Zeh Cozinha
Zeh Cozinha is located in the Midway shopping mall in Natal. It’s regarded as a local restaurant with many options of steak or seafood. The price is not too expensive for locals, and this restaurant is competing for business against Camarões and Outback in the same level of the shopping mall. Along with the foods, it also has a decent selection of drinks. We were really excited to try this restaurant out to get a feel for what’s a popular local restaurant.
Ambiance & Service
There is both an outside and inside area for seating in the mall. If desired, you can sit outside of the restaurant in an area that’s more open space and light. We sat inside the restaurant close to the entrance. The service was pretty fast.
At this moment for currency, $1 USD is close to R$5.4 Brazilian Reals.
Food
The Morena Tropicana (R$23) came with whiskey bourbon, purê de caja (caja purée), sicily lime, manga rosa, angustura, and tomilho (thyme). I’m definitely becoming a fan of both caja and caju. This drink was pretty good.
The Picanha (R$126) came with a 350g steak, rustic mashed potatoes, farofa, and vinaigrette. I asked for medium rare, and the steak came out medium. In this region, it’s atypical for steaks to come out bleeding, but they actually did a pretty decent job with it. Everything on this plate tasted fantastic.
The Filé Invocado (R$64) came with grilled filet with dark sauce, mashed potatoes, and a grilled palm heart. This was also pretty good. The steak here in this restaurant tasted pretty clean and not with any tenderizer.
The Filé Da Quarentena (R$64) also came with a grilled filet with dark sauce, but came with some delicious pasta with heavy cream, arugula, lemon zest, and grated parmesan. This pasta was my favorite side of the night. It had the right amount of heavy cream and garlic, and it was cooked perfectly al dente. We actually microwaved this the next day, and it still tasted great if not better.
Final Verdict
Zeh Cozinha was one of our favorite dinners in our visit to Natal. Not only was the food of all great quality, but the prices were very reasonable. We highly recommend Zeh if you’re looking for a no frills local Brazilian steak joint.
Yelp Jabs
Due to the lack of Yelp reviews, we’ll take a look at some of the Google reviews.
I placed an order and it took 1h15 to deliver and, when I thought it would arrive, the Ifood biker “couldn’t find” the address, and came back with the order. Disappointed!
Now that we know it’s not just Yelpers that review delivery orders. Ifood is a company similar to Uber Eats that delivers the food. It’s very much up to the Ifood rider/driver to do things promptly, and it shouldn’t be the restaurant’s fault for not able to deliver the food timely.
I ordered a parmigiana for Ifood and the quality dropped a lot. Flesh full of nerves. Extremely thin and unseasoned sauce. Pasta was overcooked and overcooked. I even checked twice to see if it really belonged to Zéh, it was so bad. Unfortunate.
This is another example where even people outside of the U.S. think that food quality of delivery food will be on par to actually eating in the restaurant. That’s never going to happen.
Revisions
- Jun 28, 2024 - Initial revision.