Tonight's Dinner: January 18, 2014

Tonight for dinner we went back to a spot that Nick and I enjoy, Espetus.  It was even better because we went to the San Mateo location rather than the San Francisco.  There is no parking in San Francisco as it is and the restaurant is in a busy part of the City and isn't very close to a BART station.  The San Mateo location was much more accessible.  For most of the group we were meeting up with, it was their first time.  Nick and I knew better, however, and did not eat large lunches and only got a little bit of food from the salad bar. Espetus is a Churrascaria, commonly known as Brazilian bbq.  It’s basically a walking meat buffet.  They had everything from lamb shanks to chicken hearts.  The only thing that I didn't have was the roasted pineapple as I knew that it would be very sweet. 

At $55 per person just for the main meal, this is definitely one of those places that you don’t go to every day.  It’s great for groups and celebrations.  I was able to eat my fair share of meat because I didn't eat that much of the salad bar.  The bar area also has hot dishes like, fish and paella, which can be very filling.  I just grabbed some mozzarella balls, salami, pita bread, olives, and cucumber salad.  My strategy was to eat a little bit of my salad to help cut the heaviness of the gobs and gobs of meat I was eating.   When you have to strategize to pack in as much food as you can you know you have a problem.

I think I managed to get a picture of everything, though some may be blurry because I was trying to snap the pictures quickly to not interrupt serving.  

I didn't want to fill myself up on these, but I believe from left to right: fried
polenta, fried plantain, popovers.  I'm not sure if they are actually popovers,
but they look like them. 

This was the plate of "salad" that I got to help cut through all of the meat. 

Chicken drumstick

House-made chicken sausage.  This was one of my
favorite items. 

Lamb shoulder.  I had several helpings of this. 

Beef ribs

Chicken hearts. 

Chicken wrapped in bacon.

Beef wrapped in bacon. 

House-made pork sausage.

Beef tenderloin 

The beef tenderloin was pretty rare, but it was really good.
Recently, I've been having issues digesting rare beef, but
thankfully didn't have that after eating this.  I love rare meat,
but it doesn't love me. 

Roasted pineapple

Parmesan crusted chicken

As if we didn't eat enough, everyone got desserts.  Nick got a chocolate cake
with ice cream.  I got a shot of Patron Silver.  Heh. ...it helps digestion...