This is how you feel after leaving El Gaucho restaurant, located on the second floor of Karon Beach Square and owned by Mövenpick Spa and Resort. The place was recently remodeled and reopened last October as Phuket’s newest Brazilian churrasqueira (steakhouse) complete with the famously meat-heavy Rodìzio grill.
What exactly is Rodìzio? It’s a style of Brazilian dining where meat carvers walk around the dining-room floor with large racks of grilled-meat (from prime beef cuts to grilled chicken and sausages) for diners to consume as many heaps as they want. Every five minutes, the carver comes back with a different meat hot off the grill.
At El Gaucho, the Rodìzio meal (B1,200++ per person) is called churrasco and comes with rice and grilled vegatables, dinner rolls, and access to the restaurant’s salad buffet (which also has seafood cocktails!).
It’s easy to get full early, which is why we saved our appetite for the meats.
First up was grilled chicken followed by beef tenderloin and then lamb. Each were succulent in their own way, especially with El Gaucho’s homemade chimichuri sauce (macerated parsley, garlic, peppers, swimming in olive oil) and black bean sauce.
During dinner, Apiwat Chaiyarat, Karon Beach Square’s marketing Manager, ordered an a la carte dish: shrimp with mango and avocado. It was a cross between sweet som tam and a shrimp cocktail, though the avocado was the star of the show. It is a light dish that can easily be shared amongst diners.
Back to the Rodìzio, our meat carver came out with racks of smoked pork shoulder, beef sirloin, Italian sausage, rib-eye, and even bacon-wrapped mussels. The Italian sausages were, thankfully, much smaller than usual since diners will be halfway or two-thirds of the way done by the time it comes out.
To finish everything off, our meat carver came out with cinnamon-covered pineapple as a treat. It was an unexpected hit though difficult to finish off since we’re basically rolling on our stomachs as we leave.
Before departing Apiwat informed us of a special for The Phuket News readers: Diners who have a copy of our review of El Gaucho should take a photo with the newspaper and post it on Facebook with a check-in at Karon Beach Square and “like” the Karon Beach Square fanpage to receive a “buy one-get-one free” churrasco meal (Rodìzio).
El Gaucho restaurant is located at Karon Beach Square and is open daily, Monday to Sunday, from 6pm–11pm. Make a reservation at the resort.phuket@moevenpick.com or call (+66) 76.396.139.