Dining at New Restaurants in Marietta

Lately we have been in a state of mind of getting ready for our cruise.

For example yesterday at about noon we noticed a new restaurant in a old remodeled shopping center. I am not sure what the name of it is but on the glass door is a sign that says “Brazilian Food”. And underneath that is another neatly printed sign saying, “Buffet today”.

Well, we will down that way – sort of. So we said why not? We will call this dining experience “research”.

And of course, it is a buffet.

In the same shopping center is a restaurant called something like Asian Buffet which has rows and rows of yards of hot steamy containers with all the Asian foods which all kinds of fish, shrimp, chicken, and much more.

We thought the Brazilian Buffet might even out do them… we said to ourselves that the Brazilians have a lot of beef and pork dishes. We went to another Brazilian Restaurant last year across town. It was not a buffet but it was expensive. As you ran low of things one of the servers would rush up to you and cut off slices of whatever your preference is until you let him know to stop. I think that day I ate myself into a stupor.

We entered the Brazilian Buffet with excitement and mouths drooling. And our smiles became frozen and our jaws and the language of our body sunk.

There was a table, not long at all, with maybe 4 or 5 rectangle vats. Each had something in it. The first one had mashed potatoes, the 2nd one had chunks of beef glistering in a liquid of some kind, and there was a rice with chunks of chicken, and a pasta. The price was $6.95 per person.

Also what we noticed there were no sneeze shields above the food. Tch tch.

We were the only customers except a young man and woman who were sitting looking into each other eyes – they looked Spanish and she had on a low cut. Maybe he wasn’t looking into her eyes. And I thought maybe they worked there and was on break, they had no plates or anything in front of them.

We the manager and his whole crew – two waitresses, and an old man (cook) lined up to look at us, or to check us out. I think customers were a rare commodity there and what was even rarer were customers with Georgian accents. They all seemed very polite.

We asked did they have menus. He pulled out a pile of laminated menus and hand us one, and said something to the effect, “Opps! That one is not in English, it is Portuguese.” Then he flipped through all his Portuguese and Spanish menus and found us an English menu. I think he only had one. I thought, “Is this like dialing “2” for English?”

He explained why he had so many non-English menus – because Mari-ét-ta has about 50,000 Brazilians* living here. I liked the foreign way he pronounced my home town Mari-ét-ta – it sounded, well, so International!

Therefore in a restaurant that caters to the Brazilians and Latinos of course there is no reason to have most the menus in English… you cater to your customers not people that wander in and probably won’t return. We were on their turf.

We ordered what by the description was a glorified hamburger each. A hamburger patty with a slice of ham, corn kernels, split linked sausage, a fried egg, lettuce, tomato, and tiny little bits of fries – it looked something like a Dagwood Sandwich. It was the ingredients for an upset stomach for sure…. I think today I will go above par in the fart count.

The woman with the low cut was delivered a bowl of ice cream by the cook. The man got up and got him some mashed potatoes and beef. Then, after he finished it he was delivered a bowl of ice cream by the old man cook.

While we were eating several people came in and got orders to carry out. I was not facing them but I assume they were given Styrofoam cartons and used the buffet. Business was picking up!

On one side of the room was a big flat HD TV. A soap opera was on in another language. I think it was probably a Brazilian soap opera. It was funny to watch and not know what they were talking about. One guy in it, looked like he was in Purgatory or something similar and he was negotiating with the devil who looked very much like the Devil looked back in the 50s with horns and a tail and a pitchfork. And another scene was a man and woman talking – close up faces and when one would say something that I think was meant to be meaningful sound effects would come on – like the DJs had back in the 50s and 60s. Sometimes it would be something like bells, or a squeeze bulb horn, or mostly it was some kind of whistle that would so sadly, “Wah, Wah.”

We walked out with upset stomachs. Well, you never know until you try – then you win some and lose some.



*Wait! Maybe he said there are 15,000 Brazilians in Marietta rather than 50,000. Fifty thousand seems to be too many for a fairly small community like this.