NOTE: AS OF DECEMBER 2014, THIS PLACE HAS CLOSED, AND DESPITE THE LARGE NUMBER OF VIEWS OF THIS BLOG ENTRY, SUCCESS DID NOT COME.
A SHAME AS THE ONLY SIMILAR ALTERNATIVE IS A BIT MORE EXPENSIVE.
Our little dining club of friends took a punt on a new restaurant in North Finchley opposite Sainsbury's. This place has had many identities recently, some of which were short lived. Despite a good review in the Sunday times, the Polish Cafe did not last, and the succeeding Italian came and went in a few weeks. I had been pondering this place for a few weeks, and even looked in, but my lunchtime visit failed to reveal what was in store.
This is the antithesis of the smart London restaurants with young staff that treat you as if they are doing you a favour. This is run by adults who treat their customers almost as if they were their children.It all really feels like someone decided to give this a go, without really figuring out a cutting edge business plan. You can't really work out from the outside what is going on, the pricing is confusing, even the nature of what you will get is not entirely sure, but all became clear. There are no reviews yet (This may be the first) on the web for you to look it up.
The place has a minimum of web presence, limited to one page on facebook, which in retrospect was quite helpful https://www.facebook.com/ABrasaRodizio/info . They say "We are a local, friendly Portuguese restaurant at the heart of North Finchley. A Brasa is a rodizio restaurant which means 'rotating'. We offer a unique dining experience where you will taste an assortment of the finest grilled meat cooked in front of your very own eyes." It is not exactly in front of your eyes, and what comes next is always a surprise. As well as the Brazilian experience, the menu has less random dishes of meat or fish, and a selection of pasta.
The Rodizio meal is a fixed price of about £18 (price seems to change) for all you can eat meat and salad and hot vegetable buffet. We went on a Friday night, and the place is not so busy.
The pictures are not very good as they were taken with my phone and the lighting is quite dim.
The buffet has nothing too strange here. The hot vegetarian section had a mix of bean stew, rice, potatoes and mixed green vegetable. This was at typical steam heated buffet heat. The salad section is pretty basic. The appearance of the food is not an issue here.
The meat comes on skewers and is very reminiscent of the Argentinian restaurant El Vaquero that I have reviewed before, but as there were fewer customers, the variety and frequency of delivery was more limited.
There are lots if little tasters of freshly cooked meats, and from where I was sitting, I could see the skewers spinning round, but this was not a display of artisanal cooking. All sorts of other skewers followed with lamb, beef, chicken hearts, sausages as shown above, and it just keeps on coming until you say 'enough'
Diners are given little tongs to help peel the meat off the skewers as it is sliced. The meat is pre-seasoned, and it is a mix of well done and rare. It would be interesting to see how things work if the place gets busy, as I guess there would be a more rapid turnaround. Certainly things did not move quickly when we were there.
The good news is that the meat is very tasty, probably having been marinated or salted or both prior to the spit roast and it is very hot, scoring about a 9.3 on the CHOF scale. Top marks for hotness and novelty.
The bill was as expected, at about £18 per person for the meat and buffet and extra for drinks and service. They do not take cards of any kind, which I had suspected, and there was a flurry of ATM use in the street to procure the necessary cash by the others. This is unusual, but I dare say it keeps the costs down and the tax man confused.
I can only hope this place survives as it represents something out of the ordinary, and the somewhat laid back nature of the operation leads to a relaxed atmosphere. The all you can eat approach will surely be appreciated by meat lovers.It was also very hot. We will definitely be going back there again.
