Churrascaria.

Yesterday was Chris' birthday! If you don't already know us, you'll find that one of our favorite things to do is eat. So, it was only natural that I plan a week full of good eating for him. I was super excited because I planned a babysitter for two nights this week. We don't get to go out by ourselves much anymore, so I figured two nights in one week would be a real treat (along with the new iPod he very subtley requested).

Another widely known fact about us is that we are very much creatures of habit. We generally eat at a few select places. Some of them an awful lot. But, on a whim... We decided to try something different last night. Everyone is going to think I'm a unsatisfiable patron or something. My past 2 posts have been about bad customer service experiences, and here I go again...

A couple years ago, we were on vacation in Dallas, TX and tried a Texas de Brazil Churrascaria restaurant. It was absolutely incredible. How often do you get to sit at a table while people come around and slice off pieces of perfectly cooked filet mignon, lamb, pork, etc. And they had the most incredible salad bar -- and I don't even eat salad! We recently found out about another Churrascaria restaurant in our area, so we decided to give it a go last night. $40 a plate later, we were very disappointed. It's a locally owned restaurant and it was no where near the caliber of Texas de Brazil. All the meats we received were extremely rare. Not a huge deal if you like rare cooked red meat. But, when even the bacon wrapped turkey is cold and uncooked in the middle, that's a little too rare. There were no vegetable side dishes, only rice and mashed potatoes. We had to wait forever for people to come to our table to bring us meats and it seemed they were running very short on most of the selections. In the end, it probably would have been a decent meal for $15 a plate.

Oh, well.. at least Friday night we'll go back to one of our tried and true favorites - The Melting Pot. Melted cheese, melted chocolate and cheesecake... Mmmm.