Pampas Rodizio has a single option. An all you can eat menu for €29.90. You can choose either all you can eat fish or all you can eat meat and fish.
The meal starts with a small tapas plate, then a plate of salad, a choice of either chips or potatoes, and a small bowl of vegetables. Once you have all these on the table, the fun begins.
From this point forward, until you waddle out of the restaurant with two notches on your belt loosened off, skewers of meat and fish are brought to the table on a regular basis. The meat is sliced off the skewer in front of you and you grab it with tongs. Rodizio is a typically Brazilian way of roasting meat, gently grilling it above a charcoal fire so that it cooks slowly and retains all the juices. Pampas combines this South American cuisine with European influences in a contemporary setting.
Salmon, butterfish, rich cuts of beef, lamb, chicken, pork, scampi (prawns for the Australian readers) and sausages, continue to be brought to the table until you can’t take any more.
The cutlery is presented in a little paper wrapper that is red on the reverse side with the word ‘stop’. This means that once your plate is full of tender cuts of all the meats, and you decide you need to eat what you have on your plate before accepting any more, you simply turn the wrapper over and the arrival of food at your table is suspended.
The meat is cooked to perfection. Beautiful, soft, melt in your mouth tenderness, each with its own marinade of herbs and spices.
Then, when you can take no more meat, the server comes along with crumbed friend bananas and skewers of cooked pineapple. There is always stomach space for this.
What we noticed about this was the server was remarkably intuitive when it came to bringing more food over. Even when we had turned our knife and fork wrappers over to ‘stop’ he knew to visit on an infrequent basis just to see if he could tempt us with more tasty morsels. He could as it turns out. His timing was impeccable.
The Georgians have a word – Shemomedjamo. It means eating past the point of being full beause the food tastes so good. You will certainly want to shemomedjamo at Pampas Rodizio.
The meal was washed down with a beautiful Chilean red and a lovely Belgian beer that I have never tried before, a Corsendonck triple. There are delicious cocktails also on the menu, such as a mojito or caiperinha, made in a traditional way using fresh ingredients.
The staff were friendly and attentive, the man bringing the skewers of meat to the table was a standout amongst them.
I heartily recommend anyone who loves a good feed of meat to try this place. You won’t regret it.
Pampas Rozidio has four restaurants; two in Brussels, one in Gent and one in Antwerp. Details and reservations can be found on their website:
www.pampas.be
Photos courtesy of Pampas Facebook page.
