Eat Once Stay Full For 6 Months

What I am about to suggest may seem wrong for a website for and about broke people.  I think the restaurant I am writing about is considered '˜upscale’ and maybe even '˜expensive’.  But here is the twist.  If you eat here once, you will never have to eat again.  That is because the amount of food you will consume will keep you full ad infinitum.

Here is the scoop.  I went to this restaurant last week with my husband to celebrate'.Christmas.  Yes, I understand that was a while ago, but we hadn’t had a chance to fit in our nice '˜private’ celebration since the actual holiday.  We finally found some time to '˜make merry’ [I swear to God that is what came up in the thesaurus when I was trying to find another word for celebrate] and decided on Churrascaria Riodizio Tribeca.  My thinking was: bathing suits season will be upon us soon, so we need to have one last gorge before we need to care about what we put in our gullets.  Why not go out with a bang and eat like you have never eaten before?

This restaurant is large, and when I went, empty'which is how your stomach should be if you go there.  This was my first experience with Brazilian barbeque and boy was I in for a treat because it is ALL YOU CAN EAT.  You read me right.  Now, there are many places in NYC that tout themselves as gorge-fests'this one really is.   Basically, there is a little circular placard for each customer on each table.  One side is green and one side is red.  When you place the green side up on your table it sends the message to the servers 'œgo and bring me all the food you have.'  Red means, 'œI can’t take any more stop, please.'œ

You begin by going to a huge buffet that holds multiple side dishes.  You would think that would mean they wouldn’t bring you additional side dishes but no, they also bring other ones to your table'it defies logic in the best way.  I was warned to not fill up on the buffet so I just tried to taste a little of things.  This, first course, alone would be a meal fit for a Queen.  The real glory here, though, is the meat.  Multiple servers come around with various meats on little carts (or even on swords) from which they carve it off onto your plate.  You even get to help by using these little tongs to grab the meat as they are hacking it off for you.  I like that because it makes it feel like I am doing something to '˜earn’ the vast quantities of food I am about to consume.

They have so many kinds of meat, I can’t remember them all.  But rest assured they all melt in your mouth. I turned my card to red after consuming 12 different kinds of meat. I cant resist giving you my actual menu so as best I can remember, what follows is what I ate'

I started with a Caipirinhia to drink'then'.

Shrimp cocktail
Lentil salad
Giant bean salad
Kidney bean dish
Asparagus
Scallops & crab
Whitefish casserole
Sundried tomato risotto
Cheesy bun things
Fried polenta
Mashed potatoes
Fried bannanas
Chicken legs
Sausage
Suckling pig
Prime rib
Filet mignon wrapped in bacon
Short ribs
Big beef ribs
Lamb
Chicken breast wrapped in zuchinni
Flank steak
Rib eye
Octopus

And I rounded it out with a flourless chocolate cake.

I cannot believe I got dessert.

I ate a lot.

As much as I had eaten, though, there was plenty (including chicken hearts) that I refused. It was a fabulous meal (if you like variety) and in another year or so I would decide to try it again.  This place is, as I said, very reasonably priced'about 65 dollars a person'once you consider that you can eat once and stay full for six months.

In my personal rating system this place gets a meat volume rating of a 10.
That is a good thing.

Churrascaria Riodizio Tribeca
221 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013
[Tribeca]