Phone: 415-729-0170
Neighborhood: Marin City & Pohono St. Website is here.
Show de Carnes Brazilian Steakhouse
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We Now Have a Rodizio Restaurant in Sausalito!!! Er… What is Rodizio?
If you’ve been to Fogo de Chao or Espetus in San Francisco (or in other big cities) you’re familiar with the workings of “rodizio” at a Brazilian steakhouse. If not, here’s an introduction to the genre, so you can confidently take part in the “culinary dance” that is rodizio the first time you walk into Show de Carnes.
The stars of the show are typically filet mignon, ribeye steak and other cuts of beef, along with pork, chicken, shrimp and grilled pineapple. The meats are flame-grilled on spits, and the spits are then brought to your table. Thin slices or chunks of meat are carved off by Gaucho-uniformed servers. They provide tongs at each place setting, which you’ll use to capture the thinly sliced meat as it’s served from the spit, and then you’ll place it on your plate. Chunks of the meat will be pushed off the spit by your server, either for you to take with your tongs or directly onto your plate. The meals include all food for a pre-set flat price, but beverages (apart from those at the salad bar) are paid for separately.
You’re given a cardboard circle when you sit down at your table. If you want to be offered meat by the roving servers, you turn the green side face up. If you want to take a break because you have food on your plate, you turn the red side up. Typically, diners will turn the disk over several times during each meal before finally leaving it on red and asking for their check.
Insiders Tip: Show de Carnes, like all rodizio restaurants, has a wonderful and diverse salad bar and buffet that’s included in the flat-rate price. But the wisdom of rodizio is that (unless you crave some of the high-end seafood at the buffet) you walk in hungry, limit yourself to a few morsels from the salad bar, and save your appetite for the flame-grilled meat.
You may also have heard the term churrasco, which some people use interchangeably with rodizio. Churrasco originally referred to a menu-based spit-roasted meat experience where the servers don’t walk around offering to serve “straight from the spit.”
I absolutely love this kind of dining, though it’s expensive: weekday lunch as of this writing is $54.95 per person, while dinners and anytime on weekends is $73.95. By way of comparison, right now dinner at Fogo de Chao in San Francisco is $79 per person.
What is Show de Carnes in Sausalito like?
I think Show de Carnes in Sausalito is an excellent rodizio restaurant, and apparently I’m not alone. For weekend and holiday dinners you’ll want to have a reservation to make sure you can get in. On the recent Saturday night when we ate there most of the tables were full during the extended dinner we enjoyed.
Compared to Fogo de Chao, Show de Carnes is more likely to give you chunks of moist, flame-grilled meat. At first this surprised me, but as I sliced each chunk into thin pieces the flavor and juiciness was wonderful. Their thin-sliced meats (like their ribeye) were also moist and flavorful.
Insiders Tip: Sign up for their email mailing list. They offer occasional special deals with discounts that can save you a significant amount of money. The discount offers are ongoing, not just a single sale price for signing up. If you have a friend who loves rodizio, some of their offers are significant discounts for parties of two.
The food menu at the bar — with traditional standard-portion entrees instead of endless fresh meats — is more affordable, with most prices between $19.95 and $36.95. (Note that these prices may change at any time).
The location is convenient, right next to the northernmost Sausalito exit from 101. You may recognize that for many years Outback occupied the building, before the quality of the food declined and the nationwide chain closed many of its outlets. The building has been almost completely remodeled for Show de Carnes, and the only familiar landmark from when we ate at Outback was the location of the restrooms. I’m embarrassed to say that the interior design was so different I needed help to find those restrooms even though their location was still the same!
There’s also a small lagoon nature preserve for migratory birds out front, sandwiched between the parking lot and the highway.
