Posts Tagged With: Rio

Guest blogger- Jane

When I was looking for somewhere a little different to eat for our last night I found restaurant “Marius Degustare”, which was on Avenida Atlantico at the far end where we had walked that day and it was rated 5 stars and 16,969 reviews can’t be wrong.

I knew from the elaborate entrance of bright blue lit palm trees and camp gold covered figurines at the entrance, that I had made the right choice! Inside was a “Pirates Cave” full of quirky lights, lots more figurines, the walls were covered with plates or painted in gold and covered in mirrors. And guess what?…. there were pirates everywhere (they were the waiters) and I should add at this point they were not the jolly sort but were quite surly, some may say grumpy and we thought highly amusing.

We were shown to our table and they explained what happens next. They asked us our nationality and then planted a flag with your country on your table.

Julie did not recognise the flag of the couple sitting nearest to us but could not ask the nice lady where they were from as the whole night she had her iPhone in front of her face taking photos for Instagram. Instead, Julie asked the burly chap who said in a rather gruff manner “Brazil Regional”. We thought he might be auditioning to be a pirate!

This was an all you can eat steak and seafood restaurant where the not so jolly pirates, each came round with trays of meat/fish that had just been prepared or in the case of the steaks were still on a hot stone so you could have it the way you liked it. You did not get the whole steak you got small pieces of meat and then more meat and then more and so on.

These are some of the ones that we were offered that I remember:

Tenderloin, Tomahawk, T-Bone, Porterhouse, Fillet, Ribeye and Sirloin.

The fish platters had these that I remember:

Lobster Tails, Oysters, Squid, Octopus; King Prawns, Sea Bass.

Woe betide you if you were vegetarian, as your list was limited to a grilled mushroom.

This wasn’t everything, oh no, they had an all you can eat and loosely titled salad bar too, on which we found:

Giant mussels, oxtail stew, seafood paella, plus lattice crisps, smoked salmon and asparagus (for the vegetarians) and so much more but can’t possible name it all.

We could have ordered a bottle of wine off their extensive wine list for around £200 but we had a Portuguese red for £35. It was very nice.

As we were eating someone moved around the room and started swinging all the lights and then a bell clanged at that point people started clapping. We had no idea why but being British we joined in.

To get to the loo you had to go up an elaborate staircase at which we noticed couples posing in front of a huge mirror for a selfie so we tried that but the photo had the iPhone in it so I must have been doing something wrong.🤦‍♀️

If it was your birthday four surly pirates surrounded you, clapping and singing happy birthday (yes we all joined in of course) they however finished as quickly as they could so they could back to serving meat and fish without a smile passing their lips!

Then every now and then a man in full pirate gear but wearing white wellies came out with a mop and cleaned up any spillages.

Before we got the bill and prepared to leave I decided to go to the loo. When I got there, I felt something odd underfoot. It was crunchy and smelt of coffee. That’s because it was coffee, coffee beans to be precise, yes honestly, fresh coffee beans strewn all over the floor of a gaudy pink ladies which had a massive pair of pink lips above the toilet.

Well this is new I thought and I ordered an Uber for us to get back to our hotel. We possibly did not do justice to the all you can eat menu but we had a wonderful time and laughed a lot – it was fab!

Of course we didn’t cancel!!! Hurrah. Strangely, it was me that was more up for this big night out than Jane. So off we went with Raquel (I’ve mistakenly been calling her Rachel up until now) and Raphael. We drove through the rain over to Lapa and a really cool cobbled street full of bars and nightclubs. This area was quite run down until an enterprising chap converted the old mansion into a three-floor nightclub, full of quirky antique collections. It had a capacity to hold 2000 people and the check in procedures are quite elaborate. You get given a card in which your drinks and food orders are recorded and then you settle up on exit.

Once in, Raquel took us to a table right at the front near the live band which she said was very lucky but I think that once again she’d worked her magic with the staff. She knows everyone! We ordered our drinks and while they came we shuffled off to have a good look round. The place was starting to fill up and as we looked at the other party people we began to feel a bit more comfortable. The crowd was like a mix between a wedding, an office Christmas party and a rather tame hen night for someone who’s done it all before. What I’m getting at there is that this was not an uber-cool crowd but rather older people letting their hair down.

After our little walk round we sat down and enjoyed the first band. This is samba music so lots of drums and beats and the singer looked like the guy out of Fine Young Cannibals. People were dancing and swaying but we sat drinking our mild Caipirinhas which was our new favourite cocktails made with cachaca (rum?), sugar and lime. It’s the National drink of Brazil. Poor Raquel tried to encourage us to dance but we held back. This could be a long night!

However, once the band had finished the wedding disco started up…with ABBA’s Dancing Queen, Michael Jackson and ‘Don’t Stop til you get Enough’ and I finally gave in and got up and danced with the crowd to The Bee Gees and ‘Staying Alive!’. Jane was having none of this forced-fun and held out until finally, she could no longer resist when Mambo No 5 came on. Now we were in the swing of it and sang out loud to Shania Twain (Man, I feel like a Woman) and the Macarena.

We took our seats and listened to the next band. A regular lady singer who sang all about the perils of love. Everyone seemed to know the words which Raquel explained compared love to a pain in your elbow. The songs seemed to be extremely long and we drank another couple of Caipirinhas. I made friends with the group of girls on the next table. They were sitting beneath the sign that had the Guardian article on it declaring this to be one of the top 10 bars in the world. I got up to take a closer look and ended up making friends. They explained that they were all from somewhere in the south of Brazil and they were very elegant and friendly.

The Guardian article was quite appropriate as it described the bar as somewhere where ‘Even awkward English girls with no sense of rhythm end up dancing’. How very rude.

After the second band finished we decided it was time to leave. Lovely Raphael was waiting for us in the car and we all laughed together about the evening as we drove back to our hotel. What a fun night it had turned out to be and I’d highly recommend it to anyone visiting this vibrant city. It was about 11 o’clock when we left and high time these OAPs were in bed.