I’ve been walking past Rodizio Rico for the last few years and gazing longingly at all those meats on a stick so finally I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns so to speak and get a group of us together to have, as Jon put it, an All You Can Meat evening.

We started with some quite pricey drinks at Westbourne House, a favourite bar of Mirela’s where, unfortunately for the beer drinks, pints start at about £4. Youch! You kind of get used to paying a bit more in London for drinks but £4 for a pint – ridiculous. Admittedly its a very nice bar and someone has to pay for all those fairy lights! Strangely enough the cocktails weren’t much more expensive than any other bar in London and in fact my pint of pineapple and lemonade was actually cheaper … not sure though if that was because Mirela was flirting with the bar tender!

When we arrived at Rodizio Rico we were directed to a table by the window and seemingly crammed into the corner. At first I didn’t think the six of us (Mirela, Pauline, Sandra, James, Jon and I) would fit but in the end I think it ended up being one of the better tables in the restaurant – there wasn’t a lot of room to move at all between the tables and with the servers running around with their sticks of meat and people moving to and from the hot buffet I think we were quite well placed to avoid the traffic.

I haven’t explained yet the concept behind Rodizio Rico (‘churrascaria de rodizio’) which is basically a rotating barbecue. As I’ve made reference to a couple of times already passadors (meat carvers) move from table to table with their sticks of various cuts of meat direct to your plates. I’ve actually been to something similar before but it was in Manhattan and Rodizio Rico claims to be the only one of its kind in London.

In addition to the sticks of meat there is also on offer a hot buffet and an impressive, and original, salad bar. I was quite impressed with the buffet and could have happily satisfied myself with the selections at the buffet alone!

But back to the meat selections. We got a whole range of meats including leg of lamb, pork, ham, chicken (wings and thighs), sausages (chicken and pork) a large variety of cuts of meat (apparently the one to go for is the picanha but to be honest I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one and another!) and finally the Rodizio Rico special: chicken hearts which caused quite a bit of laughter at our table when Wee James, who was willing to try one, ended up with something like six! Jon was the heartiest eater of the chicken hearts but both Pauline and Mirela decided to pass. To be honest the chicken hearts weren’t too bad – more similar to giblets than liver I thought.

So, its judgment time! What did I think?

Well, the concept of the restaurant is sound and makes for a fun night out with a group of friends. Unfortunately it was kind of let down by a couple of things – namely quality and to some extent service. Food quality-wise I think that the meats were quite over-cooked (even the meat towards the centre of the skewer where they are supposed to be rare) and very salty. There was little doubt you would get food poisoning at least! For this reason I didn’t enjoy the All You Can Meat as much as I ordiniarly would have though perhaps this was a good thing because for once, at an all you can eat place, I didn’t over eat. In contrast the hot buffet was actually very good. From a service perspective – what we got was a bit hit and miss. On the whole it was quite friendly but there was one particularly grumpy waitress who we seemed to keep on getting and and they were sometimes a little slow with our requests.

Here are the before and after shots from dinner. Everyone’s still smilin’! Rodizio Rico is certainly a unique experience and worth doing at least once. Branches at Notting Hill and Islington.

BEFORE	AFTER