I just returned from a second visit to my new favorite local eatery. It's a Brazilian grill (Rio, on the Ave, for any Seattle locals), which is to say, it's where good little carnivores go when they die. The all-you-can-eat buffet, a concept so divine as to secure its inventor a seat at the head of the heavenly table, has been impossibly improved by the most simple of ideas.
The food comes to you.
No more lulls in the digestive process while you drag yourself away from your table, stagger over to the buffet, and dirty yet another plate with sneeze-guard-protected vittles. While you and your companions pass around an assortment of simple yet delicious side dishes, a parade of servers visit your table. Each offers a sword-like skewer for your approval, sliding a morsel or two onto your plate at your merest nod. Grilled pineapple, mushrooms, assorted veggies, corn on the cob, bacon-wrapped turkey breast, pepper steak, chicken, shrimp, sausage... you'll want to shout "huzzah!" and pour mead on the court jester. Upon sampling the tri-tip steak, sliced off the skewer to your specifications, your eyes will roll so far back you'll see the pleasure centers of your brain doing the samba.
All of life should be like this. I want an endless stream of people walking past my door, offering services throughout the day. "Out of toilet paper, mister?" "Chevron Man-- I'm here to top off your tank." "You look tense, sir. Massage?" After all, they say life's a buffet. I want mine to be Brazilian.
Posted by Peter at March 26, 2003 09:35 PMSo, you WANT door to door salesmen to come back in vogue?
One of my customers runs a "pest control" company. He refuses to eat in any buffet. Over the last ten years he has been on calls to most of the ones around here and has yet to find one that isn't pretty heavily infested. He told me this wonderful story about baby cockroaches, that are white, that he literally saw jumping from one plate to the next as the hopper of clean plates moved up. Apparently they were starting at the bottom, then moving up with the plates until the light got near them, at which point they would run away - to the next lower plate. Yum.
Posted by: Larry on March 27, 2003 06:18 AM...I don't feel so good. That has got to be the worst bad food story I've ever heard. I'm never eating in whatever town you live in Larry.
Posted by: chris on March 27, 2003 10:57 AMI haven't eaten at a buffet since that day. He says that it is a normal problem for them - that in his years (I can't recall now - 15 maybe) of this kind of work he has never seen a buffet that didn't have bug trouble. Of course, that one about them hopping from plate to plate while he watched was the worst. He hasn't always been in this town, so I don't think it is just us.
He had some other good ones too - did you know that mice urinate while moving? So as they run across canned goods (like Coke and Pepsi) they piss all over them. I don't drink out of the can anymore.
Posted by: Larry on March 27, 2003 02:43 PMgak! You're killing me over here!
Posted by: chris on March 27, 2003 02:52 PMWe will have to have next Thanksgiving at a Rodizio (Brazilian Grill buffet-served at your table as described sans appetizers) in Newark. Its been served in the Ironbound (I know of one in Perth Amboy too) for many years.
Posted by: Your Father in New Jersey on April 14, 2003 09:47 PM