Food from Around the World

Wednesday night we decided to go someplace special for dinner. We had driven by The Flame restaurant on Hwy 111 and Washington in La Quinta and wanted to try it out. The Flame is actually three restaurants in one. One side of the restaurant is set up as a bar and serves American bar food. Another totally separate section serves Japanese Hibachi and the last section serves Brazilian BBQ.

They advertise it as, Three Worlds, One Flame since there is only one kitchen and three different types of food served. The Japanese side was pretty packed with people. It wasn’t that way on the Brazilian side. Perhaps, it was because we arrived just when the restaurant opened for the evening at 5:00 PM and most Brazilians eat much, much later.

As usual, we had been discussing a lot of different types of food lately. Terry was the only one who had eaten Brazilian food and that was when he was on business in Brazil. We knew it wouldn’t be cheap but we were worth it and we all wanted to try it out.

On the Brazilian side of the restaurant there was only one item on the menu. That item included a salad and antipasto bar plus ten different kinds of meat. That’s right. You didn’t choose between steak or chicken or anything else. You got it all. The server served and sliced each round of meat at your table. Then, a few minutes later he would show up with different meat and so the evening went. Now if the ten meats did not fill you up, he would start coming around again. In most restaurants you make a choice on the meat. Here we got it all and I definitely tried every kind.

This was how we let our server know we were ready for another course of meat. If we turned it with the green top up, he would serve us more. If the red top was up, he wouldn’t bring us any more.

Our meat dishes were as follows: Aloha-style chicken legs, ginger-soy tri-tip steak, top sirloin picanha-style, marinated pork loin, parmesan crusted chicken, ham with pineapple, filet mignon, savory sausage, spicy crusted chicken and roasted lamb.

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One other time I went to restaurant where a variety of different meat were served as one order. It was called The Carnivore but definitely wasn’t Brazilian. The meat was served in a similar way as the server walked around serving one entre of meat after another.

In addition to several different dishes of chicken, lamb, beef, sausage and pork, that menu also included Eland, Crocodile, Zebra and Waterbuck up to a total of about 14 different meats one could try.

And, yes, I had to try every single one of them.

The Carnivore

The Flame restaurant in La Quinta has only been open and in this location for four months. The restaurant is very elegant, the food fantastic and the service was some of the best we had ever, ever had. What a treat it was!

We have discovered the Hyders haven’t tried German, Greek, French or Thai food. Those are the restaurants we’ll be on the lookout for in the future as we continue on this eating foods from around the world binge. We may have to put all of that on hold just a tad though. With the Riverside County Fair and Date Festival opening this weekend, I’m sure we’ll be busy with it for a while. Admission is free on Friday if you go early so we’ll start there by scoping it out.

So much to do, so little time left in the area.