South America via West County

Neon Memes • This past Saturday brought adventure, at least in the context of someone either manacled to a Brentwood Mac or caged in a Carondelet bungalow. More specifically, I jaunted to Chesterfield. More specifically still, I treated myself to a trip to Bacana Brasil Churrascaria (16123 Chesterfield Parkway West, 636.532.6969). Lunch there ($19.95 plus tax) included, almost necessarily, a salad bar and hot buffet from which, in all honesty, I could have satisfied myself with a plate or two of Brazilian rigatoni, served cold with shredded crab. Not even primer adventures unfold so easily, of course. "Do you like meat?" my waitress had asked on learning I'd never before visited the restaurant. A leading question, that. With almost dizzying regularity, the churrasqueiro―the grill chef―subsequently descended on my table with skewers bearing carnivorous delights. Sliced link sausage. Bacon-wrapped chicken medallions bordering on the sublime. A barrage of predictably fine beef. Eventually, I could do nothing but hoist a figurative white flag. For an embarrassing time thereafter, I nursed a Palma Louca (under other circumstances, scarcely as noteworthy as an earlier Xingu Black) and eyed the cerulean Chesterfield skies, drifting, just drifting. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor