Rodízio


Rodízio is an all-you-can-eat style of restaurant service in Brazilian restaurants. In most areas of the world outside of Brazil, a rodízio restaurant refers to a Brazilian style steakhouse restaurant. Customers pay a fixed price, and waiters bring samples of food to each customer several times throughout the meal, until the customers signal that they have had enough.
In churrascarias or the traditional Brazilian-style steakhouse restaurants, servers come to the table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of quality cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, chicken, and sometimes atypical or exotic meats. The exact origin of the rodízio style of service is unknown, but the traditional story is that this serving style was created when a waiter delivered a meat skewer to the wrong table by mistake but let the guest take a small piece of the meat anyway. Rodízio became increasingly popular in Brazil in the mid-20th century and spread around the world as experienced servers moved to open their own restaurants. In Brazil, the rodízio style is sometimes also found in Italian or more recently Japanese restaurants.. Italian restaurants serving pizza are especially common.
Most rodízio courses are served right off the cooking spit and are sliced or plated right at the table. Sometimes, they are accompanied with fried potatoes, fried bananas, collard greens, black beans, and rice.
In many restaurants, the diner is provided with a colored card. Green, on one side, indicates to servers to bring more meat. Red, on the other side, indicates that the diners have enough meat for the moment.

Fare

The following foods are often seen at a churrascaria served rodízio style: