BRIC-A-BRAC: It's What's For Dinner...And Lunch...And Dinner Again Tomorrow...

It was really Alex's fault. He's the one who said he was getting a bunch of people together to go to Fogo de Chao the day after New Year's. You see? I never would have gone if he hadn't made the invitation.

Fogo de Chao, for those not in the know, is the foremost example of a quiet little trend in modern cuisine called the Brazilian steakhouse. For a flat fee, you sit down and watch as a variety of cuts of beef (with occasional cameos by other seared meat) are paraded around the room on enormous sword-like skewers by men and women in gaucho pants. You are welcome to sample as much of this as you can handle, and you signal that you are ready to ingest more by turning a card on your table from red to green. It is, quite literally, a Parade of Meat. Needless to say, in our health-conscious culture, the Brazilian steakhouse is an enormous hit.

This was not my first exposure to the concept. Last Christmas, I was taken to one of a different chain outside Fort Worth. (For the record, aside from names there is no appreciable difference between Brazilian steakhouses.) Thinking about that for a moment, there's clearly a segment of my brain that completely shuts off with regard to eating copious amounts of food during the holidays. Everything about this proposal screamed "bad idea." So naturally, my response to Alex's invitation was, "That sounds fantastic!" My brain's card must be perpetually on green.

There were eleven of us who descended upon Fogo de Chao on a cool, damp Monday afternoon, and we most definitely did not have the place to ourselves. Packed, I tell you. What the hell are we all thinking? Why are we all gorging at the end of the holidays? Is it just Christmastime? Are there other special occasions when people decide they'd like to eat steak for three straight hours? I'm all questions.

I think the Brazilian steakhouse plays into the natural competitiveness of Americans. We like to get a deal, and we like to get a better deal than everyone else. As I said, it's a flat fee for a neverending plate of meat, so in essence, we're all trying to eat more meat than we're paying for. Somehow, we're going to turn a profit on this lunch. Only Padraic and Megan actually admitted to this strategy, but we were all thinking it, I'm sure. Never mind that the restaurant just made at least thirty bucks off of each of us, so this is a little like deficit spending. Anyway, once you're committed to beating the restaurant, you have to strategize at every turn. Because the restaurant is crafty, and wants to foil you at every turn.

Take the self-serve salad bar, for example. It's a very generous spread of vegetables, with copious amounts of cheese, and even a few thinly-sliced meats. Someone called them "sucker meats". Because we're not surrendering precious stomach space to lettuce and smoked salmon, dammit. We're here for beef!

Or the bread. Padraic said it before we had even taken our seats: "The bread is a trap." And we all knew this instinctively, for who among us has not gorged on an entire French loaf waiting for the entrée to come, only to find themselves stuffed to the gills. Oh, we know about the bread. But at Fogo de Chao, it's a brilliantly conceived trap. The rolls are tiny, like mini-muffins, and I swear that each is injected with a pat of butter. They're decadent, and because they're small, they look like they could hardly do damage. In fact, they are spring-loaded, waiting to fill up your entire stomach and leave precious little room for the beef that has brought us here.

(Side note: I just now realized that I don't actually know the proper spelling of "pat of butter". It could be "pad of butter". Evidently, I've never written that phrase down before. I googled it, and both versions came up. So there may not be a consensus on the matter. Weird.)

If you can dodge these bullets, then you're ready to turn your card green and make with the gluttony. Most of your choices are cuts of sirloin, which have special Portuguese names, but they seem to have given up long ago and settled for simple descriptions like "top sirloin" or "bottom sirloin". There's also filet mignon, which is never what you expect, because it isn't a little filet. It's a big steak straight off the spit, friends. It's quite a sight, seeing some guy walk up to you with a slab of beef the size of his arm and sawing off a thin slice for your enjoyment. Sawing off the beef, that is. Not his arm.

To break up the monotony, you can also get your meat in pre-sliced portions. For example, the leg of lamb also comes as lamb chops. Or the beef and pork loin are available to you as ribs. It's nice, because it makes you feel like you're eating something different, even though it's really the same beef, pork, and lamb. Another way to spice it up is with embellishment. Both the filet mignon and chicken breast came in small chunks wrapped in bacon. For when eating one meat at a time is not enough. And then came Fogo de Chao's masterstroke. The true apex of the dining experience.

"What's that?" I said to the gaucho with the skewer of meat cubes covered in some sort of powder.

"Parmesan-crusted beef."

This was the pinnacle. I'd eaten beef. I'd eaten beef wrapped in bacon. Now, I was being offered the chance to chow down on beef coated in cheese. My journey to the dark side was complete. "Oh, hell, yes," I said. Alex's brother also wanted to know what fresh hell this was. I told him, and he flipped his card from red to green faster than if it would deactivate a bomb. We were all going to clog our arteries, and we were not going to wait any longer than we had to.

In a final burst of inspired cruelty, the Fogo folks offer dessert with a twist. They recommend some sort of papaya cream, which they insist contains "enzymes" that will assist in the digestion process. If you're not dead at this point, you're probably willing to do anything to aid the digestion process. "Drano? Sure, why not?" I was determined to carry though the abuse of my body to its logical conclusion, so I went with a gelato. Jen outdid me, though, opting for the chocolate flourless cake, which I couldn't even believe was on the menu. It's like taking C-4 to a dynamite convention.

Nearly three hours later, we staggered out into the mist. Some people were driving, and I pitied them, because I knew the food coma would force them off the road within ten minutes. But we all shared something that day. We knew, despite the fact that we had done immense damage to ourselves and paid for the privilege, that we had beaten a chain of Brazilian steakhouses. We knew that we had brought another holiday season, one based on nothing but eating, to a successful close. And most importantly, we knew that we would never ever do something so remarkably stupid again.

Next time you're in town, we should go.