'Aaah, yes," the waitress said reassuringly as men with long blades and skewered meats scurried back and forth beside our table. "Our gauchos are highly trained in Brazil for several years."
I was a tad confused at first when our waitress told us this at Fogo de Chão, the elegant new churrascaria near City Hall. Granted, it must require a certain amount of practiced delicacy to navigate a bustling steakhouse with sword-length knives and heavy skewers laden with roasted, drippy meats.
But as far as I could tell, the only real challenge here appeared to be honing the catlike reflexes with which they pounced upon tables when diners flipped their disks from red (meaning: "Wait a minute, I'm still chewing!") to green (meaning: "Yo! Bring on the meat!")
Perhaps it was just the way our waitress said it. But I suddenly imagined a secret compound outside São Paulo where young gauchos trained with ninjalike intensity to sharpen their reflexes, sprinting forward in billowy bombacha pants and then stopping on a centavo every time the master gaucho raised a colored flag.
Obviously, digesting the unlimited supply of 15 different cuts of meat being sliced upon my plate that night (which I'm sure far exceeded Fogo's modest average of 11/2 pounds per guest) was starting to strain the brain. Filling up on those addictive cheese popovers and Fogo's immensely colorful (but somewhat tasteless) salad buffet didn't help. But I found myself flipping the colored disks and timing the meat deliveries as if they were an Olympic event.
It took 90 seconds for my first taste of picanha, the half-moon roll of sirloin that is the pride of any churrascaria. Sliced directly to my plate, the outer side was roasted a deep, salt-crusted brown from the heat, the interior side pooled with sweet pink juice that had a vaguely metallic aftertaste.
The bottom sirloin, an earthy, skirtlike cut that was sliced across the grain like brisket, took a mere 20 seconds. A fat-basted cut of yummy top sirloin was on my plate just 12 seconds later.
I waited a whole 85 seconds for some of the little lamb chops, though they had withered to an overcooked, underseasoned gray long before they arrived. I could have passed altogether on the overcooked and livery filet mignon, not to mention the bland sausages, which had a sponginess that reminded me of Bob Evans.
