Grills of Brazil

By Paul Reidinger

'ESPETUS' means "skewer" in Portuguese, which is of course the language not just of Portugal but also of Brazil, a onetime Portuguese colony that seems to have established something of a (restaurant) colony of its own around the turbulent confluence of Market, Gough, and Franklin Streets. The latest addition to that colony is Espetus, which opened at the turn of the year in the space that had been Piyassa and, before that, Piaf's.

"Espetus" is not the loveliest of terms. It reminds me, for some reason, of "speculum," which is a terrifying article used by doctors. But, verbal aesthetics aside, Espetus isn't kidding about the skewers. Espetus is all about skewers. And we're not talking about the dainty bamboo kind you thread with sea scallops, or the only slightly more robust sort (usually of stainless steel) you might use for grilling cubes of meat kabob-style on the old barbie. Espetus's skewers are practically swords – several feet long, a handle on one end and a point on the other, laced with meats of various kinds that are rushed hot to your table by men in frilly pants who slice to order.

Yes, meat is the matter at hand, and vegetarians might as well stop reading at this point. For Espetus is a churrascaria, a Brazilian grill. It must be said that there are plenty of meatless items in the buffet at the back of the restaurant – including pasta salad, dilled potatoes, stewed chickpeas, crudités of broccoli and cauliflower, Spanish rice, sautéed corn with red peppers, tomatoes with mozzarella, and stuffed peppers, along with such carnal, or semi-carnal, delights as tuna-fish salad, poached salmon (flawless), and paella with scallops, shrimp, and sausage – but despite their variety and their all-you-can-eat abundance, they serve in a supporting role only (and are not grilled.) The meat is the thing, and once you spin the little cardboard dial in the middle of your table from red to green, the flesh starts coming and doesn't stop until you dial back to red, and maybe not then.

What sort of meats? I want to say "every sort," but that would be inaccurate, since there is no mutton or goat. I could say "every grillable sort," but that wouldn't be quite accurate either, since I would judge the cubes of grilled turkey to be not truly grillable and thus not a success; they were dry and a bit tough despite being wrapped in strips of bacon to preserve juiciness. The pork loin too suffered from some dessication, though it was tasty. And the prawns had passed through their ideal phase of bursting plumpness to an overcooked squishiness one associates with overripe fruit.

But even the less-than-perfect stuff isn't bad, and the good stuff is absolutely grand. Home grillers will be reassured, and not at all surprised, to learn that the great stars of the skewer at Espetus are those hardy old foot soldiers beef and chicken. Beef makes several changes of costume, appearing as sirloin, top sirloin, and what the server called "roast beef," which we understood to be boneless rib roast; it fell from the skewer in delicate, rose-red slices. But no matter the guise, the meat is tender, juicy, flavorful. It takes considerable skill, of a very dark sort, to cook beef unacceptably.

Then there is chicken, which we brutally underrate: it is cheap, it is boring, it is food for the marginally destitute or for those who don't know how to cook or for people in restaurants who can't decide what they really want. In fact few foods (other than fish) respond quite so passionately to the grill's smoky kiss; the bird's skin turns a crispy gold, while the meat (perfumed with oregano) remains moist and firm. When you have a piece of simply grilled chicken, as at Espetus, it is bound to occur to you sooner or later – and quite likely sooner – that the American habit of smothering grilled chicken in barbecue sauce is not merely gratuitous but offensive.

If grilled lamb doesn't seem quite so spectacular as grilled chicken, it is only because lamb doesn't have to come from quite so far behind in our esteem. Lamb, like it nor not, has an exotic gravitas all its own, and it does well roasted, stewed, or even ground up into burgers. But it too has a thing for the grill, whose smoke mutes and makes sweetly complex the flesh's gamy forwardness. And, like beef, lamb does very nicely indeed with a short turn over the coals, which leaves it medium rare or just rare.

Pricing at Espetus is simple enough to give a thrill to even the most unreconstructed of flat-taxers. You pay either $11.95 or $18.95 for lunch (the former brings you a house-made pork sausage, a piece of chicken, and one of pork loin – plenty if you plan to go back to work; the latter, more), and either $28.95 or $34.95 for dinner, depending on whether it's a weekday or a weekend. That is not cheap, but if you are ravenous and haven't had your share of meat in a while (as I hadn't), it can turn out to be a reasonable deal.