As Homer Simpson once sagely noted, “You don’t win friends with salad.”
You win them with meat (okay, and sweets). With pulled pork shoulder at the tailgate. With steaks and burgers on the grill. With Thanksgiving turkey and Easter ham.
The Brazilians understand this principle. They are, after all, the inventors of churrascarias, steakhouses where waiters circulate with skewers laden with beef, pork, lamb, and other roasted meats, carving off generous slices at tableside. A churrascaria’s such a non-stop conveyor belt of meat that diners use double-sided cards to signal the waiters when they want more and when they’ve had enough.
Durham’s Chamas proudly, and deliciously, upholds the churrascaria tradition. For one fixed price, it’s all the meat you can eat. Dining there is like a cross between dim sum and a Roman banquet. Everywhere you look waiters dressed as gauchos brandish giant skewers dripping with meat. Softball-sized filets mignons. Chorus lines of chicken drumettes. Legs of lamb that look like something out of the Flintstones.
Oddly, for such a temple of gluttony, Chamas has a restrained atmosphere. The staff’s gracious, the décor understated post-industrial chic. It’s the politest way I’ve ever eaten myself into a meat coma.
Chamas serves 12 varieties of meat, ranging from ribeye to sausage to lamb. The portions the gauchos carve for you are large, so if you want to taste all 12, it’s best to strategize. Dine with a partner and split one of each variety. Then ask for seconds of your favorites, if you’ve still got room.
The cholesterol-conscious need to beware: Chamas is definitely beef-centric. Six of the 12 offerings are cuts of beef, and many of them are served rare. Non-beef-eaters will still get their money’s worth, but will miss out on much of the experience.
Superb Meats (And A Few Missteps)
The meats did vary in quality, though enough were excellent to make for a satisfying meal. The bacon-wrapped filet mignon was a standout, yielding plushly to the tooth, with juices exploding in the mouth with every bite. The sirloin, served very rare, boasted suppleness and a gamy, mineral quality. In the garlic steak (a very garlicky steak), the astringency of the aromatics contrasted nicely with the meatiness of the steak. Chicken drumettes were the most pleasant surprise, their skin almost as crispy as good Peking duck while their meat was moist and subtly flavored with herbs.
That said, the pork roast and flank steak were underseasoned and bland. Beef ribs were gristly. My husband found the cheese-crusted chicken too dense to work through, but I thought the cheese added a welcome hint of salt and sharpness.
No, It’s Not All Meat
Chamas also attempts to fill your valuable belly space with non-meat side dishes. There’s a hot and cold buffet replete with cheeses, salad items, rice and beans, vegetables, and other such offerings, and each table gets an order of mediocre mashed potatoes. Tread lightly here. These dishes are good but not spectacular.
A few of the non-meat items from Chamas’s buffet. (It was too dark at our table to get a good picture of the meat.)
And you won’t be able to go easy on the tapioca bread and caramelized fried bananas. I know, I tried. The cheese-filled tapioca bread balls, which are gluten-free, have an intriguing chewy texture similar to the sesame balls available at dim sum. The bananas are intended as a palate cleanser, but they’re so sweet they’d work as dessert. They’re encased in an almost cinnamony coating, reminiscent of an alcohol-free bananas foster.
Chamas also serves caipirinhas—the mojito-like national cocktail of Brazil—and tasty-looking desserts from Amelia Cafe, the bakery next door. (Amelia is open late and has very reasonable prices, if you need something sweet to take the edge off all that protein.)
For any meat lover or seeker of new food experiences, Chamas is a restaurant not to be missed.
The post Chamas Churrascaria: Durham’s Temple to Meat appeared first on Matters of Varying Insignificance.