Today in the final celebration of the graduation we took the lad to Fogo De Chao for lunch. He’s been wanting to go there for a long time, I’ve been avoiding it for at least as long. Fogo De Chao is Brazilian for “Lotta Meat”. And while they do some good meat dishes there, it is an awful lot of meat. To much if you ask me. Hence why I’ve been avoiding it.
But he wanted and we went and everyone had a great time.
I sort of imagined a bar graph with annual caloric intake of an average person on one axis, and countries listed in order on the other. As we started eating I could only think about how we were blowing past countries, devouring in one meal what some folks eat in day, week in some cases. We blazed through the low end of the scale; Ethiopia, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, and by the time we got to Thailand I was starting to get a wee bit full. But, persevering we kept on and the countries, they kept falling- Philippines, India,
What? Another lamb chop?
Well, if you don’t say so..
Georgia and Moldavia right there.
Bacon wrapped fillet you say.. lemmie pop a button here on the pantaloons and KaBoom- South Korea, Ukraine Poland and ironically Brazil, the “host” country itself was in our rear view mirror. After 45 minutes of cardflipping gorging we started to get to some legit first world diets. France, Italy, Great Britain.. uh… gawd it was starting to hurt. My son even slowed down, a circumstance I’d only observed once before, when got carsick on a family drive to Kentucky.
We stalled out at about Germany and Austria.. damned Teutonic bastards with their strudel and batter fried veal… Oooo wait now, are those really Brazilian style ribs you have there.. you know delicious and hairless like ribs should be.
Thank you very much, I’m here all week, try the tenderloin..there’s a bunch of it.
Beef tenderloin? Serious.. Like Allies in ‘45 we carved up the hunnish states and set our eyes on the prize, the big boy.. could we eat an entire days caloric input of the biggest eaters on the planet, the good old United States of America.
I know the consequences, hell I was sitting across from my Mother In Law, the healthiest person I know, she know the impact, calories and carbon footprint of everything she puts in her mouth. Even she was a bit taken a back, muttering something about if Augusta National was made of wheatgrass there wouldn’t be enough to counter this meal…
She was particularly intrigued, as was I, buy the table of Chinese businessmen next to us. They were doing a layering thing, trip to the salad bar, 3 servings of meat, another trip to the salad bar, more meat, green, meat, green, meat, about 8 times. Made me sick to even think of it.
Speaking of sick
I was really getting to critical mass now and I was pretty sure my density was now capable of generating it’s own gravitational field. I was tempted to toss a fork in the air and see if it fell into me. That, would be a neat trick.
I didn’t think we could make it to the US. And like Jeffery Goldbloom in Jurassic Park I began to question the wisdom of this whole affair. “They only asked ‘could we’, no asked ‘should we’”.
My Mother in Law was sitting across from me and I started to think she might need some safety goggles as she was in a direct line should the oxford cloth button down shirt I was wearing, strained and starting to tear under the tension of pounds of animal flesh in my belly, well, if that thing burst and sent a line of buttons her way it would put an eye out easy sneazy.
We were so close.. so damned close.. but
Couldn’t do it. Gawd was I feeling not so hot. All that meat festering in my gut was taking it’s toll. I felt like the lion who needed a 3 day nap after eating a gazelle. And while I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat a gazelle, I did eat a pig, lamb, cow, chicken and something else I couldn’t identify, Harp Seal I’m guessing.
I started to wonder if this place offered colonoscopy coupons ‘cause I’m thinking I’d set my digestive health back 20 years. Only able to breath through my mouth and a bit light headed as all the blood in my body headed to my stomach.. sadly I turned my card over to red. NO MAS… I was done.
The gaucho’s caring three different kind of roasted animal on skewers, who only seconds ago were lined up at the table to shave off slices of glistening fire roasted goodness looked at me with some disgust. “No more sir?”
As if my sweaty forehead didn’t give me away, the belch that accidently escaped my lips like goose call blown under water did, and just like that they put down the knives and walked away.
The Brazilian meat orgy was over.
All I could say was “uhhh”. Seriously. “Uhhh” and “might need a bucket.”
We were so close.. then waiter came by with the desert menu.. “No”,
“sir, take a peek”..
“No, I’m stuffed”
“just a mint sir..”
Oh Ok..
And then I remembered, and just like that the roof opened and a ray of light came down out of the heavens, and shone on my son and I. I remembered my mantra in every Mexican restaurant I’ve eaten at the last 30 years.
Remember kids, like Sank says.. “there’s always room for flan”.
Wednesday’s menu was a mixed green salad, a very interesting chicken confit with bacon bits, brussels sprouts, lima beans, and sun dried tomatoes and covered in garlic butter. Dessert was a fresh backed chocolate cookie with a salty carmel ice cream.
First of all let me go on record as say that up until that night I’d never meet a lima bean that I liked, nor that I would eat on purpose. In my experience lima beans are nasty soft green things that truly make me gag. Add in brussels sprouts and you’d see me eating something that would make my mother fall over dead. All stuff I’ve been known to hate. (Hmmm maybe I’ll more of that stuff it helps.. never mind)
