Souza's Brazilian Steakhouse on Main Street

June 25, 11:51 PMBurlington Stay-at-Home Moms ExaminerRebecca Vickery

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The Vickery Family enjoying a special Souza's brunch

Business was bustling at Souza’s Brazilian Steakhouse on Father’s Day during the brunch seating.  People who had reservations waited in line outside the door waiting for the 12pm seating to clear out of the corner restaurant.  Once the restaurant cleared, every seat was filled again with people hungry and ready for a unique dining experience.

The tables are set with the usual—plates, silverware, napkins and water glasses—and also the not so usual: bananas, and double sided, laminated 2X2 cards that say respectively, “No Thank You” and “Yes, please,” in both English and Portuguese.  The wait staff is dressed in Brazilian attire and they explain to the tables how the cards and serving works.  (If you do not receive the explanation, make sure you ask, otherwise you might just miss out on some great food.)

The brunch consists of a fresh buffet, several different types of tropical fruit juices, and table side service of 4-5 different meats and grilled pineapple.  When you go up for the buffet, you are greeted by the most welcome sight of beautifully petite pastries and Brazilian rolls.  This is a plus because it’s easier to justify sampling many pastries when they are petite.  (If you bring your littles with you, you can split your pastries in thirds, which gives you just a taste of the sweet brunch treats.  Next, there’s a silver covered hot dish of hash.  It seemed to be Brazilian corned beef hash with meat, potatoes, carrots and onions.  It was delightful.

The next section of the buffet is the international salad bar, which includes all sorts of things that help you to feel like you’re still eating right.  The standard salad faire is present—green salad, tomatoes, and the like—and then there’s some cucumber salad, corn and black beans, seaweed, peas and black sesame salad, as well as a number of other unique dishes.  Finally in this section there is a long dish of smoked salmon-nice and fresh.  The salmon and the corn and black bean salad were definitely items that stuck out in their flavors and freshness.

The next section contained a number of hot covered dishes. These were: string beans and almonds, potatoes (these were well spoken of by my husband), bacon with fried slices of bread rolls, and scrambled eggs.  All of these were very fresh and nicely cooked.

Between the brunch section and the cheese/dessert section is a table that contains several fresh tropical juices.  There was cashew juice, pineapple juice, passion fruit juice and guava juice.  Some of these might seem more watery than we are used to, but that is probably just a matter of preference.

The last section of the buffet is a cheese and dessert section.  This contained a large cheese wheel, what appeared to be Brazilian peanut butter and jelly, and several different types of dessert.  This is a section to be visited later on in the review.  The cheese was quite nice.

After you sit down to eat (and if you have little ones, after you split up everything on your plate amongst the lot of you), you get to start sampling the variety of foods that you have placed on your plate.  However you do your buffets, this part is bound to be enjoyable.  Before long, the wait staff arrives at your table with the first meat selection.  At the time, it was pork loin.

The pork loin is served from a sword of skewered meat.  For anyone who likes meat, this is a sight to behold.  The meat is put onto the baseboard by the waiter, and then you remove it with your mini tongs.  At this point, if you never received instructions as to how the serving works, you might be in trouble.  If the red face of the card is up, the waiters do not stop to serve you whatever meat they have.  You get passed.  This is not part of the dining experience you want to mistakenly miss.

At any rate, there are several more types of meat that come around.  There is chicken on the bone-delightfully seasoned and crispy.  It comes nicely off the bone, so there is not a lot of waste necessary.  There are two different kinds of beef, one on the sword and one in vegetables.  And there was another type of meat that little red sign trouble got passed the table.  The meats were quite excellent, although the beef in the dish was much juicier and more flavorful than the one from the sword.

After you’ve had all of the savory faire that you feel you need (or maybe a little more), it’s time to revisit that dessert station.  There, you will find flan—and if you’re used to the flan that you get in Mexican or Spanish restaurants, this will taste good, but different to you, éclairs, a coconut pudding, and a variety of bar cookies and brownies with which you may just be too full to sample.  

Finally, when you think that you’ve have all the food that you can manage to fit in your stomach (or when you’re in the process of getting there), the wait staff brings out grilled pineapple.  This is something that you absolutely must try.  It is coated with cinnamon and then grilled to perfection.  Or in the very least, it’s grilled to sweet goodness.  

The Sunday brunch runs from 9am to 2pm.  It costs 14.95 a person and children under five are free.  This is good for you thrifty moms, because if you have two littles under five, then you can say you’re paying $10 for an all you can eat brunch for yourself, and $4.95 a piece for the children.  Just think, if you have more than 2 under the age of five, you’re getting an even better deal!  And considering that dinner at Souza’s costs $37 a person (with children under 5 still free), brunch is a great way to sample some of Souza’s unique and delicious cuisine.  This is a great place to treat your family to on special occasions, but not necessarily price frienly enough for the average Joe, Jill and their children to eat at on a regular basis.