Logan gets a taste of Brazil in new restaurant
In a town full of places to eat, there are burgers, pizza, steak and sandwiches. The Gaucho Grill is the newest addition to Logan’s collection of dining options and adds a Brazilian flavor of versatility.
Marcio DaSilva and Chad Casler, partners in business and owners of the Gaucho Grill, have been in the restaurant business for over five years, but only recently decided to embark on their own entrepreneurial journey.
“It’s a lot of fun to be able to run something the way you want it to be run, and make decisions for yourself,” Casler said.
He said he believes that by doing business in a more personal way, it’s more likely that the customers will be satisfied with their respective dining experiences.
DaSilva moved to Utah 11 years ago from New Hamburg, Brazil. He and Casler, who have been friends since working in Logan together, used to drive the 160 miles to Salt Lake and back just to eat Brazilian food.
“We would either take the trip to Salt Lake, or just make the food ourselves on the weekend,” Casler said. “We thought it made more sense to stop driving so far, be able to run our own business, do what we love doing, and enable the people of Cache valley to partake of some amazing food with us.”
DaSilva said the restaurant is “a great addition to the local options,” and Brazilian-style cooking and serving is becoming more popular in the United States.
The Gaucho Grill is not your typical sit-down, menu, waiter, appetizer and entree restaurant. The food is cooked in a “churrasco” fashion, meaning the meat is cooked on a rotisserie skewer. In the back of the restaurant the chefs have all kinds of meat constantly grilling on the rotating rotisseries, including BBQ chicken, ham, coracao, bacon-wrapped turkey, sirloin, beef, fillets, pork, grilled pineapple and other Brazilian varieties. It is then served in traditional Brazilian rodizio form, meaning that customers pay a flat rate for their whole meal, are seated, and are then personally served meat from skewers that the servers cut onto their plates.
Assistant manager and Brazil native Luis Ramos takes care of almost everything in the restaurant, including the cooking of the food, managing the staff and serving.
“It’s not like any other restaurant because they’ll bring you meat and if you don’t like it you can get another type of meat next time they come around,” he said.
The food options are not exclusive to meat-eaters, though. Casler said the restaurant has received good reviews from vegetarians who said the salad bar turned out to be very satisfying. The whole salad bar is supplied with “high-quality sides” including vegetables, potatoes, polenta, fried bananas, stroganoff, pasta, tilapia and feijoada.
They also offer genuine Brazilian desserts, including flan, white chocolate raspberry cheescake, prostigio and two different Brazilian ice cream recipes, which may be ordered separately.
Open since Jan. 4, Casler said the restaurant has already had a lot of positive customer feedback.
“We’ve exceeded our goals for everything in these first two weeks,” he said. “I never could have expected such a response. It really is overwhelming.”
A Gaucho Grill server, Jessica Winslow, said, “Working with the customers is the best part. I love the interaction the staff is allowed to have with them. It’s a really fun atmosphere.”
She said all the meat carvers are either native Brazilians or are familiar with the traditions and language because of LDS missions served in Brazil or Portugal.
If business is as good as it has been, which DaSilva predicts it will be, they plan to build a patio on the back by the Logan river for some ambiance in the back yard.
Casler said, “The whole point of starting this in Logan is to give the people here a similar experience, but without having to drive so far for high-quality Brazilian food.”
The Gaucho Grill is located on 633 S. Main Street.
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