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.

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.

**Edit** Congrats to Boise State on their victory.

Since my football team wasn’t even bowl eligible, I’ve had a tough time figuring out who to root for in each bowl game this season. For tonight’s Fiesta Bowl, though, this will not be a problem. The game pits the Boise State Broncos against the TCU Horned Frogs. Although the concept of a horned frog is awesome, I will be cheering for Boise State because of their intense love of meat.

TMZ reported that the Boise State football team paid a visit to Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian restaurant known for catering to carnivorous appetites. According to TMZ, “A rep for the restaurant tells us they served 130 members of the team, who, on average, consumed between 3-4 pounds of meat per person, totaling roughly 450 pounds of beef.”

My word, that is a lot of beef. And I thought horses were herbivores.

For having a pretty damn good football team that I (surprisingly) have no problem with and eating a ton of meat, Boise State Broncos, you are true Unvegan Heroes!

And here’s a bonus video to show why else Boise State is pretty awesome.

(via TMZ)