Doug’s dinners

Do Brazil
Portomaso Marina, St Julian’s
Tel: 2742 0000

Food: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

I know, you all thought you had seen the back of me didn’t you? Well, sorry to make you choke on your Sunday cornflakes, but I’m back. Albeit on a not-as-regular-as-I-used-to-be basis.

I guess I am one of those people who doesn’t know when to call it a day. A bit like the Silvio Berlusconi of the Maltese restaurant reviewing scene. Only with all my teeth and no underage students hiding under the bed.

The truth is my life these days doesn’t really allow for much eating out. In fact, it doesn’t allow for much eating, full stop. And that, as you can imagine, is not ideal for someone who is supposed to be writing about that very subject.

But after placing intense Wikileaks-style pressure on my editor, he eventually relented and agreed to let me do the odd review every now and then. Probably out of sympathy. Or possibly because Ed is unavailable this week.

Anyway, enough waffle and on to dinner.

The meal in question was actually one of necessity rather than pure choice. I had a business associate here from England and he needed some wining and dining during his short stay. Colleagues had taken care of two nights but this one was up to myself and Sharon.

The idea of a midweek outing, with all the various babysitting logistics involved, was not high up on our list of must-dos. But duty called and our enthusiasm was boosted by the fact that the person in question happened to be extremely good company.

The dilemma was where to go. After blagging my way back into the reviewing gig, it obviously needed to be somewhere new and reviewable. However, that left me open to the risk of taking the man, let’s call him Arthur, somewhere that could end up being a bit of a dog’s dinner.

And so to counterbalance that fear, I decided it would be a good idea to head over to Portomaso. At least if the food was a disaster he couldn’t help but be impressed by the surroundings.

A few mouse clicks later and I had the destination sown up: Do Brazil. Heard of it, heard good things about it in fact, but hadn’t been there. So a table was booked for five following the late addition of two colleagues.

As is getting increasingly typical these days we were fashionably late. When I say fashionably what I actually mean is plain, old, simple late. For someone who likes to be punctual, I don’t find arriving late particularly trendy. However, with kids involved, it is something that is becoming a bit of a trademark. Sometimes you are lucky if we turn up at all.

Having rushed to the table and sat down amidst a blur of apologies, we are finally able to take a deep breath and absorb the surroundings. As you expect from the restaurants at Portomaso, there is a certain degree of elegance to Do Brazil. And as this particular eatery is located at sea level, that feeling is enhanced by the close proximity of boats and yachts worth considerably more than our apartment.

A waiter who sounds like he could very well be Brazilian, talks us through the menu options, but to be honest there was only ever going to be one choice for me – the Meat Rodizio. I’ve heard about this and basically it involves a large variety of different Churrasco-grilled meats being delivered to your table in wave after wave of carnivorous heaven.

Although it takes a little bit of gentle persuading to push Sharon down the same route due to her not being the world’s biggest meat fan, she eventually relents and all five of us order the Meat Rodizio.

The waiter explains how it works.

A small round card is left on our table and when we are ready for the procession of meats to begin we just flip it over to green. The meats will then come out on skewers one by one and we can taste them all. When we have been through all of them we can then pick and choose our favourites and send for more. When we finally want this process to stop, we turn the card over to red.

Sounds good to me.

Before that fun begins though we have the option of attacking the salad bar, which we do. The selection on offer is good and involves a lot of Brazilian influences as well as plenty of basics. Two or three of the others stock up well and head back to the table. I, however, feel like this is just a distraction from the real business of meat eating so only take a few nibbles to be polite.

In the meantime, I settle back and soak up the atmosphere along with a couple of large glasses of white wine which is light, crisp and whose name I cannot recall for the life of me. Call it what you want, it is hitting the spot.

Eventually, after what seems like an age of watching the other four nibble their way through their salads, we are ready to commence the real business. I was like a child on Christmas morning, desperate to get his presents opened. I flipped the card to green wondering why all things in life couldn’t be this simple.

What followed was one of the nicest, more relaxing, lengthy and tasty main courses I have ever been involved in. There were ribs, there were flame grilled sausages, there was pork, there was chicken, there was delicately tender beef. All enhanced by a selection of heavenly dipping sauces.

As you only got a relatively small piece of the respective meat each time, it was a meal to be savoured and enjoyed, certainly not ideal for someone in a hurry. Combined with the wine, the ambience and the good company, it was exactly the kind of unhurried meal I like best.

When we had at last tasted all the different meats it was time to go back for more or, more accurately, pick which ones we wanted more of bringing to our table. Not an easy decision but a joyous dilemma with which to be faced.

It had all turned into a bit of a meaty blur by this point, but I think we ordered more of about three or four items. And round they came again, once again lovingly distributed from their respective skewers.

Although the temptation was to keep the whole process going for eternity – or at least until we were kicked out – we eventually have to admit to being full and I reluctantly flip the magic little card back to red. It had been superb, but all good things must come to an end – in our case because we were in serious danger of protein overdose.

The plates are cleared away and we are left to sip our wine and mull over the meal. In a strange way the looks on our faces were not entirely unlike those you might find on five children who have been left, unsupervised, at the sweetie table during a birthday party. The only difference was, of course, that our supervisor had been repeatedly encouraging us to have more. And who were we to say no?

After a respectably long gap we are invited to try out the sweets. A small plate containing pieces of all that is on offer is brought to the table. A nice touch, allowing you to see the insides and not just guess how the individual dishes are constructed. Unfortunately, we have seriously over-extended ourselves with the mains and only Sharon, who had understandably been the most restrained on the meats, ending up ordering something. It was a seriously chocolatey little number which went down an absolute treat with the wife and ensured I wouldn’t get too much grief for taking her somewhere so meat oriented.

Several coffees and a bizarre number of Avernas later – especially bizarre for a midweek school night – we are asking for the bill, chipping and pinning and heading off for our respective homesteads. Or hotelstead in Arthur’s case.

It had, on reflection, been an absolutely superb meal – like an ultimately professional, high class, silver-service barbecue. If meat is your thing, and it is very much mine, this is as close to the perfect dinner as it is possible to get.

Don’t get me wrong, there is more to the menu at Do Brazil than just meat. You can also have vegetarian or fish dishes, which also sound tempting. But if, make that when, I go back there it will be with one foodstuff in mind. And it doesn’t grow in soil or swim in the sea.

The service had been impeccable, the ambience delightful and the food exceptional. I won’t go into too much detail about value for money as we managed to dramatically distort the figures with our excessive consumption of wine, spirits and Averna. But the Meat Rodizio itself is just €28 a head for an all-you-can-eat-meat-bonanza, which is certainly not outrageous or offensive.

After a couple of years doing this column on a weekly basis it is sort of depressing finding myself limited to just the odd restaurant review.

But if these one-offs are all going to be as good as this one, I am going to be one exceptionally happy man.

dougsdinners@timesofmalta.com

The scoring

When reviewing any restaurant I try to be as objective as possible and take into consideration all the different aspects which make for an enjoyable meal. The scores I give cannot be seen as a permanent result for a venue, but merely a reflection on how it performed on the occasion I was there. Also, it is important to note that comparisons between different restaurants’ marks should not be made. I score an establishment on how it performs within its own field, not against competitors in different catering sectors. For example, a cheap pizzeria that does what it does well is just as deserving of a high mark as a fine dining establishment would be.