Review: Churrasco BBQ & Steakhouse

Churrasco BBQ & Steakhouse visually spices up its portion of Springfield Avenue. Clay-colored awnings shelter curtained windows, and strings of white lights drape the doorway.  It’s festive and welcoming—inside and out.

We were seated us at a table against the stone and burnt orange wall surrounding the dining room. The room is narrow, with no more than 20 tables, but it’s warm and pleasantly Portuguese, with paintings of the homeland on the walls. The room was half full on a Friday night with most tables filled with families.

Make sure to check out the pedestal sink tucked away in a tiled alcove to the left of the front door. It gives guests no excuse to come or to leave with sticky fingers.

Churrasco (Portuguese for barbecued meat) specializes in traditional Portuguese meats and seafood. It’s a bring-your-own but there’s a liquor store attached with a separate street entrance. Co-owner Ed Mourato stopped by our table often with menu suggestions and to pour the wine.

We started with an appetizer special—a portabella cap on top of crabmeat dressed with tomatoes and lettuce and topped with mozzarella. It was savory; with a basketful of the delicious bread that came right away and the bottle of pinot we brought, the meal could have ended there.

The declarations of how delicious the food was from the table of six next to us suggested that meat was the way to go at Churrascos. Every plate at that table had a meat entrée. Hard to tell exactly what, because the portions were huge and were smothered with sauce.

With choices such as Texas baby-back ribs, pork cubes with shrimp and sausage, whole bbq chicken, spare ribs, and a host of chicken and veal entrees, Churrascos is meat-heaven.

All entrees come with an ordinary green salad, rice, Spanish potatoes and vegetables. They’re reasonably priced between $14 and $20. The filet mignon with buttered mushrooms was the priciest dish on the menu at $22.95.

We tasted the chorico (Portuguese sausage) and collard green soup. It was a cream-based, greenish, rather bland concoction. The salt and pepper on the table saved it from being pushed aside.

We had high hopes for the seafood. But those hopes quickly plummeted.

A swordfish entrée smothered with a red sauce containing pearl onions, capers and potatoes was overcooked and under-spiced. And the vegetables were obviously frozen, mixed and when heated, produced mushy broccoli and mashed cauliflower. I’m not sure if the long green vegetable was an asparagus spear or a string bean.

The paella was topped with a lobster tail that was overdone and the rice-a-roni was aplenty. Digging was necessary to find the peas, the shrimp, the two clams and the three mussels.

But most disappointing was the lack of flavor.  Any of these dishes could have been saved with a little adobo, or at the very least, some onions and garlic. The flames painted on the sign out front suggest spicy and seasoned. Didn’t taste either.

We skipped dessert. But a separate desert menu is offered.

Mourato brought our leftovers to the table and suggested the paella would make a great breakfast. I took him up on it the next morning. It did taste a bit better the next day when I reheated it in a pan with hot sauce, chicken broth, salt, pepper and garlic.