Churrascaria Plataforma

I’ve never understood the allure of the all-you-can-eat meatfest that is Churrascaria Plataforma.  It took me a long time to get into whole pieces of meat.  Steaks just seemed so savage and inelegant, with all that serrated sawing and chewing and bloody juice.  Now, of course, I can appreciate a nice fatty piece of charred meat, but I’d still rather split Peter Luger’s porterhouse for two with two other enthusiastic carnivores who will eat the lion’s share.

And I can’t trust any all-you-can-eat joint.  The quality of the food is often rather dubious (because how else are they going to make their margins?).  But more importantly, I cannot be trusted to keep from slipping into capitalist consumption mode, busting my gut to make sure I get my money’s worth.  It took years of ranch-drowned round trips at the Claim Jumper salad bar before I realized that no matter how courageously my stomach played chicken with the restaurant buffet, they could still make money off the cheap-ass pesto tossed tortellini and machine chopped iceberg that stodgily gurgled in my abused stomach.  It’s a lose-lose situation for all parties except my waistline.

But my cousin Sirion gets her M.B.A. from Columbia Business School this year and to celebrate, she made a reservation for 8 at 8 at the Churrascaria Plataforma meat trough, one of her cherished dining destinations.  I try not to be too picky/bitchy with my family because I love them dearly and they’re stuck with me for life.  After enduring a graduation ceremony involving a soporific student speaker who prattled on using every high school graduation speech cliché in the book (friends we’ve made – check;  come from different backgrounds – check;  thank you parents – check;  cherish these moments forever – checkmate!), we walk the 15 blocks from Madison Square Garden through an especially grimy and stinky section of Hell's Kitchen to get to the restaurant.  We are seated quite quickly at a round table close to the maitre d' podium, far away from the magic kitchen portal where the spit skewered meats emerge.

We all hit the salad bar, a surefire money-saver for the restaurant.  I watch the ladies next to me pile dull-looking, seemingly intestine-contentious sushi onto their plates alongside piles of limp mesclun, strange creamy fish casseroles, clumpy sun-dried tomato risotto and prefab cold shrimp cocktail.  I take some bits and bobs myself, knowing full well that if someone served the stuff to me at a restaurant, I’d never return.  But my little American game of Beat the Receipt has begun and I determinedly pick at my foraged goodies.  We turn our little placards from red to green and begin to make googly eyes at the carcass-bearers.

About ten minutes and two types of flesh into the meat orgy, a waiter gets bumped by a chair at the table next to us.  He steps back, tipping his tray and sending our third full bottle of Pellegrino straight onto my 4’10”, 90 lb. aunt's fragile head and shoulder, smacking her delicate little hand before it crashes into wet green shards on the floor.  Everyone is appalled.  We all turn concerned to my wee button of an aunt.  She says she's okay, but we are all shaken and worried.  While my cousin Atita stands and pulls her chair away, the mop boy spends about ten minutes sweeping up glass and mopping up our sparkling.  The captain brings an ice compress for my aunt's spidery little hand. 

They do not offer us a different table while they clean up, so Atita chews a sawed off chicken leg while we wait.  They do not bring us a new bottle of Pellegrino.  After ten minutes, we have to flag two different people down to get some for us.  My tiny, featherweight aunt, the only person in our big-boned party whose frame could have been damaged by a flying glass bottle, proceeds to eat a domino-sized portion of salmon for the rest of the meal, insisting that she's fine and that we carry on.

But it’s hard to gnaw on hunks of flesh with gusto when you’re trying to make sure your pint-sized aunt is not suffering from a CONCUSSION.  The captain and waiters, for all intents and purposes, seem to have brushed the incident off.  In our rainy parade of a dinner, we begin to taste flaws.  “Everything’s so salty,” Aaron says.  “I think there’s MSG in here,” Atita asserts.  “Nothing spectacular yet,” says Sakorn.  My poor cousin Sirion, who was so excited for us to have a good time, begins to dejectedly push the bits around her plate.

Little pork sausages are juicy, but the casing is so rubbery I’m afraid my vigorous slicing is going to send the chunks hi-bouncing on the table.  Turkey wrapped in bacon is so bone dry that no dousing of vinegar salsa can reconstitute it.  Flank steak, prime rib, and sirloin are cooked well enough, but they’re right – it’s salty and not much else.  I don’t know, when you eat meat in that quantity, it becomes less nourishing and enjoyable and more HARD WORK.  I’ve also noticed that the unbidden waiters tend to offer ladies the well-done bits and the men the bloodier slices.  I assume they do it from experience, which makes me sad for the overworked jaws of my sex.

The mashed potato sides are salty and buttery, but not a great foil for the already salty meat.  I don't bother with the rice, steamed broccoli or toasted yucca flour (another thing I can accept but don't really understand -- because if the salt hasn't sucked all the moisture out of your mouth, these dry little crumbs DEFINITELY will).  Bread crumb rolled fried ripe bananas are gooey and sweet.

Later, an impossibly loud fire alarm begins to whoop.  And whoop.  And WHOOP.  The waiters all roll their eyes.  "We're part of a hotel, and they have to do fire drills."  At dinner time on a Sunday night, apparently.

A voice comes over the loudspeaker as the music is turned off.  "Ladies and gentleman.  Someone tripped the security alarm.  It was a false alarm."  The alarm whoops a few more times before dinner resumes.  On another day, we might find this funny too.  But our good humor seems to have been swept up with the glass that FELL ON MY AUNT’S HEAD. 

After we have all finished tentatively eating our slices of meat, the captain comes by and says, "I'd like to offer you a round of drinks," as a half-assed apology for the waiter's gaffe.  I point out what should be obvious to anyone whose taken our orders for two glasses of wine and two beers between eight adults --  "We're not really drinkers."

Sirion says, "How about dessert?"

The captain says, hesitantly, "For that I have to ask permission."

Sirion says, "Well, if you could comp her [Sirion's mini-mom] because of what happened -- she didn't eat much."  The captain slips away.  He comes back to take down the name of our party's reservation, a phone number, and my little brittle aunt's name, only then pouring on the slippery sympathy, telling us that he'll be happy to "call an ambulance" if we need one. 

The hokey dessert cart rolls around.  I get an enjoyable fruit tart and Aaron (who generally subsists on Del Taco and Taco Bell) wolfs his cheesecake down, but the other desserts we have for the table –coconut caramel cake and chocolate mousse – get pecked at unenthusiastically.

We get our bill.  The captain has comped my bitty aunt's meal, but we have been charged for four Pellegrinos.  That's one more than we drank.  Which means we have been charged for the Pellegrino THAT NEARLY KNOCKED MY POCKET-SIZED AUNT OUT.

Talk about insult to injury!  I grew up with a mama who would say, “Oh, that tofu tastes sour and there’s something green and furry growing on it?  It’s okay, I’ll just pay for that and buy you something different.”  But when you are eight people out for a special occasion, paying $50 a head (which I’d like to note buys you two enormous “steaks for four”, two orders of lamb chops and about a dozen sides at Peter Luger), you want to relax and have a good time.  You don’t want to make a scene.  But make me pay for the DEADLY ASSAULT WEAPON that almost took out a member of my family and I’m going to have to get scrappy on your ass.

I call the manager over to chat and he quickly knocks the bill down to a more agreeable number, because he KNOWS they fucked up.  But WHY did I have to make a scene in front of my family for that to happen? 

THANKS FOR RUINING MY COUSIN'S GRADUATION NIGHT, CHURRASCARIA PLATAFORMA.

Bridge: Burnt.

Ladies and gentleman, my meatmongering days are over.