Beeeef!

Saturday night we ate at a Brazilian restaurant in Philly, I can't pronounce it and can spell it even less. Something like Fogo de Chau. We set off on our outing, the eight of us, with big ambitions. The men hadn't eaten anything ALL DAY, to save room for the meat. I guess they don't know that will make their stomach shrink and have less room to eat. Not me! I had my lovely liquid lunch and breakfast, and three snack bars. I was ready!
We took the recommended exit, onto Broad Street. And then we followed it alllll the way down. The road ends at a circle, our street was the last one before the circle. Broad has approximately a thousand red lights, and we hit each and every one of them. Z was having a fit. We had a reservation for 7:00 pm, and ended up being a few minutes late. Thank goodness for valet parking. I reluctantly handed over my keys, received my ticket and we headed in.
We were seated right away. A man came over and explained the rules - two courses, salad and MEAT. Salad we could have any time we wanted, and we could eat our fill. When we were ready for meat, all we needed to do was to flip over the coaster on the table over to the "green" side. Green means bring on the meat, red means no thank you. Salad bar was delicious, a meal in itself, which I'm sure is their plan. I've never seen smoked salmon at a salad bar before. Truth be told, I hope to never again, since I hate seafood.
Once we had indulged in as much lettuce (in my case) as we could, we decided to brave it and flip over to the green side. It probably took a good ten seconds before the first meat man showed up. And then they just kept coming. There was a filet, bacon wrapped chicken, top sirloin, parmesan pork (my favorite), linguica, sausage, oh my! I think there were twelve different meats in all. Each was carried around in circles by men with knives, who would cut off a piece right at the table for you. Each of us had little tongs that we would grab the food with, once it was cut. The different meats were cooked different on each side, so we could specify how we wanted it cooked, and still be served immediately.
Once we were groaning and bursting with food, they came around again to see who wanted dessert. The girls out there know there is always room for dessert, the guys do not save room. Ever. But we did it, and were glad we did!