PAMPAS GRILL
ADDRESS: 6333 W 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90036
WEBSITE: http://www.pampas-grill.com/
On the drive back down from Santa Barbara, my girlfriend Cami and I were talking about a place to get dinner before heading back home. For a little while, Cami had been wanting to broaden my Brazilian barbecue (churrasco) horizons beyond the single experience that I had at Fogo de Chão. Her go-to churrasco spot was a place called Pampas Grill, which has two locations in LA. I’m always down for some barbecued meats, and from what Cami described, this place had plenty of variety and cooked them very well, too.
We decided to head over to their location in The Original Farmers Market, next to The Grove. With it being a weekend, their parking lot was jam-packed, and we had to rely on the parking gods to get a decent spot. Once we found one, we made our way into the main market area and over to Pampas Grill, where we were greeted by a pretty large line that was already wrapping around the corner of the storefront.
With all of the stores that set up a space within The Original Farmers Market, the majority of them don’t have their own seating, where you instead have a number of communal tables that you can go sit at once you’ve gotten your food. Pampas Grill works this way as well, so even though the line was rather long, it was progressing at a pretty good pace once we got in line. The food is priced by weight, and as you walk through the beginning portion of the setup, you’ll find the salad and hot dish offerings you could choose from. At the back end, that’s where you can order all of your meats, which are either carved or portioned off of their skewers coming directly from their huge rotisserie grill.
The menu board showed nine different options of meats to choose from, which featured different preparations of beef, chicken, lamb, and pork. I’ll be honest that every single one of the options sounded good to me, and if I had the stomach space to try all nine, I definitely would have. But in the end, I went with six total: garlic chicken, spicy chicken, picanha (sirloin cap), lamb leg, linguiça (sausage), and tri-tip. I skipped the salad bar, since I wanted to save the valuable stomach space for the other Brazilian hot dishes to complement the meats. Cami helped to be my food guide and recommended me to try the feijoada (Brazilian black bean stew), farofa (toasted cassava flour), garlic rice, and plantains.
From what I remember, I definitely had over a pound of food on that plate, between all of the meats and hot dishes. I started getting meat sweats just looking at the plate, but that didn’t stop me from going right into it. Every piece of meat had been cooked wonderfully, full of savory and smoky flavors that were imparted using the rotisserie grill to cook the meat on the skewers. None of the meat tasted dry either, and with purely just the meat and seasonings imparting the flavor, the churrasco really just lets the meat do the talking. If I had to select a top three, in no particular order, it would have to be the garlic chicken, picanha, and linguiça.
As for the hot dishes, I found all of them to also be really enjoyable as well. The feijoada had rich, earthy flavor from the black beans, with some bits of meat also cooked into the stew. Mixing that in with the garlic rice was a nice pairing as well. The farofa helped to give some additional texture and smoky flavor if I dipped a piece of the meat into it before eating. The plantains were a good way to finish off the plate with a slightly sweet note as well.
The meat sweats after polishing off that entire plate of food were certainly well worth it, with each bite having fantastic flavor from the various styles of meat preparations. The quality of the food is fantastic, and for the price that you pay per pound, I thought that it’s an absolute bargain. There’s good reason that there is a long line that forms for this place, but don’t let that dissuade you from joining it. The wait to experience the rich flavors from these barbecued meats would be well worth it.
Let’s now take a look at the Pampas Grill Dish Spotlight. Asterisks (*) below mark my recommended dishes. (Since all of the food ended up being piled onto one plate, I’ll just list out the various items that I got instead of trying to pinpoint them within the picture.)
** Garlic Chicken **
** Spicy Chicken **
** Picanha (sirloin cap) **
** Lamb Leg **
** Linguiça (sausage) **
** Tri-tip **
** Feijoada (Brazilian black bean stew) **
** Garlic rice **
** Farofa (toasted cassava flour) **
** Plantains **
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And finally, here are my rankings for Pampas Grill:
Food: 5 / 5
Beef, chicken, pork, or lamb, all of the meats from this churrascaria had amazing flavors and were cooked just right. Each bite certainly left me wanting to go back for another, and the nine different preparations definitely provided enough variety to choose from.
Atmosphere: N/A
With the restaurant operating in a takeout only model, there wouldn’t be an atmosphere to rate for the space. There is an ample amount of open seating available in the rest of the area to enjoy your food.
Service: 4 / 5
The staff members that helped with getting the meat off the skewers worked pretty efficiently to make sure that the line kept moving.
Price: 5 / 5
For the price of $16.25 / pound, I thought that was a fantastic price point to be able to try all of these different meat options, along with the hot dishes. Made even better was that the quality of the food was top tier, as well.
Overall:
14 / 15
(93%)
Categories: California, Restaurants
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