Sal E Brasa

Sal e Brasa is a Brazilian churrascaria (steakhouse) chain that has all-you-can-eat meats, salads, and foods. In the outside, you can see these gigantic ribs on spits rotating. I have no idea if those were real, but they were pretty cool. We were able to walk in with seating for a party of 6 very easily in the middle of the afternoon. This was going to be our last meal before we head back to the U.S., and I was worried if I was going to get full fast.

Ambiance & Service

The ambiance is pretty loud and very typical of all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ buffets. It felt less pretentious than Fogo De Chão. The instant we sat down, we were bombarded by the meat servers. I didn’t even get a chance to get up to scope out the hot/cold foods, and I instantly had like 7 meats on my plate. What was very different than other U.S. places was that you can order carafes of juices (R$22,90). We ordered a carafe of caju and a carafe of passion fruit.

Food

I didn’t order any caipirinhas, but they had this fresh caipirinha station where they make it in front of you. Interesting enough, you can see the caju fruit on the right side.

The rodizio de carnes was R$89,90 per person. The second that we sat down, we were swarmed by 5+ meats, ranging from full on prime ribs to picanha. By the time I was able to eat, my whole plate was decked out.

Some of the options that I can remember and was new to me in this format that I haven’t seen before:

• pork picanha - this was super tender and juicy. I’m surprised they don’t offer this in the U.S.
• crispy pork chicharron - wow, this was really good and very similar to Puerto Rican chicharron. The skin was super crispy, and the meat was very tender.
• full rack of beef ribs - I usually see this already chopped up, but they literally bring a full rack and will slice whatever you want
• many different kinds of sausages - these were all very delicious
• picanha cheese patties - these were mini cheeseburger slides sans bread made out of picanha meat. The meat was actually very delicious because it had both the flavors of the stone and the full flavors of the picanha meat.
• garlic picanha - I wasn’t a fan of this because the picanha was cooked well-done and slathered with garlic. The steak was very dry.

For the cold/hot foods buffet, they had a lot of different things that were uncommon compared to the U.S. churrascaria restaurants. Without getting into too many details, they had a slew of different options that was quite overwhelming. Compared to Fogo De Chão, I thought this place was quite good for the amount of choices and quality.

The Abacaxi Assado com Canela (R$10,90) was basically a half roasted pineapple loaded with cinnamon. This was sublime.

Final Verdict

Sal e Brasa was surprisingly very delicious and enjoyable. I actually enjoyed this much more than the Brazilian chain Fogo De Chão because it had many cuts of meat (especially pork!) and lots of different types of sausages. We will probably try again Churrascaria Plataforma here in NYC to remind ourselves how it compares.

Yelp Jabs

Due to an absence of Yelp reviews, we’ll take a look at Google reviews.

The variety of meats is quite limited.

I think it was pretty comparable to Brazilian steakhouses here in the U.S. with slightly more meat options. The picanha variants here were quite good, and they offer surprisingly many pork options.

Revisions

1. Jun 30, 2024 - Initial revision.