Brazilian dinner at Porcão

(Katherine) Our last full day in Rio started with a final trip to the beach. We packed up a picnic and found a great spot of the border of Ipanema and Leblon beach, quite isolated from the chaos about 5 blocks down in the center of Ipanema. I snapped some final photos of the surrounding area and a local kite boarder, and we finally bit adieu to the beach and headed back to the apartment to prep for our major event of the day - dinner!

I’ve only had an elaborate Brazilian dinner experience one before in Dallas, which is ironic considering they are equally known for being a land of “meat eaters.” The place we had selected was called Porcão, which is apparently a famous chain of restaurants but their Ipanema venue had been there for only about a year. When you first walk inside you are greeted with a wall of celebrities that have dined at the establishment - the main people we recognized were Tom Cruise and Gisele. We checked in for our reservation and were ushered to our seats, right next to the salad bar. Here’s how these things works - it’s a fixed price which includes every thing you want to take off the salad bar, and then all the meat you can eat. They present you with a button which has a green side and a red side. When you have it flipped to green, servers come by and offer you meat from a skewer - it could be chicken, lamb, seafood, or various cuts of beef. When you flip it to red, they stop and give you a break.

As soon as we sat down, they kept encouraging us to visit the salad bar - we decided that this was their means of us filling up on as much “fluff” food as possible so we wouldn’t be hungry enough to eat an abundance of meet. Little did they know we had a strategy! We went for a few grilled vegetables (again, avoiding fresh items which had been rinsed in running water) but then hit the sushi bar. We loaded up on sashimi and several rolls. We also strategically nibbled on the free sides they offered because we noticed they were all starch (rice, potatoes, etc.) which were again designed to fill you up.

We finally flipped our buttons to green and the race was on - who could serve us the most delectable meats the quickest? We samples various cuts of poultry and pork, but we finally started to decline the multiple cuts of beef because Robert was anxiously awaiting his favorite. One of the nicer servers who came by asked him what he wanted, and Robert laid it out for him - prime rib. The server smiled and walked off. A few minutes later, he showed up with the elusive skewer of prime rib, fresh off the grill. We each received a slice, and I watched Robert’s face light up as he took a bite - I could tell this was the highlight of the meal!

We probably stayed for at least 2 hours, making as much room in our bellies as possible. A bottle of Malbac had helped to top off the evening, but also put us into a comatose state once we had stuffed ourselves beyond belief. Although we had high hopes of going on our last night in Rio, we decided instead to just relish the yummy food in our bellies, and roll ourselves home. It was a very fulfilling (figuratively and literally) way to end our experience in Rio!