Brazilian rodizio makes its way to Las Vegas

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2000 | 8:54 a.m.

Locations

The restaurants are:

3900 Paradise Road. 794-0700. Rodizio, $24.95.

Inside the Mirage. 791-7111. Rodizio, $28.95.

4375 Buffalo Dr. 889-4466. Rodizio, $19.95.

When a new-style restaurant comes to town, it's a concept. When it spawns, it's a trend. That's exactly what has happened with rodizio, a style of barbecue native to Brazil. Rodizio may be relatively new here, but it has been going on in Brazil for almost 500 years. That's about when the first Brazilian gauchos (cowboys) cooked their meat over coals, usually in a pit dug into the ground.

Suddenly, rodizio -- meats served sliced from skewers, usually in the all-you-can-eat form -- has become very fashionable all over the country. We've actually had it since 1987, the year Sao Paulo native Yolie Piccoli opened her Paradise Road restaurant, Yolie's Brazilian Steakhouse.

I'm seated at the bar in Yolie's on a weeknight, and the place is filled to overflowing. "I've been lucky," the jovial Yolie tells me in liltingly accented tones, "because most of my customers are regulars."

This time, a shoe convention crowd is packing the place. Yolie boasts that they come every year to eat her special brand of rodizio. At Yolie's, that means eating meats such as bacon-wrapped turkey, leg of lamb, tri-tip sirloin and Brazilian style sausage, all of which are sliced at the table and served with an array of traditional Brazilian side dishes. Yolie marinates all her meats in garlic and wine, and the taste of garlic permeates all of them. It's quite a feast.

Yolie may have gotten the concept off the ground in this town, but it is Samba Grill in the Mirage that scores a slam dunk with it. Samba Grill, designed by David Rockwell, is both splashy and colorful, without a single straight line in its architecture. Overhead there are airbrushed, forest green palm fronds made from air-brushed sheets of tin. You sit on multicolored cloth banquettes, facing an unusual bandstand done in the shape of conga drums.

One of the main reasons Samba Grill stands out is the unique background of its executive chef, Patrick Glennon. Glennon once played professional soccer, is a native of Ireland who was raised in the USA, and a man endowed with a truly adventurous spirit. He cooked in France with celebrated chefs such as Jacques Maximin and Alain Ducasse, and also in Mexico, Spain and Brazil.

The meal you eat here, prepared with the assistance of Glennon's assistant chef, Brazilian Fuad Hamden, is pure magic. First, your waiter will bring you a basket of breads; the Brazilian cheese roll called pan de queijao, a second and denser bread made from manioc (a starchy root) flour, and also the Italian country bread, ciabatta.

At the same time, you get a trio of side dishes. The first two, the Argentine garlic and oil sauce chimichurri and the chopped tomato and onion salsa that Brazilians call vinaigrette, are meant for the meats. The third, a black bean, banana and cilantro dip, is intended for the bread.

Now the feast begins. First you get what has to be one of the most delicious salads in the city, the bottomless Samba salad. It's a bowlful of Romaine lettuce, hearts of palm, garbanzo beans, chopped tomatoes, Kalamata olives, scallions, Spanish cheese and beets, but what makes it really special is the complex 30-ingredient salad dressing.

The deliciously seasoned meats come on skewers, in waves. The first three are usually turkey wrapped in bacon, beautifully blackened chicken and fat, spicy Brazilian sausages. Following that, you get an entire skewer of Parmesan encrusted grilled veggies, things such as button mushrooms, red peppers, onions, eggplant and zucchini.

On the table is a small wooden hourglass-like gadget which is red on one end and green on the other. When you want the parade to stop, you put it red end up. When ready to start eating again, you place the green end on top. Next there will be small chunks of Atlantic salmon, thinly sliced pieces of beef from a huge portion of the shoulder (picana on the menu), chunks of beef tenderloin and finally, well salted, beautifully tender pork ribs, which for me is the most delicious component of the barbecue.

On the side, there are dishes of rice, black beans, sauteed bananas, the fried manioc flour farofa that Brazilians love to sprinkle on rice and also wonderful carrots steeped in dates and apricots (a Glennon invention.) If you've left room for one of the a la carte desserts, there are terrific pastries like coconut creme brulee and a meringue covered, individual Key Lime pie, from Mirage pastry chef extrodinaire Christophe Ithurritz.

These aren't the only two places in town to eat rodizio. Out on Buffalo Drive, a new restaurant called J&J Rodizio is also making a winning impression.

This restaurant belongs to a couple of transplanted New Yorkers, John and Teri Fritz. But the heart and soul of this place is the chef, Jorge Da Silva, from Portugal, and his Brazilian wife, Fatima. Da Silva prepares all the meats, over a huge charcoal pit. His wife, meanwhile, makes the side dishes, such as the black beans, the vinaigrette salsa and the collard greens.

Da Silva is quite proud about what he does, and also extremely secretive. When I ask him what makes his rodizio special, he tells me that it is the spicing. Later, when I ask him what spices he uses to barbecue his meats, he visibly stiffens. "If I tell you that," he says, "I'll have nothing."

A meal in this earth-toned, art-filled restaurant has a character all its own. Here the side dishes include homemade potato chips as well as rice, beans, greens and farofa. The meats are all barbecued to order and brought to the table on U-shaped skewers. They are quite tender. One round is all we can manage. "Nobody has ever gone more than two rounds," Da Silva confides.

I should mention that the Mandalay Bay's rumjungle has created its' own version of rodizio, although in technical terms, it is not much like a true Brazilian rodizio but rather Caribbean in spirit.

The restaurant's GM Frank Tucker describes this food as a "creative take on traditional Braziian rodizio, incorporating South Pacific fruits like pineapple and passion fruit, island peppers, Jamaican jerk spices and rums in the marinades." Still and all, this restaurant, where customers walk through a "wall of fire," provides its own kind of fun.

The restaurants are:

* Yolie's Brazilan Steakhouse, 3900 Paradise Road. 794-0700. Rodizio, $24.95.

* Samba Grill, inside the Mirage. 791-7111. Rodizio, $28.95.

* J&J Rodizio, 4375 Buffalo Dr. 889-4466. Rodizio, $19.95.

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