AfterTaste (by Sherry)

Porcão - 360 Park Avenue South (bet. 25th and 26th Streets)
(212) 252-7080

Although I had pushed the reservation from 7:30pm to 9pm, the place was still comfortably crowded when we arrived (ten minutes late). Matt was sitting at the bar waiting for my family and me, sipping a coke next to a group of 14 rowdy men (barely) in suits. We were seated at a very large round table on the edge of the room, near the stairs to the restroom and the waiter station. You’d think being so close to the home base for all the waiters would get us great service since they were always whizzing by, but alas, that assumption never came to fruition.

Upon being seated, the waiter asked if we had been ever been to a churrascaria before. A couple of us had, most of us hadn’t so he explained the entire system. You go and eat as much from the salad bar as you’d like and when you’re ready for the main part of the show, you flip over your little cardboard button from red to green. The green light, theoretically, will bring a flurry of waiters wielding medieval looking spears of meats to your table.

I normally would have ordered a cocktail, perhaps a caipirinha from the caipirinha cart rolling around from raucous table to raucous table. Seeing as I was ill, I decided to ask what juices they had, expecting orange and maybe cranberry. They had strawberry, pineapple, lemonade, orange, mango, and a slew of others I don’t recall, almost all freshly squeezed and unsweetened. I ordered strawberry and pineapple, my sister got strawberry lemonade. The juices were accompanied by packets of sweeteners, but the pineapple juice in my concoction was sweet enough, thoroughly refreshing and delicious.

We all got up together to explore the salad bar and circled around it like hungry sharks with our mammoth plates (literally 14-15″ in diameter). There was regular create-your-own salad, Caesar salad, two types of pasta salad, potato salad, some suspicious looking sushi, marinated artichokes, a couple of soups, some hot items, some salad that looked like Potato Stix mixed with mayo, and many other dishes. The most notable thing was the potato salad, not just because the rest of the salad bar was forgettable, but because it actually was delicious. The potatoes were tender and it was so well mixed that you couldn’t detect the mayo, which had melded with all the crumbly bits of overcooked potato to create a pleasantly grainy, thick “sauce”. Pleasantly onion-y from the chives and perfectly seasoned, the potato salad was the biggest hit at the table.

Nothing else was very exciting or better than what you would get at a typical hot/cold buffet at your local deli. I had some palatable bow-tie pasta salad with pesto. The artichokes were eye-twitchingly tart with that tinny flavor of artichokes marinated in a can or jar. The Caesar dressing didn’t really taste like Caesar, but it was garlicky and the croutons were crunchy so I finished that. I realized too late that I should have stuck with the potato salad and a regular green salad. Gluttonous me, oh well.

I wanted to get rid of my salad bar plate since 70% of it was still filled with food that I scraped into the middle of it to signal to the waiters that I was done. I couldn’t get their attention or even slow them down so I scraped the food to the top of the plate to make way for the meat. It was only after three or four “meat men” that I finally got a new plate.

“Get ready, when you flip your button over they’ll start coming and won’t let up,” Matt warned me. Okay, I flipped my button over and braced myself for the onslaught. Nothing. Finally, the sirloin man arrived at our table. For the rest of the evening, the meat was stop and go, sometimes one would come right after the other; other times, there would be a five minute gap in between, which was good if you had a lot of meat to catch up on, not so good if you were just sitting there impatiently waiting as if for a bus to arrive.

We all agreed that the sirloin was the best of all, succulent, salty, and perfectly cooked. This includes the plain sirloin and the sirloin with mysterious gobs of cheese injected into it. The pork loin was overcooked, dry, and bland. The beef ribs arrived on a rolling cart and were meaty with a tender texture, a nice variation from all the regular steak we had. The pork sausage was deliciously spicy and savory, but far too rich to eat on its own. I longed for a soft, pillowy roll to tuck it into.

I noticed a theme of wrapping leaner meats in bacon to keep them moist. This included turkey breast and filet mignon. I quickly learned that the bacon should be scraped away and not consumed as the roasting process (or however these skewers are cooked) made the bacon chewy, pink, and soft. It did lend its smoky saltiness to the lean meats; most successfully, the turkey breast. I tried chicken hearts for the first time, which I was very proud of myself for. My previously mentioned Brazilian friend told me chicken hearts are very popular in Brazil so I’m glad I tried them. I only ate two. They were tiny little things, one would probably fit comfortably in a teaspoon. They tasted like dark meat chicken but with an unusual consistency, not bad.

About 15-20 minutes into our green lighting, I wondered about side dishes and wasn’t sure if we were even supposed to get any. As if reading my mind (for the first and only time that evening), a waiter swung by to let us know our side dishes would be coming along shortly. Ten minutes later, we received a small bowl of mashed potatoes, a plate of shoestring fries, and a plate of yucca fries. The yucca was by far my favorite, very crispy and lighter, smoother, and tastier than a regular potato. It was salted to perfection. The fries were cut exactly the way I love them (about the width of a McDonald’s fry), but hadn’t been salted at all. I would have tried the mashed potatoes but by the time our side dishes arrived, I was already pretty full from the meat.

Skip dessert. I couldn’t taste anyone else’s since I was sick, but judging from each person’s reaction the desserts ranged from mildly satisfied (my cousin) to disappointed (me). I only ate about 1/3 of my chocolate cloaked, Klondike-type ice cream square and it wasn’t just because I was stuffed.

I can’t do an itemized rundown of the bill, because it was kept from me, but I can tell you that with tax and tip, 4 Diet Cokes, 4 juices (in large daiquiri type glasses), one glass of wine, 5 desserts, and 2 coffees the total came to around $460. We knew going in that the all-you-can-eat portion cost $50/person and that it didn’t include drinks or desserts, but the extras added up fairly quickly.

This is what I have to say about Porcão. The atmosphere is a little cheesy in that trendy club kind of way, but still fun. It’s great for large, loud parties. There were at least three other birthdays being celebrated. I could tell because they did this whole tambourine, drum hoo-ha for them. I threatened my family with torture and decapitation if they told them it was my birthday. They got the hint, so I (and they) narrowly escaped that fate, thank god. I could see how diners could be horrified by the salad bar. It was a little Sizzler-esque. Stick with a plain make-it-yourself salad, Caesar salad, or potato salad. Nothing else is worth the calories or stomach space. As for the meat, I mean, it’s mass produced roasts. What can you expect? The meats ranged from delicious to flavorless sand. I’m happy I chose Porcão for my birthday and finally experienced the lively atmosphere of a churrascaria, but for the price and with all the other great restaurants in this town, will I be returning any time soon?