Fogo de Chao

If you live or travel near Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Washington DC or Chicago, this Brazilian Restaurant is the place to take your special someone for a memorable evening. The salad bar is really a bar of vegetable dishes - marinated asparagus spears, pepper slices or sundried tomatoes, as well as fine cheeses and more typical salad items, plus rice and black beans. But don't fill up - the meat is coming and this is really a meat-eater's restaurant - 12 different kinds of meat fire-roasted on spits and carved at your table by wandering waitstaff. You have a red and green disc for each diner. Green means bring me food; red means leave me alone for a while so I can eat. And the sides that will be brought to your table include garlic mashed potatoes, grilled polenta, cheese bread puffs and friend bananas. Incredible food; incredible decor; incredible service. Yes, it's pricey - plan to spend $50-65 per person, so for us it's an anniversary thing, the one night a year we don't look at prices on the menu (of which there are none at Fogo anyway). We shared a Flan for dessert, and the lovely former Alicia Martinez said it was the best she'd tasted (to which I carefully added "except for yours")

Movie Reviews

King Kong - too long for my tastes at 3 hours; special effects looked - well, computer-generated; several parts were too gross to watch (the giant cockroach scene in particular); but the faithfulness to the essential story of the Fay Wray classic. Much better than the mid-70s Dino de Laurentis version ("Nobody cry when Jaws die. When my Kong die, people cry.")

Good Night and Good Luck - A wonderful George Clooney film. Shot in grainy black and white to capture the 50s television feel, it's a film about Joe McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow and William F. Paley and the HUAC Communist blacklisting. The actor who plays Murrow is dead-on accurate. The story is great and fairly balanced and the jazz soundtrack featuring Diane Reeves is fabulous.