Churascarias
Topic: Brazil
Churascarias are restaurants and as Brazilian as they come. We found a good one in Ipanema and went there a couple of times. If it was good enough for Bono, Naomi Campbell, Magic Johnson, Ronaldo, Pele and Romario (pictured on the wall posing by the buffet), then it was good enough for us!

Basically, you pay a fixed price (very reasonable by European standards) and this entitles you to visit the buffet as many times as you like. On this buffet are really good salads, sushi and seafood. In addition to all this, guys circulate around the restaurant with skewers of different cuts of meat. They slice you off slivers of flesh with their scary looking sharp knives until you can eat no more. the name of the place translates as something like "Porkers" but despite the cheesy name, the restaurant has an old fashioned charm. The impeccable service seems almost choreographed right from the pre-dinner cocktails, to the sommelier-served wines to the dessert trolley and the drinks cabinet. It has a typical Ipanema-chic 50s style decor and is probably the only place in the world where you could drink "creme de menthe" 2005 and still look cool. Not that we did of course.