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Food: Taurinus (Brazilian Steakhouse)
My birthday rolled around a little while ago and after some thought, I decided I wanted to try a Brazilian steakhouse. My first thought was 'Foga de Chao', but after some consultation with relatives, my aunt said she'd prefer a quieter place, a sentiment with which I agreed completely. So I settled on Taurinus.
I picked lunch because it was cheaper, even though that meant we wouldn't get as many selections of meat. That and I figured it wouldn't be as crowded. Well, I was right about that, it really wasn't crowded.
Here, you can see the back of the dining room with sides and salad bar.
They were quick to bring my older bro and myself some appetizers. Sadly, my aunt and cousin took long enough to get there (some issues with parking, I gather) that the fried bananas-- the bottom food shown here-- got cold. However they were quite happy to bring an extra plate of them. Definitely much better warm!
The other items here are cheese bread (biscuits really) which were quite tasty, and fried polenta which were nice and savory.
The theory behind the Brazilian steakhouse is that you go and get your sides first, then come back and servers come around with skewers of meat and they will slice off portions at your request. You can specify, for example, whether you'd like some meat cut from the more rare or more well-done part of a large piece of meat.
So, here I am with a plate of mostly sides and just the first meat dish that's shown up, a relatively mild pork sausage. From bottom, working my way around the clock: a 'roulade' of some kind with prosciutto and salami. Very salty and a bit spicy! White rice, which might seem boring but it worked well with the meat as a sort of palate cleanser. Black beans with what I suspect is the same sausage, just cut up and simmered with the beans. Grilled asparagus from the salad bar.
Actually I want to talk about that last one a bit more. The asparagus were great! They were chilled, but even so they were perfectly tender, not a bit fibrous unlike the times I've attempted to cook asparagus for myself. I'll have to experiment and try to figure out how to replicate it.
The red wine steak (filet mignon? New York steak? I'm not sure) and the parmesan-crusted pork loin were the next to show up. Both seemed a little overdone, unfortunately. They were still edible, just not as tender as I would have liked.
The tines of the fork have been left in this image for scale so you can see what should have been obvious from when I saw chicken hearts mentioned in the reviews: chicken hearts are small!
They taste pretty gamy, like liver or kidney, and they seemed kind of on the tough side. I had to try this once... But having done so, I don't feel I need to have it again.
They had pork ribs, which were somewhat mild... My aunt asked for some sauce to pour on her ribs. I ate 'em straight up because I believe that meat should taste good by itself. They were pretty decent. Not terribly meaty.
Then they had two kinds of sirloin! Regular sirloin, and top sirloin. I liked the regular sirloin a lot more, it was tender and delicious.
After another round or two, we were all getting pretty stuffed, but we made room for dessert:
This is their 'Dulce de Leche' crepe, a crepe filled with a Brazilian homemade custard and topped with... well, nominally it would have been an orange sauce, but they had mango today. And a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a leaf of chocolate. Delicious! I can't imagine eating one of these all by myself, but we split it four ways-- hence the spoons at the corner-- and that was perfect.
Definitely the best meal I've done for my birthday yet. :)
I picked lunch because it was cheaper, even though that meant we wouldn't get as many selections of meat. That and I figured it wouldn't be as crowded. Well, I was right about that, it really wasn't crowded.
Here, you can see the back of the dining room with sides and salad bar.
They were quick to bring my older bro and myself some appetizers. Sadly, my aunt and cousin took long enough to get there (some issues with parking, I gather) that the fried bananas-- the bottom food shown here-- got cold. However they were quite happy to bring an extra plate of them. Definitely much better warm!
The other items here are cheese bread (biscuits really) which were quite tasty, and fried polenta which were nice and savory.
The theory behind the Brazilian steakhouse is that you go and get your sides first, then come back and servers come around with skewers of meat and they will slice off portions at your request. You can specify, for example, whether you'd like some meat cut from the more rare or more well-done part of a large piece of meat.
So, here I am with a plate of mostly sides and just the first meat dish that's shown up, a relatively mild pork sausage. From bottom, working my way around the clock: a 'roulade' of some kind with prosciutto and salami. Very salty and a bit spicy! White rice, which might seem boring but it worked well with the meat as a sort of palate cleanser. Black beans with what I suspect is the same sausage, just cut up and simmered with the beans. Grilled asparagus from the salad bar.
Actually I want to talk about that last one a bit more. The asparagus were great! They were chilled, but even so they were perfectly tender, not a bit fibrous unlike the times I've attempted to cook asparagus for myself. I'll have to experiment and try to figure out how to replicate it.
The red wine steak (filet mignon? New York steak? I'm not sure) and the parmesan-crusted pork loin were the next to show up. Both seemed a little overdone, unfortunately. They were still edible, just not as tender as I would have liked.
The tines of the fork have been left in this image for scale so you can see what should have been obvious from when I saw chicken hearts mentioned in the reviews: chicken hearts are small!
They taste pretty gamy, like liver or kidney, and they seemed kind of on the tough side. I had to try this once... But having done so, I don't feel I need to have it again.
They had pork ribs, which were somewhat mild... My aunt asked for some sauce to pour on her ribs. I ate 'em straight up because I believe that meat should taste good by itself. They were pretty decent. Not terribly meaty.
Then they had two kinds of sirloin! Regular sirloin, and top sirloin. I liked the regular sirloin a lot more, it was tender and delicious.
After another round or two, we were all getting pretty stuffed, but we made room for dessert:
This is their 'Dulce de Leche' crepe, a crepe filled with a Brazilian homemade custard and topped with... well, nominally it would have been an orange sauce, but they had mango today. And a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a leaf of chocolate. Delicious! I can't imagine eating one of these all by myself, but we split it four ways-- hence the spoons at the corner-- and that was perfect.
Definitely the best meal I've done for my birthday yet. :)
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