Meat your waiter before he meats you, at Brazil Grill! IMAGE: MATT WONG

Although it has been open since January, Brazil Grill still feels undiscovered due to its hidden office-building-like locale downtown. The Grill serves everything in an all-you-can-eat style ($28.95), so it's best to eat lightly the day of your visit and pace yourself. I was so taken by the exotic offerings on the salad bar—hearts of palm with pimento, curried sweet potatoes and black beans and rice with farofa, a condiment made of cassava meal—that I was stuffed before the mounds of meat began to arrive.

Being a novice, I didn't fully grasp the importance of using the hockey-puck-like signal on the table, either. Flip your puck to the green side and a waiter dressed in traditional gaucho gear (black vest, billowy white shirt, scarlet scarf) arrives with a skewer loaded with meat. Flip the signal to red and they give you a break.

We were so distracted by the romance of men whisking around the earth-toned dining room with swords of meat that we forgot to flip our puck; they kept coming with more meat, and soon I had more than I could handle.

Around 15 meats were on offer. "Lighter" fare like bacon-wrapped chicken and shrimp came first, then cognac-marinated chicken drumsticks, pork loin and roasted pineapple. A parade of red meat followed, from simple salt-and-pepper-seasoned leg of lamb to mustard-coated sirloin. If you're after rarer-cooked meat, pass on the first few outer slices and wait for medium-rare slices from the center of the roasts.

Once you get the hang of the "go" and "stop" signaling thing and take a few sips from a deliciously tart Caipirinha cocktail ($7.50) made with muddled limes and cachaça (Brazilian rum), the leisurely pace of dining of Brazil is bound to set in.