What do you do when combine Chipotle and Brazilian food in the city of Denver? Apparently a spot called Five on Black. It has the element of walking down the line to make an order, puts it all in a bowl instead of tortillas. Seeing as I and the world seem pretty bored of Chipotle these days, this seemed like a nice change of pace.

I picked a base of white rice, then topped it with steak, feijaoda (a special stew with beef, bacon sausage, black beans and a ton of flavors that they gave me for free because it was my first time), spicy coconut sauce, more black beans, lime, chimichurri and cilantro. I also snagged a pao de queijo (cheese bread) for good measure. And let me tell you, it was all good measured. The flavors all worked in holy harmony to make me one very happy unvegan. The meat was cooked nice and tender, while the coconut sauce added a nice hot kick that was perfectly buffered by the black beans. If I had to do it all again, I’d be hard-pressed to pick something different. And that’s not because of a lack of options, but simply because I kinda nailed it on this first try.

Five on Black is anything but boring, and the kind of place I wish was right down the street from my office, as opposed to simply being right down the street from a hotel I’m in for a business trip.

I have a confession and this may come as a surprise to all of you: I love Brazilian BBQ. Yes, I know it’s shocking that a menagerie of meat such as Brazilian BBQ could be one of my loves, but it’s true. Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy love. Firstly, it ain’t cheap like Korean BBQ, which is equally meaty. Secondly, I can’t go without eating an insane amount of food. Sorry, it’s just how I work at such things, which means my body usually needs a fair amount of recovery time before going back. But, when I saw a sweet Travelzoo deal for Libra in Culver City, at least my first problem with Brazilian BBQ was taken care of.

Upon entering, we were immediately seated and our head waiter came by to see if we knew the ways of churrascaria. We assured him that we did and set out to peruse the salad bar. This thing was vast and had surprising options like mac and cheese to go with the more typical items like yucca and beans. Per my usual, I avoided the entire salad bar (save for a little cheese and salami) as I planned on filling up completely on meat.

I shan’t get into each individual meat we were offered, but I will certainly highlight a few. In fact, one of the first things we were served turned out to be one of the best – garlic beef. This stuff was perfectly cooked to a medium rare and had just the right amount of garlic to add flavor but not so much to frighten off the ladies/vampires.

Another highlight was their picanha steak. As with every other churrascaria I’ve been to, the waiters referred to this as the house special and as always it really was special. I don’t know what they do with it other than lightly season it with salt, but it was as good as I expected it to be and I definitely went back for seconds.

One thing that was surprisingly good was their smoked sausage. This stuff just melted in my mouth and was packed with smokey awesome flavor (insert sexual innuendo here). It was sliced super thin (end sexual innuendo here) and completely blew away the other sausage offering, which was the Brazilian sausage. I tend to think based on the restaurant we were at that both sausages were Brazilian, but this full, unsliced Brazilian sausage was a poor comparison to the smoked.

I could go on about the chicken hearts, lamb chops, pork ribs and beef ribs, but that would be pretty long-winded. Just know that pretty much everything was awesome. Yet, one of the most awesome things of all wasn’t meat at all. It was their grilled pineapple, which I experienced for the first time at M Grill. Here at Libra, it was no less amazing. Sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and packed full of pineapple juice, my taste buds jumped for joy.

Oh, and I won’t forget about the salad bar, in which I certainly saved room to dabble. The best thing I found over there was a pan full of chicken adobo. Chicken adobo is a big deal in just about every Latin-influenced county and interestingly enough they all taste different. And also interesting is that they are all delicious. This stuff had a great taste to it and was just moist, tender and delectable.

Finally, the Travelzoo deal included a dessert and we opted for the berry meringue. This was a wise choice because it was not only light, but also worthy in taste. The strawberries and blueberries were fresh and perfectly ripe, while the whipped cream was simple, unsweetened and a perfect companion to the meringue. It was a great way to wrap the meal up.

In closing, go to Libra. If you eat meat, you won’t regret it. If you don’t eat meat, one sweet look at the waiters’ skewers will convert you. Plus, even the regular price of the place is a whole lot cheaper than a lot of churrascarias.

Occupying the courtyard that formerly contained NoHo Royal Garden is a place called Rain Forest Cafe. While I’m not sure how they were able to get away with using that name, I do know that the rain forest referred to is that of Brazil, so it should definitely not be confused with the more mainstream Rainforest Cafe. Claiming to be a Brazilian Churrascaria, I was certainly interested in what would be offered.

In front of the place, the $12.95 lunch buffet is advertised, but inside only one table is taken and there are no people walking around with skewers of meat. This was definitely going to be a different kind of churrascaria. Tentatively, we sat down and were greeted by the friendly face of the new proprietor. He told us that it was a buffet and pointed to a sad-looking table with heated aluminum pans and a couple of crock pots. Note to sir: that is not what you call a buffet. That is what you call cooking a couple things and putting them out on a table. Buffet-style…maybe…but that’s it.

We took our plates and wandered over to the “buffet” table to see what they offered. What we found was a bit disappointing. There were three main dishes. The first was a variety of terrible vegetables like broccoli. I quickly moved on to the next one, which seemed to be a chicken dish, but also with a bunch of vegetables. I tried to scoop out the meaty parts to give them a whirl and then moved onto the third and final option, which was little smoky sausages and potatoes. Finally something unvegan-worthy in this “churrascaria.” But wait, there’s more, there were some sort of beef stroganoff noodles (without the beef), rice, vegetable soup, bean soup and then there was my personal favorite: an entire spread of Middle-Eastern sides like tabouli, hummus, and more. Clearly the place still hadn’t lost the Middle-Eastern roots of its last restaurant.

The chicken ended up being decent, but the real highlight was the smokies and potatoes. The potatoes were nicely cooked through and seasoned, while the sausages were a little bit spicy, but nothing to worry about even for the most sensitive. The bean soup was quite plain and the hummus was pretty good except that all we could dip in it were some stale dinner rolls.

So wow, what a disappointment. I’ve eaten much worse food, but this was just not the type of place I’d been expecting. It felt like I was eating an okay meal at someone’s Super Bowl party, but instead I was stuck forking over 12.95 for a place masquerading as a Brazilian Churrascaria buffet. Well, at least the owner was friendly.

Thanks to @DanJacobs81 for the guest blog. Follow him today!

Meat is a religion, and M Grill in Koreatown is the reason I’m anti-Semitic against vegetarians.

A friend of mine had an e-mailed discount from Yelp.com, and with this firmly entrenched in his soon-to-smell-like-meat hands, I went with him and another friend to the aforementioned all-you-can-eat Brazilian churrascaria. Authentic Brazilian food in K-Town? This I had to see taste.

For those who’ve never been to meat heaven, a churrascaria is a Brazilian-style meat buffet where waiters bring out long skewers of meat to shave off and slap on your plate. Over the course of the night, about 15 different cuts of cow, pig and chicken, all cooked and deliciously seasoned, will be brought to your table. That’s right, a buffet that comes to you. God bless Amer…Brazil.

M Grill was quietly tucked away on the second floor of a tiny strip mall in Koreatown on Wilshire Blvd. and St. Andrews, behind a giant chocolate brown door with the letter M on it. We were seated immediately, thanks to our 7 p.m. reservation, and the U-shaped eating area was barely a quarter full. This would change very quickly throughout the night. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who knew about this hidden beacon of Brazilian meat in a sea of Hangul.

The waiter came over, and we gave him 3 fingers, the universal signal for “we don’t care about the specials, just keep the hot meat flowin’!” He must have liked our swagger, because the first cut came out a few minutes later.

In life, when intense events happen, it’s common to only remember what happened, not the order of events. When eating traumatic amounts of beautiful meat, I can’t tell you what we got first, second or even last. I can only tell you that each slice we got was a fork-full of deliciousness.

Their house special is picanha, which is the cap piece of top sirloin. Please allow me to say “OMFG,” as it was so hearty and succulent that I’ve been reduced to the vernacular of a Gossip Girl. These tender slices required some intense tong use as the waiters sliced away thin slices of awesomeness.

The bone-in beef ribs, which are called costelao, were so moist and juicy that they practically fell off the bone – everything a well-made rib should do. These take 6 hours to roast, and I’ll happily spend a quarter of my day in a waiting room reading Highlights Magazine if it means I can have them again.

Filet mignon, perhaps the highest quality cut on the cow, left little to be desired. It was so soft that these chunks of cow just melted in our mouths. We needed at least two more rounds of this because the filet was just so scrumptious.

The waiter must have really liked our swagger, because midway through our meat-fest he simply came over and asked us if we liked lamb chops. And lamb chops aren’t even on their regular buffet menu. These had the right amount of smoky char cooked into them, and because they were a little rough, they pleasantly reminded me that our dear Lord gave us our canine teeth for a reason.

The chicken thigh was probably the weak link in terms of quality. Thighs tend to be the fattiest piece of the chicken, and while the skin was good, I have never really been a fan of this piece, Brazilian or otherwise. We turned down our waiter when he brought thighs out again.

What we didn’t turn down, however, was the garlic beef, which were circular cutlets that were marinated in the one ingredient you can never have enough of. I believe my compadres had two more rounds of this throughout the night.

M Grill also serves Brazilian sausage and smoked Polish sausage. Both were excellent, however, I would only recommend ordering them if you really like sausage – I didn’t taste any seasonings that would have made the Brazilian sausage truly unique, and to be honest, it was a little soft. The Polish, though, was perfectly cooked and way juicy.

One surprise that I would highly recommend to the pork-guzzling unvegans was marinated chicken wrapped in bacon. Each piece was about the size of a racquetball, and if you like pork, and you like chicken, but have always complained about the lack of chicken that tastes like bacon, M Grill might be your new hangout.

Another surprise was grilled pineapple covered in cinnamon and sugar. Much like the other carnivorous options presented by our waiter, the pineapple is sliced off and put on your plate. One detail I noticed was that the juices stayed inside the pineapple slice, so when the slices were cut off, and even when it was put on the plate, juices didn’t drip everywhere. The result was uh-MAZING juicy pineapple . It was so sweet, it almost could have passed for dessert, and the cinnamon/sugar/citrus combination was a welcomed palate cleanser based on what we’d devoured thus far.

While engorging in meat, there is a fine line between “too much meat” and “waaaay too much meat.” Thanks to the great service and attentiveness of the wait staff, we fell in the latter category. At Fogo de Chao (the gold standard of Los Angeles churrascarias), the staff was equally attentive, but due to how busy and large that place is, they always seemed in a rush to answer questions we had about the food. M Grill was probably about a quarter of the size, so with a more intimate setting, the waiters were primed to talk meat.

Because one cannot live on meat alone – though this unvegan has certainly tried – we paid some credence to the salad bar, if only a little. The most foolish diner at the table got an actual salad with lettuce, carrots, crumbled blue cheese and grown up adult vegetables like beets. The rest of us got local Brazilian cuisine for our sides. Mashed yucca was like the illegitimate love child of mashed potatoes and grits – creamy in texture but with ground -up chunks of yucca. The fried plantains were about the size of a pinky finger – Kirstie Alley’s pinky, not yours or mine – and sweet enough to be a dessert, especially if you added some ice cream. Perhaps a new dessert would be fried plantains a la mode?

Ultimately, M Grill is a great value based on the price. At $39.99, the buffet includes an awkward amount of succulent meat, and the salad bar. By comparison, Fogo de Chao is $65 for the same deal. Full disclosure – my one experience at Fogo was during Dine L.A., so I paid $45 for the buffet, salad bar and dessert. M Grill was paid for partially on a Yelp discount, so with tip, the meal cost $32. But sticking to the true value, based on retail pricing, while Fogo has a wider variety of buffet meats, a bigger salad bar and a trendier ambience, the extra 25 bucks just isn’t worth it. Next time I’m choosing between the two, M Grill in K-Town, is my choice for a protein overdose.

Once in every generation, a great new idea is unleashed upon the world. The steam engine. The printing press. Penicillin. All-you-can-eat Brazilian pizza. That’s right, that list of great ideas now has company and it comes in the form of Bella Vista, a somewhat new restaurant in Culver City. As if combining the awesomeness of Brazilian food with phenomenon of pizza wasn’t enough, Bella Vista took the combination one step further by offering it rodizio-style, which is basically the Brazilian version of a buffet, but with the added bonus that the food is brought to you, rather than forcing you to do actual work. Oh and all that only costs $12.99.

Throughout the dinner, I experienced some pizza I had never seen before in my life and all devoid of tomato sauce. So here’s the breakdown of what I found to be awesome. First off was any pizza that used a cheese called catupiry. This creamy Brazilian cheese added a dimension of taste to any pizza it touched that was sort of like goat cheese, but with a grainier and stickier texture. A Bella Vista, this delicious cheese could be found on the Frango com Catupiry and 4 Cheese pizzas. Frango com Catupiry also had chicken and corn, making it a pretty interesting combo you wouldn’t find in any ordinary pizza place. The 4 Cheese was what you would expect from any 4 cheese pizza, except that in addition to the more normal mozzarella, parmesan and provolone cheese, catupiry was there to make it uniquely Brazilian.

But catupiry wasn’t all that made this place special. They also had a crazy Stroganoff pizza, which is exactly how it sounds. Yes, literally beef stroganoff on pizza and topped with mini potato sticks. It wasn’t the easiest thing to eat, but it sure tasted good. There was also their Alho Frito pizza, which is just a fancy Portuguese way of saying fried garlic. It was also quite good.

There were definitely some pizzas that weren’t quite built for an unvegan, but needed some tasting, such as the Calabreza pizza. This had calabreza smoked sausage mozzarella cheese and onions. In order to eat this, I had to pick out the onions, but it was worth it to give that sausage a whirl.

Finally, as things were winding down at the restaurant and we seemed to be the last table standing, our lovely waitress came out to ask us if we wanted anything more. We did, and she said she would have the kitchen make us a pizza just out of the types we wanted. Not surprisingly, I opted for the Meat Lovers pizza. It was made with pepperoni, Brazilian sausage, salami and ham. When it did finally come, I found it was actually the most disappointing pizza of the night. Was it bad? No, in fact it was really good, but it just didn’t blow my mind and taste buds like all the unique pizzas I had already eaten that night. If I want a Meat Lovers pizza I can just go to regular pizza place, but at Bella Vista there was no need to waste stomach space on such an ordinary pizza.

But that was not the end of my eating. After the Meat Lovers came it was time for dessert. And what a dessert it was. First off, I tried out the Banana com Calnela pizza. Covered in creamy mozzarella, bananas and cinnamon, this pizza alone would have been enough to close out my meal. Yet, there were still two other dessert pizzas. The second was called Romeu e Julieat, which used guava paste as a sort of sauce underneath a mild mozzarella for a delicious balance. Last, but not least, came the Brigadeiro com Morango. Essentially it was a strawberry and chocolate pizza. It was topped with real strawberries, a chocolate and condensed milk sauce and chocolate sprinkles. It was like the perfect trifecta of dessert pizzas and has probably spoiled me for all kinds of dessert pies in the near future.

Before paying our bill, we even got the chance to chat with Marcelo, the owner of the place. He explained about the freshness of the ingredients and just how much better his pizza was than your average pizza. Normally I would take comments like that with a grain of salt, but considering how amazing the meal had been, it was hard to argue against him.

Ever since beginning my meat blog, Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills has been in my sights. I’ve eaten Brazilian food before, but I have been told over and over again that Fogo is the king of meatiness. But it’s expensive. Like a fixed price of $56.50 expensive. But when Restaurant Week comes to town, that ridicu-price drops down to a more reasonable $44 bucks, including dessert. So for my first Fogo experience, I made sure to go during Restaurant Week and was amazed with what that price bought me.

Fogo de Chao boasts a selection of 15 different meats. This doesn’t mean 15 different animals, but 15 different cuts of meat from 4 different animals. The animals are pork, chicken, beef and lamb and the cuts are called picanha (top sirloin with garlic or just regular seasoning), filet mignon, beef ancho (rib eye), alcatra (more top sirloin), fraldinha (bottom sirloin), costela (beef ribs with garlic), lamb chops, leg of lamb, bacon-wrapped chicken, chicken drumsticks, costela de porco (pork ribs), lombo (pork loin crusted with paremesan), linguica (sausage) and finally bacon-wrapped filet. Wow, that’s a lot of meat.

But before I get to my own meat-eating, I’d like to talk about Fogo’s attempt to trick customers. You see, they have a huge salad bar and it’s not your average unvegan unfriendly salad bar. Sure, there is lettuce, but there is also bacon, cheese, bread and delicious-looking cold cuts. I avoided this area at all costs and figured I would pay it a visit in case I had stomach room after consuming my weight in meat. They also try to distract you with starchy sides like mashed potatoes, fried polenta, fried plantains and cheese-stuffed rolls. Fortunately I have an iron will and managed to avoid these until after the meat as well.

Now, the Brazilian Churrascaria is no ordinary buffet. Instead of doing your own work, people come around with skewers of meat to slice off for you. Buy how do they know you want food? Great question! Every diner is given a coaster-shaped disc with green on one side and red on the other. If the green side is up, the food comes. If red is up, the food stops. There is no yellow, so when it rains meat, it pours meat.

Honestly, I can’t get into each individual meat. Partially because I don’t have enough room to write, but also because at some point the meats begin to blur together. Overall, I ate 14 of the 15. Yes, somehow the garlic picanha escaped me, which is a shame because the picanha was my favorite cut. It was moist, tender, juicy and flavorful. In sure a lot of the flavor came from the huge layer of fat surrounding the thing and for that I was happy. They call it the house special, and with good reason. The filet was also delicious and I surprisingly found the bacon-wrapped chicken to be better than the bacon-wrapped filet. The flavors just seemed to work much better together.

The beef ribs were tasty and the pork ribs fell right off the bone and into my mouth. The assorted sirloins were decent, but seemed like a waste of space compared to the picanha and filet. The same went for the lamb and sausage. They weren’t bad. Really nothing was bad, but I only had so much stomach space and wanted to fill it with something better. About midway through, the meat gave me the dizzies, but I rallied and finished with a stomach stuffed with meaty deliciousness. I even had a little space to offer to the sides. Each of them were tasty, but I was glad I had concentrated on the meat instead.

The dessert was pretty good, but I honestly couldn’t be a very good judge at that point. I ordered the key lime pie and also tried the cheese cake. The cheese cake was better, but again at that point in the meal, my tastebuds were so savory that any sweetness tasted like it came from a different planet.

In the end, I was one full and happy unvegan. Fogo de Chao is truly a meat-lovers paradise, as long as you are a meat lover that can afford it. Restaurant Week is definitely the time of year to do it, because even though it only comes twice a year, it would be pretty tough (and too delicious) to handle Fogo de Chao more than that.

As a child, going to a food court to eat was just about the greatest thing to do. I could get fries with a taco, maybe throw a slice of pizza on there and top it all off with a root beer float. Sure, it wasn’t a healthy place, but I was a growing boy. Most food courts have lost their allure since then, but the new food truck craze has given my old love of food courts a grown-up spin. Apparently the Miracle Mile loads up with food trucks during lunch, so when I was finally able to get there, I wanted to take advantage. A few trucks that I had been to before were there, along with a regular taco truck that was either reaping the benefits of these newbies or losing a lot of business to shiny and newer trucks. For the first part of my modern food court meal, I decided to try out Bool BBQ.

A long time ago, I had written off Bool BBQ as a Kogi BBQ imitator (both have a four-letter, foreign-sounding word followed by BBQ), and the truth is that they really do have some dishes similar Kogi. Yet, at this point, it’s like calling Burger King a McDonald’s imitator. Plus, they have made their menu unique by getting a little Brazilian and offering pastels. These looked the most interesting to me and apparently they were each a handmade shell filled with cheese and a meat choice. This veggie-free dish sounded too good to be true, so I ordered one with chicken.

Since it was handmade, it took a little while to cook, but when it was done, it looked pretty awesome, like a crispy pillow of Brazilian joy. It came with pico de gallo and a spicy aioli. I tossed the pico aside and delved into this Brazilian pastry. The shell had a tiny bit of sweetness and a soft crunch (how’s that for an oxymoron?!). Inside, the cheese and chicken were strewn about, but I was a little disappointed that there was so little inside. Alone, the pastel didn’t have a ton of flavor, but with the spicy aioli, it tasted pretty great.

This pastel was a great idea and had there been more meat and cheese, I would have liked it even more. It was a little expensive at 4 bucks, considering it wasn’t terribly filling, however, I was happy it wasn’t so filling when I moved on to another food truck for the second part of my lunch. Check back tomorrow to read about that…

Going to Bossa Nova is not the easiest dining experience around. This is nothing of their fault. I’ve never had any trouble getting a table or getting good service. Rather, it is the difficulty in deciding what to get from their textbook of a menu.

The possibilities are almost limitless, ranging from sandwiches to pizza to pasta to steak. And somehow this is a Brazilian restaurant. With so many options, they manage to have a good amount of unvegan food.

Since I was at a Brazilian restaurant, I decided to get the Picanha Steak. It is a special Brazilian cut that has never let me down. It comes from the “Hot from Bossa Nova Grill” section, meaning I also get plantains, rice, beans, yucca flour and salsa. Not bad for $15.99.

When my plate came, it looked almost perfect. There was a strange green (parsley?) garnish on my rice that could be easily removed and the salsa was actually more like pico de gallo, but that could also be easily avoided. I cut into the steak and it tasted like grilled bliss. The best part was that I knew I didn’t have to finish the steak so fast, since I could keep myself occupied by rice and beans in-between steak bites. I was, however, a bit confused by the yucca flour.   I tried rubbing some on my steak, which helped enhance the flavor. I also thought it might make a nice addition to the beans, which were a bit waterier than I prefer. It also made those taste better. Perhaps yucca flour is the miracle condiment that I’ve never discovered. Next time I’ll have to see how it tastes with fries.

In all, Bossa Nova gave a me a great meal and filled me all the way up. Next time I want a great steak (or really any variety of food that they offer), I’ll be sure to pay them another visit.

Cafe Brasil is one of those restaurants that has always been elusive to me. I have driven or walked past it in Palms countless times, but never gotten up the courage to step inside.

Never more.

I finally took the plunge and stepped into the Cafe. At first I was confused by the place. There are three different seating areas. One is inside, one is semi-outside, and one is for real outside. I found a table in the semi-outside, but then realized I had to order at a counter. Ordering at a counter always puts a lot of pressure on the consumer, especially if they don’t know what they are going to order. Under this deep pressure, I went with every unvegan’s default choice, steak.

The steak was said to come with rice, salsa, black beans, fried plantains and a choice of soup or salad. Ah yes, soup or salad, the unvegan ethical dilemma. Both have roots deep in the heart of vegetables (unless it’s something like chicken soup or egg salad), yet how can someone turn down food if they are paying for it? This is the unvegan catch-22 and there is no right answer.

My number was eventually called and I went to pick up my steak at the counter. On top of the steak, I found a disappointing surprise. Onions! The menu had said nothing about onions, yet there they were, right before my eyes, suffocating my steak. If you’re going to violate my steak with onions, at least have the decency to warn me ahead of time. I angrily scraped them all off and finally began eating. It was a good size and was pretty tasty, as were the rice and beans. The plantains were a little dry, but good nonetheless. All that was left was the salsa, which was pretty much just a sad-looking dump of tomatoes, onions and green things. The “salsa” would remain untouched as I neatly cleaned up the rest of my plate.