If Al Primo Canto is a churrascaria—and it basically is—it is the most generous and least pushy of the bunch. Here, going the all-you-can-meat route is an option, not a requirement. And if you do choose that route, the rest of your table is free not to. This is maybe not the smartest move on the restaurant’s part—what’s to keep a table from mooching off the lone all-you-can-meater?—but as the restaurants in River North’s Brazilian district go, it’s refreshing. Doubly refreshing: No coins to indicate when you’re ready for more meat, a practice that’s impossible to participate in without looking like a human garbage truck. Triply refreshing: The focus here is on chicken—the galeto al primo canto—not on beef and lamb.
That chicken has a crispy, well-seasoned skin and juicy flesh underneath it. But if you eat it among the rest of the all-you-can-meat meal, it’s likely to be your dinner’s only bright spot. As these Brazilian spots tend to do, Al Primo pads the beginning of its feasts with enough starches to plug BP’s next oil spill. There are rubbery little cheese rolls, bowls of pasta tossed in unexciting sauces and eggplant caponata, which is, of course, meant to be spread on bread. The goal, I think, is to fill you up so much that by the time you get to the proteins you won’t care that the lamb and beef is a little sad looking. And that’s why you should utilize this churrascaria’s flexibility and order that chicken à la carte. It won’t necessarily feel like eating in a churrascaria—but since when is that a bad thing?