After we checked in the hotel and got settled in, we took off to have dinner at Green Field Churrascaria, a Brazilian Steakhouse next door to the hotel. If you haven’t been to a Churrascaria, here’s a little explanation of what it is from their website:
The word ” churrascaria” originates from Portuguese, and it literally means “house of barbecue”. The European Brazilian elaborated the idea further around the turn of the century, and it has become synonymous for a place in which you continuously partake of all kinds of meats until you are more than fully satiated; This is called, ‘Rodízio’, which means ‘in cycle’.
In addition to the many meat offerings, they also have a bunch of side dishes available to along with the meats.
We started off by gathering up a few side dishes to munch on before the meat came rolling in. Above are just a few of the prepared salads they had available.
Here’s a view of some of the hot side dishes.
They also had fixings for making a salad as well as some caprese.
Here’s a look at some of the things I grabbed: a cold pasta pesto salad, a corn salad, a paella dish, meatballs, shrimp and cocktail sauce, some cheese cubes and a little of the caprese. I loved the sausage in the paella dish as well as the flavor of the rice. The meatballs kind of lacked flavor to me so I only ate one of them. There were a ton of choices for sides and I wanted to make sure I still had room for meat! I also got a bowl of mashed potatoes for us to eat with our meat which I didn’t take a photo of.
[A view of inside the restaurant]
Our waiter explained to us the process. We had a little wooden cube with three colors on it: red, yellow and green. Putting the block upright with “green” on top indicated we were ready for more meat. Putting it up with “red” on top indicated that we were pausing. Placing the block sideways said that we were done with our meal.
Jake was eager to get started on the meats and we set our little block to “green” and waited for the servers to come around with the meats. Here’s our server slicing off some sirloin tip for us, which was my favorite meat of the night. We had a tri-tip before this, but the piece I got was dry. The sirloin tip on the other hand was perfectly cook, very juicy and full of flavor.
[Sirloin Tip with my dried out tri-tip in the background]
I already don’t remember what this is! But I just liked taking photos of our server cutting off pieces of the meat.
Here’s a little later in the meal – with some chicken, sausage, flank steak and that dried out tri-tip which stayed uneaten on my plate the entire time.
This was at the end of our meat journey – I started getting full early on and started only eating pieces of meats. A lot of the meats were flavorful and well cooked, though a few were overcooked for my taste. We also tried some bacon wrapped turkey (yummy), lamb (too gamey tasting), quail, duck, brisket and some other steak cuts. We didn’t even try all of the meats they had before we called it quits!
Even though I was feeling pretty full, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check out the dessert cart. They had some really wonderful looking desserts, but I ended up getting something that very hard for me to resist.
Cheesecake! Dulce de leche cheesecake to be exact. Instead of the caramel inside the cheesecake (like they do at the Cheesecake Factory, which I love), this had a wonderful, thick layer of caramel on top. The cheesecake itself was super creamy – I loved it. The crust was perfect – a good crunch and sweetness and the caramel on top just made it perfect. One of the best cheesecakes I’ve had!
Jake almost passed on dessert before decided he’d go ahead and get the strawberry cheesecake. He also really enjoyed the cheesecake but thought my Dulce de leche was the better of the two cheesecakes.
We loved the cheesecakes so much that Jake talked about them with our server, who told us they were from a nearby bakery called Rossmoor Pastries. He gave us directions to the bakery and you can bet your buttons that we headed there the next day.
Jake didn’t feel like walking so we took the car over for dinner. Luckily we didn’t have to go far since right after our delicious meal we discovered my car’s battery was dead to the world. The ironic part was that Jake’s car did the exact same thing earlier that day and I had to swing down south to pick him up for our trip to Long Beach. We didn’t find this out until after our meal so at least we had a delicious meal before discovering a little monkey wrench in our plans. I didn’t stress out though since I knew exactly what was wrong. We walked back to the hotel and enjoyed an evening in watching TV in our very comfortable king sized bed. Little did I know how much time we would spend the next day taking care of my car problem (to be continued…)
Green Field Churrascaria
5305 E. Pacific Coast Hwy.
Long Beach, CA 90804
(562) 597-0906
Wow – that dinner came with your hotel room? I love Brazilian steakhouses – all that crispy, salty, juicy meat!
Yes! It was a really EXCELLENT deal 🙂 Jake almost didn’t want to buy it, but luckily he came to his senses.
Churrascarias are popping up all over. I think what’s even better than the quantity of meat is the variety of meat choices – things like lamb and duck and cuts of beef that don’t frequently appear on American menus. And the preparations are a departure from the standard salt-and-pepper. Overall, a very exciting trend in eating experiences!