After travelling around Brazil earlier this year, I immediately fell in love with the amazing beaches, football, women and cuisine. It was one of the few times I’ve been on holiday and seriously thought, “I’d like to move here.” It did feel like a bit of the culture came back with me as, on my next trip into town, I noticed that the old Hard Rock Café, most recently Vienna, had become a churrasco restaurant.
The tradition of the Brazilian churrasco (barbecue) goes back to the seventeenth century when large parts of the country were covered by the flat lands of the Pampas. The vegetation favoured cattle farming and produced some of the best meat in the world. Fast forward four hundred years and their love affair with meat continues.
Tropeiro (named after the first Brazilian cowboys who rounded up the cattle) is the brainchild of Nei Borger, who left his homelands for Manchester in the mid-nineties. He earned his spurs cooking at the likes of La Tasca, Reform and Panacea, before setting up on his own. This is the third in his chain (the others can be found in Manchester and Chester) and the cuisine remains faithful to his countries’ tradition.
The place uses the rodizio (continuous) service concept, where you pay a fixed price (£9.95 for lunch on weekdays, £19.95 at other times) and get to sample whatever you want from the menu. Skewers of beef, lamb, pork and chicken are carried by waiters around the restaurant and the meat is carved table-side at your request. On each table is a beer mat with a red and a green side: red side up says you have enough on your plate, green side says you’re ready and waiting for more.
Among the dishes there are several to get excited about: alcatra is a cut of top sirloin and oozes flavour, cordeiro is a crunchy joint of tender lamb sliced straight off the bone and coração da galinha is an established Brazilian delicacy: a chicken heart. There is also a well-stocked salad bar to help yourself to. Their wine menu is also decent and, needless to say, they serve a great capirinha (£6) in eight fruity flavours.
A final word of warning: vegetarians, avoid this place as there’s nothing for you here. Serious carnivores: welcome to your new favourite all-you-can-eaterie.
11 King Street, NG1 2AY. Tel: 0115 9470124
tropeiro.co.uk
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