ECHO (Page 16 Resto section February 28 – March 5, 2008)
BY DENISE DE LA FRANIER
RESTO - 9 out of 10
A head’s up to vegetarians and vegans across our fair Tri Cities: Boa Nova Rodizio Grill House is definitely not for you. Feel free to stop reading here. I won’t mind.
As for us flesh-eaters, I’d like to invite you to join me aboard the Meat Train. First stop: Boa Nova, where the atmosphere is welcoming, the greens and beans are aplenty, and the meat just keeps on coming. A visit to this elegant restaurant is an experience all its own. The only thing you need to pack is your appetite. (Oh, and maybe a nice pair of shoes and your credit card, since the place is pretty swank and good meat doesn’t come cheap.)
Here’s the deal in a nutshell: a “rodizio”, says Wikipedia, “is a style of restaurant service in Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants. One pays a fixed price and the waiters bring an offering of food to each customer at several times throughout the meal, until the customers signify that they have had enough.” There’s two dining options at Boa Nova. For $25.99, dip into the dinner buffet, or for a significantly heftier $34.99, add the rodizio feature and enjoy various kinds of deliciously roasted animal sliced directly from the spit onto your plate.
My man Eric and I checked it out last week, and our first impressions were promising. The place was quiet – but it was mid-week, so that doesn’t indicate much – and the space is gorgeous with soft lighting and rich earth tones. We were seated by the host; a handsome, balding fellow with a good supply of dry wit, and he gave us the low-down. It must be assumed that most patrons are in it for the “Meat Train” (that’s the host’s phrase, by the way) because he didn’t go into detail about regular dinner buffet option. He left us the rodizio card – one side lets the server or “gaucho” know to keep the meat coming, and the other lets him know when you’ve had your fill.
We made our way down to the buffet, heeding our server’s warning not to fill up on too many extras since a copious of meat was headed straight for our table. There were a couple of soups, fresh rolls, some bean dishes, seafood items, and salad bar fixins’. The greens looked a little wilty and sad, and the dried-out rice wasn’t that great, either. However, I was thrilled to tear into some mouth-watering smoked salmon and cold shrimp, and the roasted potatoes with onions were out of this world.
Then the assortment meat started rolling in. First in line was the chorizo (a.k.a. sausage) and it was divine. So was the pork loin that followed. Then, the medium-rare, scene-stealing peppercorn steak blew our minds. Its sheer amazingness overshadowed the drumstick that came next; though the chicken was lowly by comparison, it was still good. Next was the lamb, which failed to command our attention, but the bacon-wrapped chicken breast bits hot on its little lamb heels sure did.
“Wow, what kind of prestigious cut are they gonna serve us after all that,” I wondered.
“Grilled manatee, probably,” Eric answered. Mmm, probably not. At Boa Nova, just when you’ve eaten more meat at one sitting than you have in the past month, it just keeps on coming. But, thankfully, we ate small slices of everything, and by this point the train’s caboose was in sight. The sea-salt seasoned steak was delicious, and then to bring the meal to a close, onto the garlic steak, a worthy contender to its peppercorn counterpart. There was one final, digestion-aiding, non-meat item: roasted pineapple, dusted with cinnamon and brown sugar.
“It tastes just like warm apple pie,” wooed our host. Eric winced; he’s probably one of the ten people alive who doesn’t like apple pie. (If you’re one of the rare few, please get in touch with me and I’ll start a support group.) The pineapple slices did taste like warm apple pie, so, in spite of my full belly, I ate two.
We loved our meal at Boa Nova. The buffet without the meat isn’t worth the $26 price tag, and though the rodizio was also on the pricey side, you get what you pay for; we got a lot and the majority of it was excellent. Plus, after all that, the guacho reminded us that it’s all-you-can-eat, and offered us seconds of any of the meat selections we’d just enjoyed. Unreal. To my carnivorous friends: All aboard the Meat Train! It’s a delicious ride.
THE RECORD (B6 • Local Section • Tuesday, December 19, 2006)
BY DAVID GEORGE-COSH - RECORD STAFF - WATERLOO REGION
For some passersby, it simply looks like a big, wooden sign.
But beyond the barrel and floral design of the new Boa Nova Restaurant sign lies a story that bridges its timber with Waterloo Region’s past and its contemporary home.
The Kitchener restaurant’s co-owner, Roy Silva, said they were looking for a sign in keeping with the theme of the building, which was originally a Boehmer’s Fuel and Oil depot in the 1930s.
“We didn’t want to do a neon sign or anything like that. We wanted to keep with the materials of that time, or what they would have done around that time.”
After Silva approached local sign maker Blaine Casson with a rough concept of what he was looking for, Casson was able to locate wood culled from old Seagram Distillery buildings that were demolished several years ago.
“ I remembered a past project I worked on where I found this special wood from Seagram’s and thought it’d be perfect for the restaurant,” Casson said.
According to Casson, the barrel-like background board was created from white oak that was previously part of the Seagram’s warehouse’s sawing room, originally located in Breslau. The sign’s typography and outer leaf motif was created from cedar from the wood stockpile at the former site of Canada Barrel and Kegs at the corner of Erb Street and Father David Bauer Drive.
The sign took almost nine months to complete and cost about $20,000. It was installed last week.
Kory Kieswetter, a sales clerk at Kieswetter Demolition, the company that stored all the historic wood after gutting the Seagram’s buildings, says nostalgia accounts for a lot of the questions asked about the sign.
“We got a lot of inquiries from people that worked at Seagram’s or knew someone that used to work there,” Kieswetter said. “They really wanted a piece of a place that used to be associated with their family, or had some local historic value, and to recycle it to create something new.”
The Record.com - Dining Guide, Thursday, January 12, 2006.
Reviewed for the Record by Andrew Coppolino
Brandishing metre-long rapiers of hot meat, swift-moving "gauchos" flash a gleam of razor-sharp Henckels and finesse a glistening, juicy roasted morsel on to your plate. It's a carnivorous "buffet-by-the-sword" that comes to you rather than you going to it.
Kitchener's Boa Nova Rodizio Grillhouse, its Brazilian service punctuated with Portuguese flavours, is unique in the region. Open just a few weeks, Boa Nova strives for the spit-roasted authenticity of the churrascaria (pronounced to my linguistically lazy ear as something like "shoe-HAWS-ka-REE-ah").
The multi-windowed building at Charles and Ontario streets befits an eating establishment, and I'd love to see a different food experience stick behind those windows like a chunk of sirloin on a hot skewer: Rodizio Grillhouse could be that experience.
Roy Silva and Herman Macado hope so. The two local restaurateurs of Portuguese descent have eyed the location for a while, have bided their time, and have got their gauchos and ducks in a row, though there's none of the latter on their specially-ordered Portuguese rotisserie just yet.
The restaurant's decor is simple and clean, and has not succumbed to Iberian kitsch: it offers a Mediterranean feel and a nice bar, though tile flooring throughout makes for a coolish atmosphere (which linen tablecloths at dinner might improve).
Sit and you are briefed on a two-part menu. A buffet portion has delectable verve mingling with the uneventful: two soups (a good cabbage variation of Portuguese kale and an insipid, flavourless carrot), decent half-moon salmon rissois (though pasty for my taste), uninspired pasta salad and ubiquitous caesar, delightful pasteis de bacalhau (cod cakes), shrimp cocktail, lovely Portuguese roasted potatoes, chickpeas with hard-boiled egg, excellent black bean and pork feijoada, and classic Portuguese rices. At lunch, this half of the all-you-can-eat buffet is $12.99.
But bring on the meat: the second part of the lunch menu is luscious, juicy chicken drumsticks, nuggets of pink-centred peppercorn-studded sirloin, tender pork roast, and the spicy, smoky Iberian sausage chourico. Each was superb. The meat brings the all-you-can-eat tally to $17.99.
At the dinner buffet, many of the lunch offerings are joined by a good hot shrimp and mussel combo, tuna puffs, cheeses, cold cuts, and a mediocre green and yellow bean combo. A highlight for me was a wonderfully tender, lightly acidic cold squid salad.
Bring on the meat, times two. The four lunch meats double, and seven were fabulous at dinner, with balanced spices and salt allowing the essence of roasted-meat glory to dominate. Sausage, pepper-steak, pork, and chicken return, but add to these beauties succulent rosemary lamb with rich, round mouth-feel, a controlled garlic sirloin, and a marvellously tender picanha (top sirloin with a thick cap of fat) with at-the-edge-of-control saltiness (the bacon-wrapped chicken tidbits did nothing for me). Unlimited buffet is $25.99 with unlimited meat $34.99.
Arm yourselves and assist the gauchos! As they slice, you're called to duty with tongs to grab the food. I think I was drooling as I watched the juices run delectably down the skewer into the troughs of the cutting board. I mean, really, is there anything more mouth-watering than roasted meat?
Or roasted tropical fruit? Whole roasted pineapple, tinctured with cinnamon, parades through the dining room and is sliced as a palate-cleanser and light digestif between portions of meat. I must say it does both those things and is a good dessert, too.
Along with the tongs, other rodizio paraphernalia you get is a card, the green side representing, "Yes please, Mr. Gaucho, I'd like more," and the red side signifying, "Nao obrigado" (no thanks: I'm so full my tummy has skewered my lungs). Keep the green side visible, and you'll keep getting more. Plan your buffet attack carefully, though: I advise fewer trips to make sure you get a good sampling of meats, then fill in at the buffet when you've got the meat.
The lunch buffet was sparse, but I attribute that to Rodizio finding a balance for amount and timing of food presentation. I'm sure they're watching price points and food costs, but to some customers $18 for lunch with a moderate range of buffet options and meat might seem expensive, even though it is all-you-can-eat.
Sure, you can get a quick hot and cold lunch for $13, but the reason you go to Rodizio is for churrascaria. I wonder how how many diners want an all-you-can-eat meal focussed on meat before heading back -- belly-filled -- to the office?
On busy nights, Rodizio will need to schedule enough gauchos and waitstaff -- fleet-of-foot and eagle-eyed -- to clear plates for buffet service, lest the whole process leaves diners looking like they're sitting at a busing table.
Can Rodizio Grillhouse work? I hope so. Macado and Silva are gracious and friendly hosts, with growing product and customer knowledge. And they've got a food experience I think the city needs: unique, flavourful and fun.
