Brazilian Flame Meats and Barbeque ~ Zetland

 Essential eating for the carnivorous.

We stumbled upon Brazilian Flame Meats and Barbeque after one of our many visits to the fantastical Slurp Slurp around the corner.

Half the shop is a butcher and the other half sells BBQ. We noticed the roasted meats are only forty bucks a kilo, which is insanely good. By comparison, the long gone American BBQ joint in our neighbourhood charged over a hundred dollars a kilo, for lesser cuts of meat too.

We have visited at varying hours and days and it is always busy, usually with  Brazilian folks. No matter how busy it gets the super lady at the counter always treats us like we are the first and most important customers of the day, and she is immensely proud of the food, and rightly so.

We are generally not big fans of meat-for-meats-sake, so it was the Feijoda ($20) that lured us in. The black bean stew has some meaty bits, rice, salad and cassava flour. The bean stew is pretty good, but when you take home the leftovers to reheat, something mysteriously magical happens and the bean stew gets a knockout unami hit.

Flame PF -  $18.  The menu says this comes with rump but the super lady asks what meats we want, so we go for chirozo and pork. It comes with black beans (different to the black bean stew),  rice, salad and casava flour. The chorizo kicked buttocks though the pork was super salty, probably to get that lovely crackly skin. We liked the meat but the toasted casava flour blew our little minds. The flavour is difficult to describe, it has a lovely light texture and is a little sweet, lets just say like The Dude's rug, it just brought the whole dish together.

Flame BBQ Roll - $16. One choice of meat, in this case beef, in half a hot dog bun with chippies and salad. The bread roll is toasted and crisp on the outside, and goes well with that beautifully cooked beef, with some bacon for good measure. The roll doesn't hold in the meat that well, it's a bit hard to eat without looking like Bill Shorten at Bunnings. The roll is a good option if you want a lighter meal, it's satiating, not stuffing. We love the beef best of all the meats here so far, it's a nice cut of beef cooked and seasoned perfectly. Haven't tried the lamb yet...

PS - When the counter lady asks if you want sauce, the correct answer 'oh lord, yes'.  It's a humdinger - flame smoked mayo, it really is super smokey and sweet.

Flame meat and salad - $22. Two choices of meat, beef again with chicken, with more of that super smokey sauce on top, on top of two choices of salad, we go potato salad and tomato salad. We reckon this will be our go-to dish here - protein and salad - it's pretty close to being healthy, salt and sugary sauce aside. We even loved the chicken here, which can be a lesser meat in some bbq type places - it's super smokey.

The most popular menu item on our visits was the Flame BBQ Loaded Fries - $13. We go beef again, we just can't help it.

Our tip is to bring a takeaway container because the servings are deceptively large. We see folks throw out their unfinished feasts which is a crime against humanity - this food makes for amazing leftovers.

Brazilian Flame Meat and Barbecue is at 565 Botany Road, Zetland, just a short waddle from Green Square station.

PS - we have started a little tradition of visiting Saint Germain Patisserie in Redfern after lunch in the Zetland/Alexandria area, for caneles, wee dense doughy cakes that are sweet-but-not-too-sweet, with an eye-popping caramelised crust that we somehow overlooked in our travels to  France (thanks to Miss Piggy for putting us onto these). We are also big fans of the croissants here, they run that perfect line between crispy and bread-y type croissants.