Last week, while vacationing in Myrtle Beach, I promised a review of the Brazilian grill restaurant, Rioz. The basic idea is you get a huge salad bar, with unlimited roasted meat in 10 kinds. All you had to do was flip over your disk, and servers would come by and slice you off a hunk of meat.

John and I had tried a similar restaurant set-up a few years ago, and he enjoyed it as much as he did last time. I don’t know where he put all the food he ate, but he said he got his money’s worth.

And that was not cheap. The salad bar alone ran $22 per person, and the whole meat dinner cost $35. Kids ate free. I wasn’t as excited about spending $13 to eat meat. I should have, because that’s the point. The salad bar is clearly meant to play a supporting role. The shrimp cocktail was good. The cheese bar rocked. The pasta salad had potential.

I also tried pickled hearts of palm. Glad that’s over with. Quail eggs are just tiny hard-cooked eggs. That was fine. Cooked salmon in dill/Dijon sauce took the cake. The key lime pie was worth the trip all by itself. The sushi was reportedly awesome, but it was lost on me.

The restaurant was impressive in its efficiency. The place was packed but the service was great. The fun part was watching the servers slide chicken nuggets off the roasting stick for the kids.

Check out the restaurant’s web site here