Apparently, it's a bad idea to try to jump-start a Toyota Prius, unless you're an expert. So after waiting almost an hour for roadside assistance to show up and, possibly, revive my dinner companion's car, I decide to bail and head out on my own. Problem is, it's February 13, and restaurants are already filling up with proactive couples seeking a premature Valentine's Day experience.
Which leaves me to ponder what types of restaurants might be unromantic enough to be relatively free of passionate canoodling. Not only do I want a table without a wait, the thought of all those couples struggling for conversation leaves me cringing in sympathy. I want to steer clear, so I head for Boizao Steakhouse.
All the meat should keep Valentine's lovers away, I figure. The meat combined with the all-you-can eat format. And those exceedingly sharp knives and skewers. Piercing, gorging and cutting might intrigue some of our more alternative couples, but most of the Bay area's Valentines are after a tamer experience, I expect.
Boizao is a churrascaria, one of the new breed of Brazilian-style steakhouses where servers parade through the dining room, stopping to carve meat from gigantic metal spits right onto your plate. At its best, churrascaria makes you wonder why you'd ever want to visit another Outback. At its worst, churrascaria is just another way to consume mass quantities with little gustatory pleasure. Somewhere in between, you'll find Boizao.
I've been single-minded when it comes to describing the menu at Boizao because, well, there's no reason to pay $41 for the salad bar. I'm not knocking it. You do need roughage to ease the marathon of salt and flesh down your gullet, and what are you going to eat while waiting for the next meat-man to find your table?
On that buffet line you'll find an assortment of pasta salads, marinated veggies and cheeses, as well as the usual suspects required for any buffet that aspires to high-end cred: smoked salmon and prosciutto, shellfish arrayed in intricate patterns, cured meats. There's even an entire wheel of Parmigiana Reggiano hollowed out and refilled with crumbled bits of the fabled cheese. Boizao's buffet line is just good enough to serve as a between-meat distraction. If you have any time between meats to be distracted, that is.
Churrascaria restaurants traditionally provide you with a disc that sits on the table and lets the wandering meat-men know whether or not to pester you with another slice of sirloin or beef rib. At Boizao, it's color-coded green on one side, an invitation that will be met every two minutes by a Brazilian bearing a skewer, or red, which is supposed to tell them "no more right now." Here, though, the servers typically regard red with disdain or outright scorn.
All night I'm faced with a pile of meat in front of me and a continuous chorus of "excuse me, sir" and "filet, sir?" in blatant disregard of my red disc. I'm not sure if these guys are blind, obsessed with filling out the diners' scrawny frames or merely interested in gorging patrons as quickly as possible in order to cycle the tables. Turn and burn becomes stuff and turn? After a while, it starts to make me feel like I'm being fattened up for some nefarious purpose.
The real problem, though, is that I'm moving through the meat too slowly. Each visit by a new cut of meat is met with giddy excitement that quickly becomes tinged by mild disappointment.
Chicken is oddly spongy and doused in an overwhelming garlic seasoning. Pork loin is overcooked; baby-back ribs are under-seasoned; and lamb comes with an intense funk that goes beyond its usual natural gamey character. I can accept that, though. These are merely sops thrown into the mix of meats to cater to a few beef-averse customers.
But then I'm faced with an array of beef dishes that are often overcooked, leaving filet mignon gray and grainy. Sirloin suffers from the same, along with an under-seasoned crust.
Beef ribs are better, with the honeycomb texture that comes from rendered fat and connective tissue and a profound beefiness that infuses each bite. Picanaha — the poster-meat of Brazilian churrascaria — is Boizao's best beef by far. This cut of sirloin is rimmed with a thick layer of fat, which gives the meat a sizzling crust and luscious richness that's missing in much of the rest of the beef.
I expected better from Boizao. Churrascarias hearken to the simple life of gauchos herding cattle on the plains, their meats cooked rotisserie-style in front of an open flame after a hard day roping steers. I expect lots of salt, crisp crusts and moist, rosy interiors, all of which I've received at other churrascarias. Except for the picanha, that's not what I end up with at Boizao. None of the restaurant's meat would ever tempt me to forgo my good ol' American steakhouses.
Especially not for the price. If you want quantity over quality, then maybe you can justify the stiff cost for mediocre meat. But if you want the best beef for your money, I can think of better places.
And to top it all off, despite my best efforts, I'm surrounded by couples. I guess the promise of all-you-can eat meat is more romantic than I had previously assumed. But after weighing themselves down with all that protein, I have my doubts that the rest of the night will play out as desired.
This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2008.