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Dinner Date: Thanks, I’ll take the meat
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If you are going to The Grill Club, the Brazilian churrascaria in Bayfront, you need a plan of attack.
For those unfamiliar with the churrascaria concept, it’s pretty much a meat free-for-all. There is no real menu. You pay a flat fee (in this case $39.95) and for that you have free rein of the salad and appetizer bar and as much meat as you can eat. For your main course, roaming waiters come by with various roasted meats still on the spits. Everyone at your table gets little cards that either say “Yes, I want some more” or “No, thank you.” You flip your card to the side of your choosing and the waiters, or gauchos, pass around to see if you are interested in more. And there’s always more.
Which is why you can’t just go there on a whim. You won’t be able to fully enjoy what the restaurant has to offer, although, honestly, that’s probably part of the meat emporium’s business plan. After all, there are few reasons for the restaurant to offer such a large, and seemingly delicious, spread of appetizers — everything from gourmet cold cuts and cheeses to asparagus to oysters on the half shell.
The problem with that plan is that the food on the starters bar is mediocre at best (cold tough asparagus, bland mussels and some OK salami) and the meat runs from good to unbelievably so. So they might trick you the first time you go. But after that you’ll be smart enough to know to skip the filler and dive right in to the main courses.
Jon: We weren’t really planning on having cocktails, but our waiter really pushed starting our meal with a traditional caipirinha ($10). Made with cachaça (a distilled sugarcane liquor), sugar and lime, the drink tastes kind of like a combination of a mojito and a margarita. All it needs is a prominent placement on some reality TV show and this would be the next great American cocktail craze. It’s both refreshing and substantive. There wasn’t too much of a kick, although the alcohol was a key flavor.
Jenna: The starters/salad bar looks appetizing, but there really isn’t much there in terms of flavor. Part of the problem is that while there are a lot of options, all of them are served cold — including a few things that shouldn’t be served that way. Who wants to eat cold mussels? And as appetizing as oysters are normally, you tend to shy away from them if they are sitting shucked, on their shells, on a bed of ice. Who knows how long those have been out there?
Jon: Before the gauchos started circling our table, a server brought out a few accompaniments for our meat. Three sauces (all so-so and therefore disregarded), a healthy portion of potatoes (which he warned us to stay away from because they “fill you up”) and some baked cinnamon-sprinkled bananas as a palate cleanser in between meats (which wasn’t that effective.)
Jenna: We got off to a great start with our meat choices when the chicken breast wrapped in bacon came around. As they slid the piece of chicken off the spit and onto my plate, I had no reason to be excited. But there was something wonderful about the combination of the smoky bacon and juicy chicken that was definitely more than the sum of its parts. Another excellent piece of meat was the top sirloin. The small rim of fat at the top of the steak added both a nice texture (crunchy, then soft) and a lot of beef flavor. Unlike some of the other steaks that came our way, this was a revelation. It makes you wish that more places cooked their meat over an open flame.
Jon: There were a few other nice surprises. The roasted pork loin and the chicken thighs both were so much more moist than you normally get at a restaurant.
But there were a few duds. The lamb chops were both puny and a little overcooked. The mint jelly was borderline edible. The bacon-wrapped filet of beef was surprisingly bland and a little chewy (again, due to overcooking). And the Brazilian sausages were just plain boring with a flavor like a mild chorizo and the texture of an Italian sausage you’d get at Publix.
Jenna: After rounds and rounds of meat, there wasn’t any chance that dessert would be an option. But before we left, the head server insisted that we have a piece of the roasted pineapple. Thankfully, we obliged him. With its high sugar content, the fruit works great over a flame. The juices caramelize on the outside, creating a flavor that is like eating fresh pineapple, only magnified by five. With an option like that, it’s hard to imagine they sell many of their other house desserts.
The verdict
Jon: Go expecting to loosen your belt a notch after you finish your meal. It might take you a few extra days on the treadmill to work off the calories, but it’s worth it, especially if you stay away from the appetizer bar. And it’s OK to laugh when they ask you if you’ve saved room for dessert.
Jenna: The Grill Room isn’t a spot for everyday dining — unless perhaps you are a competitive eater or a sumo wrestler. But if you are looking for something a bit out of the ordinary in town that thrives on sameness, this is a good place to start.
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The Grill Club
492 Bayfront Place, Naples, 430-7020, thegrillclub.com
(This Web site isn’t live yet, but should be up and running soon.)
Hours: 4:30 to 10 p.m. daily
Cuisine: Roasted meat
Service: Good, almost too good. Even when you flip your “No, thanks” card, plenty of people offer you more meat.
Atmosphere: OK. The owners didn’t do too much renovation and remnants of the Italian eatery it was are evident. So, it’s got a lot of Old World touches.
Noise and light levels: Both pretty bright. Since the Brazilian barbecue is a very communal meal, the crowd was a little boisterous. It’s definitely not staid dining. But the noise level wasn’t so much that you had trouble hearing your dining companions. The light was a little brighter than you normally find at local restaurants, but comfortable.
Beverages: Full bar and generic wine list
Prices: Dinner is $39.95 per person, and this includes an appetizer-salad bar and all the meat you can eat. Desserts and drinks are extra.
Value: It really depends on how much you eat. At $39.95, dinner is either a steal or a rip-off, depending on how gluttonous you are and what you eat.
Recommended dishes: The bacon-wrapped chicken breast, top sirloin, grilled pineapple
Verdict: Go, but make sure you’re really hungry and that you have a plan of attack. This isn’t a place that you’ll ever consider as part of your regular rotation. But it’s nice as a change of pace and a good idea for a large group of people. The one price for everyone makes splitting the check a lot easier.
The Naples Daily News asked readers to help us build an interactive map of Mother's Day greetings from around Southwest Florida and you responded! The majority of our responses were from Collier County, but we received Mother's Day messages from all over the United States, including Louisiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Ohio, New Jersey, Georgia and Missouri, as well as locations on Florida's East Coast. 
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