepper flakes and oil that, we were advised, can be put on everything. Most desserts are made in-house and include flan, heavenly whites and .
100 Herricks Rd. Mineola NY, 11501, 516-280-8000
www.rasarodizio.com
Hours: Monday to Saturday: 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Sundays: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: All-you-can-eat rodizio: $29.95; half barbecued chicken: $12.95; appetizer of clams, Brasa style: $11.95.95.
