When people think of Brazilian food, they mostly think of the all-you-can eat steakhouses, but they are also very big into buffet style food. Their buffets are usually the kind where you pay for the weight of your food which can be dangerous if your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Fellini is located on this dark, quiet street in Leblon and the customers there are generally local families.
You basically walk in, grab a plate, load up with whatever you want and then weigh it at the end. You can go back as many times as you want and each time you weigh your plate, they give you a sticker with the price of each weigh so that when you check out, they know how much to ring you up for. There is a fairly large variety of food here ranging from salad, sushi, pastas, meats, fish, seafood, fried food and dessert. The ingredients seemed fresh and the food looked like it was constantly switched out and not like it had been sitting there for hours. I went straight for the sushi - the Asian mentality of me was trying to figure out how to get the best bang for my buck. I loaded up on sushi, poke and some sliced meat. This is also a great place if you are traveling with vegetarians or have other dietary restrictions because there literally is a little bit of something for everyone. My first round of food was $12 USD and I must say that the quality of the food was pretty good. I was a big fan of the salmon poke (or it tasted a lot like poke since it was cubes of raw salmon with soy and sesame oil with scallions) and the sushi wasn't too bad either. The cut of meat was fine - it was a bit well done for me, but you can't expect too much for buffet style meat. In all honesty, I most likely could have (and should have) stopped eating here but I went back for a second round of poke and spent another $10 for no real reason.
I wouldn't say this was a culinary highlight of my trip but I did like that it was a no frills, easy meal. Sometimes you just don't want to eat at a full service restaurant and for those occasions eating at Fellini is just right. Total bill: $22 USD
Photo Credit: Tripadvisor
Ahh - yes. A trip to Brazil wouldn't be complete without a visit to a Churrascaria/Rodizio des carnes. It's essentially an all-you-can-eat steakhouse and you must come hungry. Lav and I came for lunch after visiting Sugar Loaf Mountain and I'm sad to say that I probably wasn't hungry enough for it but I made it work. Unfortunately there is no lunch price, so it was a very expensive lunch and they also don't have a price for just the salad bar for vegetarians. So Lav really took one for the team by coming here because she ended up paying a lot for the salad bar which really isn't worth it. But for me, I was in pig and cow heaven. I started with a caipirinha as an afternoon beverage and they make it table side for you and really see all the god damn delicious sugar that they put in there but it was one strong drink. Next I headed to the salad bar and again, loaded up on sushi and sashimi here. Despite being called a salad bar, the really had a lot of seafood based dishes, which sucked for Lav and honestly I was so focused on getting to the meat portion of my meal that I completely skipped over them. The sashimi was actually very good and was a good palate cleanser for me in between bites of meat.
On to the meat. I've been to Churracaria's in New York before and they work the same way here. You have a card and if you want them to come over with the meat, you turn the side green. If you're full, then turn it to the red side that says stop. But since we were here for lunch and it was pretty empty, they kept pushing meat on me the whole time despite having it turned to red when I was trying to clean my plate. The waiters come around with all sorts of mouth watering meat on a skewer and then they slice off generous portions on to your plate. I must have eaten every cut of beef known to man and they were all pretty delicious and juicy. They also had sausage and chicken (it was like fried chicken but not totally battered) but I would say that if you have limited stomach space, stick with the meat. I was able to put away almost 2 full plates of meat and a few rounds of sashimi and that was all I could handle. The cuts of meat were flavorful on their own as none of it needed any sauce to it. With your meat, you can get sides of fries, tomatoes, shrimp and some other appetizers but to me that's all just filler for the main course.
Annoyingly, dessert is extra. Lav got a slice of cheesecake to top off her meal but I couldn't eat anymore food. While this place is great for meat eaters, it's a definite bummer for vegetarians. They should either offer a lower price for just the salad bar or include a price with dessert for them. I left lunch feeling uncomfortably full but I'm still glad I went. I'm sure the scene would have been totally different at night for dinner but lunch was a much calmer experience which was just fine with me as I rolled home drunk and full. Total bill: $63/pp with drink and dessert
Photo Credit: Yelp
So this is a bit of an unfair review because I barely ate anything there because I was in in a meat coma from my lunch at Porcao earlier in the day, so there's not much for me to review. But from what little food and drink I had, it seemed like a very lovely place to grab some tapas and sit outside with a lovely cocktail. The tricky thing is that also also pass around random tapas while you eat and at first we weren't sure what was going on. Was it complimentary? Well the answer is no, they are not free. They like to pass around different types of house tapas and if you are interested, they put it on your table and write it down on your bill. Luckily the food is pretty good here, so when we grabbed some kind of potato dish, we weren't too upset. For our main dishes, we got our usual order of potatoes bravas and a tortilla and both were solid dishes.
The location of the restaurant is on a lively and fun strip in Copacabana. After checking out this neighborhood, I'm glad we chose to say in Ipanema as it's not quite as touristy and crazy as Copacabana. But this restaurant would be a fun place to check out on any other occasion, just not after I had eaten an entire cow for lunch. Total bill: $25/pp
Photo Credit: Yelp
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