Fazenda Churrascada is a restaurant with the soul of a corporate event with an overdose of brands

Fazenda Churrascada is not exactly a restaurant: it is an offshoot of a multi-platform business that also operates a traveling festival, a signature meat club, another restaurant specializing in grilled fish and, in the future, a carnivore tourism project in the interior. of State.

It all started in 2015 with the event, Churrascada, which hires renowned chefs to run themed squares — always cooking with fire, almost always a food that exudes virility with notes of leather and motorcycle smoke. This year, for example, there was a whole ox flattened, a Ferris wheel of piglets and a show-class on deboning bovine carcass.

Churrascada is an expensive event, which charges expensive tickets and raises with brands related to barbecue. The 2022 line-up (that’s what they call it) had 52 chefs, 42 stations and 55 sponsors. The ticket cost R$ 550, with free consumption of food and drink.

That’s why Fazenda Churrascada is not really a restaurant. The feeling of someone who walks through the entrance of Casa da Fazenda do Morumbi, in the west of São Paulo, where the operation was installed, is equivalent to parachuting into a corporate event.

Someone takes your name, gives you a command card, and directs you forward, then right, to a pulpit where a hostess checks something on a screen and indicates a table in the large, naturally lit room.

Along the way, the customer is exposed to more publicity than the poor listener of the free version of streaming music.

In the first screening of the entrance, you can see a shed from a wine importer, a red barrel from a ketchup brand, a beer hall with a bear and a black umbrella from a brand of very masculine pickup trucks.

On the way to the hostess, there is an encounter with the muse of the black parasol: every male’s dream pickup truck, parked casually inside the restaurant. Then you still pass for an English motorcycle, very fast, but luckily also with the engine off. And a little shop of licensed products.

The sound is loud, mechanical and masculine. It plays classic rock and some American country music. I sit with my back to the grill and in front of a small stage like those where, at corporate events, the finance guy goes up a little drunk to announce that the company has beaten Ebitda, the indicator that measures a company’s cash generation, and that will happen, yes, bonus at Christmas.

More logos strike the retina. I have the displeasure of staring at the elastic of the underwear of the occupant of the next table, mischievously displayed over the piggy bank. I deduce that it is a precious piece. The same citizen wears the letter “D” on the left shoe and the “G” on the right — I don’t like to mention names, but I even found this marketing by Dolly Guaraná #sqn nice.

There are those who are relaxed amid the overdose of advertising. I’m not that person. Despite hating the atmosphere of the Farm, I am fully aware that it appeals to a large audience in the boroughs of São Paulo. Food, in turn, presents objectively undeniable predicates, with slips in execution.

I went to Fazenda Churrascada to taste the seasonal menu called “Barbecue of the World”, with creations by international and famous people in this universe of beef, embers and rock’n’roll. Until February 2023, the guest is the Dutchman Jord Althuizen.

Inspired by the South of the United States, the Jord dish (R$ 170, for two) has short rib grilled and flambéed with American whiskey (a declared brand, of course), with marrow butter and accompanied by corn cake and corn cream. Corn, corn and corn, if you count the whiskey raw material.

Before, I order some starters with the friendly waiter Rubens. Smoked pork rib dumplings (R$32, six units) and garlic bread (R$24). Rubão treats me like a sage: “You just asked for the flagship snacks and the best garlic bread in town.”

Both very tasty (plus the garlic bread) and both with a reasonable temperature problem (plus the garlic bread, again). The creamy filling made of cheese, garlic and other paranauês, incomparably better than industrial garlic bread, is cold in the center of the baguette.

Finally, the Dutchman’s meat arrives — supplied by a slaughterhouse that has a butcher shop in the restaurant, etc. etc. etc.

Short rib, for those unfamiliar with grill jargon, is a bone-in cut of beef chuck. Extremely tasty fore meat. But that, even in animals of genetics and total topzera management, does not excel in softness.

This isn’t a hoot with the great Dutchman’s steak, on the contrary: just order it knowing you’re going to need to chew. The meat comes exactly as ordered, to the point for less in my case. The accompaniments, as I anticipated, are too sweet for my taste (but technically impeccable).

I also order a beef broth rice, rich in flavor, sodium tycoon. I need one more cheap lemonade: sparkling water, squeezed lemon and ice.

When I ask for the bill, Rubens asks if I had enjoyed “the experience.” Yeah, sure, it was great to eat with a view of the guy’s underwear at the other table and under a colossal monster truck brand sign.

From lunch, there is food left over to feed at least two more people (side effect of going alone and professionally to a restaurant), but no one asks me if I want to wrap “for the dog”. Looks like it’s not nice to ask. I ask.

The marmitex was delivered while still hot (minus the garlic bread) to some homeless families who jointly approach drivers at a traffic light in Pinheiros.

Earlier, while I was receiving the bill, the manly sound of Fazenda Churrascada was playing “Fortunate Son” by the Creedence Clearwater Revival: “I ain’t me/ it ain’t me/ ain’t no millionaire’s son” (“I’m not I / it’s not me / I’m not the son of a millionaire”). It’s certainly not me, much less Rubens, still less the hungry at the lighthouse.