Restaurants / Cabot Circus
Casa Brazil – restaurant review
The prospect of an all-you-can-eat meat restaurant is simultaneously exciting and a little intimidating.
The concept at Casa Brazil in Cabot Circus is known as rodizio, which means rotating and refers to the style of service where experienced passadors (meat carvers) pass from table to table slicing different cuts of meat from metre-long skewers with their equally long machetes.
Casa Brazil’s skewered meat
Like The Real Greek also recently opened in the shopping centre, Casa Brazil has opted for an approach to design that without any subtlety whatsoever attempts to place you into the location your food originates from.
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Bright images of Rio’s carnival and favelas litter the walls, samba style drums beat in the background, and on numerous flatscreen TVs there are videos of luxury beaches, festivals and even Brazilian wrestling.
To bulk out your plate before the towering pillars of meat arrive there is a hot and cold buffet bar.
The unashamed focus of Casa Brazil is clear here as well, with every single salad also containing meat: new potatoes come with bacon, chickpea salad with tuna and green beans with pork.
There is vast amounts of food but none of it is very good. The sweet potato fries are undercooked and excitement over the feijoada (a meat and black bean stew) is quickly quashed by its blandness.
The buffet bar’s salad options
Loading up at the buffet bar, however, is just a distraction from the main event.
As soon as you sit down with your plate of self-served meat, more meat quickly arrives at a restaurant founded in Southampton which is more like an interactive dining experience
The flow of meat is controlled by a double-sided card on the table. Green means ‘I need more meat pronto’, and red ‘I need a meat break’ or ‘help, I’ve eaten way too much meat’.
The first skewer to arrive at the table contains chicken wings and sausages. Next to arrive is gammon, and we are encouraged to use the tongs on the table to help take the meat to our plates as it’s elegantly sliced away by our passador.
Shortly afterwards, it’s time for pork with cheese (not recommended) then sirloin, rump, spicy turkey and finally chicken hearts.
It soon becomes almost a challenge to finish what’s on the plate before the next steaming skewer appears, a tough task with the pace at practically one new piece of meat per minute.
Once the parade of various meats has done a pass of each table it’s time for the cycle to start over again.
A plate of meat
Passadors bring wave after wave and if you are even a little hesitant with your coloured card there are high chances of finding more meat being stacked onto your plate, with no preference able to be given for how it is cooked.
As the meat is constantly rotating on the grill, by the time it arrives at your table there is a crisp outer layer, which works well for caramelising the outside of the gammon but turned my first slice of turkey into jerky.
If you like your beef a little pink, then you will likely have to take at least two slices of which one will assuredly be well done.
After an hour without barely a pause for breath, I had to succumb to the meat resting heavily in my belly, with the fear of having to eat any more forcing me to turn my card over to red. The only thing that convinced me to change my mind briefly was another portion of grilled pineapple with cinnamon.
I left feeling full and satisfied with the hint of a self-induced stomach ache and the desire for a nice nap.
Casa Brasil, Glass Walk, Cabot Circus, Bristol, BS1 3BQ
0117 929 3389
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