Ponteio Grill/Calhetas
03 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
I’m skipping ahead in the sequence of what has happened here so I can go ahead and write about this past weekend. One of Samuel’s mom’s friends from Paraiba (the state to the north of Pernambuco) came to the apartment in Recife and stayed during the last week of our travels in Jurema. On Saturday night, her son and daughter-in-law came to Recife and stayed with us as well. They had made plans to go out for dinner with another couple and invited Samuel and I to go along with them. So we ended up at a churrascaria called “Ponteio Grill”. If you have never been to a churrascaria, or never heard of one, I’ll need to explain a little bit. First of all, there is a buffet with everything but meat on it. This one had different types of vegetables, cheeses, salami, pasta salads, bread, soup, etc. It also had a great sushi bar. I had never eaten sushi in Brazil before, but I must say that was the best sushi I have ever tasted. And now for the unique part: the waiters bring around skewers with several different types of meat and you just pick what you want…and as much as you want.. They bring the meats by your table several times throughout the whole meal. Here are the meats that I can remember: picanha (a delicious cut of beef), sirloin, steak with parmesan cheese cooked on it, a very tender roast beef, about 4 other types of beef, chicken, chicken wrapped in bacon, chicken hearts (I saw these on my 1st trip to Brazil, and I still haven’t worked up the courage to try one. I will one day though…), and 2 different kinds of sausage. You get all of this plus the buffet for around US$16.00 per person. It’s pretty awesome.
While we were at dinner, it somehow came up that the other couple wanted to go to Porto de Galinhas on Sunday. (a beach which is about 40 km away). They invited Samuel and I to go again, so we decided to go. The plan was to leave at 8:00 a.m….we left around 9:15., and that’s when things got a little crazy. We were in 2 separate cars, and the guy driving the other car called us around 9:40 as we were driving to the beach to say that he was in a wreck. So we turned around to go find them and help. It turned out that a lady rear-ended him while he was driving through huge potholes on a side road. What was supposed to be a quick thing turned into an hour and a half of us standing on the sidewalk waiting for the police to show up and then get the thing resolved. (Of course I shouldn’t expect anything different in the country of perpetual lateness.) Since we had lost a lot of time, and our friends still had to drive back to Paraiba later in the day, they decided Porto de Galinhas was too far. Someone then came up with the idea to go to Calhetas (another beach). So we all piled back in the cars and headed there. Even the scenery on the way there was beautiful…
After driving down a narrow, washed-out dirt road with cars parked on both sides, we finally made it to the beach. We ate lunch at a restaurant there and enjoyed the view. After such a struggle to get there, it was definitely worth it…
