Last Saturday night, Mollie and Barbara and I drove to Santa Rosa for a girls' dinner. Mollie and I had planned to celebrate our October birthdays earlier, but we were both sick and had to wait until the end of the month to do it! We also wanted to spend some good time with Barbara because she'll be leaving us at the end of this month. While we were perusing the menu, the waitress informed us the restaurant was serving rodizio de file. I've never really seen rodizio in the U.S. Basically, the waiters walk around to every table and offer different foods. You have the option to accept or decline. Some restaurants serve pizza rodizio style and others serve different cuts of beef in the same way. We've never been to a restaurant that served just filet rodizio style. We all agreed to experiment. To start, the waiter brought us salad, rice, dried breadsticks and dip, fried polenta with cheese, and drinks. Then they brought us an alfredo-type pasta. After all that, the rodizio de file began. The filet was prepared nine different ways - grilled filet, filet with pesto sauce, filet with mustard sauce, filet parmesian, filet with sauteed onions, filet with garlic and olive oil, breaded filet, California-style filet, and filet with madeira sauce (which I'm not sure how to explain). The filets were so thin and small that you could eat them in one bite, maybe two. Every time we finished off the polenta or salad, the waiter would bring more. It was a never ending feast!! They only stop bringing food when you ask them to stop. Oh, and since we're Americans, we like to eat our supper at a decent time. We were the only customers in the restaurant when they began serving at 8pm. By the time we left at 11, the place was packed!! I was thankful for the quiet atmosphere during the first hour and a half. I loved being there. It's just really neat and one of my favorite ways to eat here! I felt like I ate a whole cow!! (I also felt like a cow.) We each ordered a cafezinho, or little coffee, after dinner and let our food settle. We talked and laughed the night away. Then we all almost fell asleep, so we decided it was probably time to head home. I was the driver and I was so thankful those girls were with me to keep me awake. It's about a 45 minute drive back to Horizontina and I was so tired! The food and company were both really great! In fact, it was so good that we went again last night. Kevin and I got a babysitter for Emma and we took Mollie and Stan and Barbara back to Armezem Oito. The experience was just as good the second time!! I'm sure we'll be heading back there again soon!! We learned they serve rodizio de file every Thursday and Saturday nights! Yay.
