San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Brasão Brazilian Steakhouse
Endless parade of steaks, chops plus a lavish salad bar
Note: This is a full Taste Test review, with a star rating based on multiple visits.
Welcome to your steak-cation at Brasão Brazilian Steakhouse.
The vacation vibe starts at a front door the size of a castle gate, set in an imperial facade of orange and black, the colors of flame and char. Inside, piano music drifts from the lavish bar while a choreographed brigade of managers, hosts, waiters and gauchos freezes just long enough to make eye contact.
The formula’s familiar. Palatial setting, giant salad bar, cold caipirinhas and an army of gauchos in black armed with endless swords of grilled meat. Brasão attacks that formula with gusto and style.
The main dining room’s a land-faring cruise ship, a sea of white tablecloths around an iced-down island of salads, cheeses, meats and vegetables trimmed like topiaries in various grilled, roasted, pickled and fermented states.
It’s all-you-can-eat, starting with that salad bar and rolling into the main attraction: 15 kinds of meat, grilled over live flame and loaded onto skewers, waiting for you to turn the card on your table to the green side, the sign for infinite “go.”
Go for lamb chops, seasoned with salt and pepper, with caramelized edges and an interior ranging from pomegranate red to weathered oak, depending on your preference. Brasão’s all about preference. Every gaucho knows by look and feel what’s rare, medium or well done on the sword.
Rib-eye steak cut in long, fatty ribbons gave full steakhouse satisfaction a few bites at a time. Less glamorous but treated with respect, a top sirloin called picanha performed above its humble provenance, energized by a curled stripe of fat over the top. It was better than the scarlet velvet of filet mignon, a cut that made only one appearance in three visits to Brasão.
The carousel of meat at Brasão doesn’t always stop where you want it. Fifteen varieties doesn’t mean 15 right here, right now. It means keep an eye out and get ready to signal.
There’s a beef rib floating around somewhere in the room. Ask for it. As lush as a rib roast, its kaleidoscope of lean, fat, fiber and char gave it the room’s biggest profile and biggest personality.
Pork ribs gave almost the same experience but in miniature, with meat that hugged the bone with championship barbecue tension without the distraction of smoke and sauce. Mild pork sausage and bland, chalky pork loin with a Parmesan cloak couldn’t keep up.
I didn’t expect much from chicken legs. I was wrong. Bronze and crunchy on the outside, they held onto their juices, drawing flavor from a simple spice rub and the inherent lushness of dark meat.
Brasão’s carnival included a procession of hot sides and fresh cheese rolls, wrapped into a price that I defy you to match at any steakhouse at this level, where one lonely steak would swallow the $49.50 Brasão charges for the whole show. Fried polenta, loaded mashed potatoes, rice and beans, caramelized bananas — all good if you’re filling your time and straining your capacity with starch.
There are some drawbacks to Brasão’s steakhouse formula. The menu’s the same every day, and that’s not as exciting as a restaurant where the chef churns the menu based on the harvest and creative pride. And the salad bar makes me think about the dad on “That ’70s Show,” who gripes that if he has to make his own salad, he could do it at home for free.
But his home salad wouldn’t have manchego cheese and prosciutto, nor smoked salmon or giant stalks of asparagus, nor grilled eggplant or marinated artichoke hearts. On the other hand, neither would it have picked-over iceberg wedges, sad picnic potato salad and blotchy deviled eggs.
Brasão’s a place to flex your buying power with luxury-label wine. But there’s more creativity at the bar, which turned out standards like a proper oldfashioned and a crisp caipirinha with lime and cachaça and flashier cocktails like Mexican Candy made with pineapple-serrano cachaça and an after-dinner carajillo, flamed tableside with espresso and sweet liqueur.
Brasão captures an aesthetic of an experience without limits, and that extends to a staff that can’t stop, won’t stop until they’ve done everything they can to create an aura of celebrity around you. One to greet you, one to seat you and all the other ones to meat you.
I joked with a colleague that when you breathe, one waiter will bring oxygen while another takes away the carbon dioxide. It’s smothering sometimes, but I’ll take it over the largely indifferent wasteland of service out there.
It’s a coincidence that Brasão sits next to a Ferrari dealership on the service road. But it draws a nice analogy for unapologetic indulgence. A staycation, turbocharged.