Culver City Beat

Pampas Grill is a restaurant for the serious meat eater.  Don't even think about taking your vegetarian friends here because even though they do offer somewhat vegetarian sides like salads and plantains, their speciality is meat. Brazillian style churrascaria type meat to be more exact.

The restaurant is laid out as a long self-serve buffet. Not all-you-can-eat, mind you, just a buffet. Diners load up their plate or plates full of food, end up at checkout where someone weighs your plate and charges you by weight. At the front of the line are the cold dishes like salads and hot dishes like croquettes, collard greens, and okra. These are all $8/lb.  At the end of the line is where all the meat on skewers are. A plate of just meat is about $14 while a plate of meat and others is $10.

Not wanting to feel like a complete pig, I loaded up on a serving of collard greens and okra before heading to the main attraction: roasted, spiced, delicious meat. The collard greens turned out to be a big disappointment because they were both underdone and underseasoned. Poorly cooked collard greens are one reason why people don't like to eat their green leafy vegetables.  The okra was a bit better, but nothing worth returning for.  I also picked up a chicken croquette which was cold, soggy, and not very good.

The most care obviously went into the meat.  The garlic beef was tender, juicy, and oh, so garlicky.  The garlic chicken was also heavy on my favorite allium as well as rosemary.  Roasted chicken sometimes gets to dry in the wrong hands, but this was not the case here at all. It was cooked to tender, almost fall-off-the-bone perfection.  I also got a sausage which while good was nothing to write home about.  I was excited about the sirloin caps, which I got two slices of, but they were rather dry.

Pampas Grill is a great place to bring meat-loving friends.  Don't be fooled into filling up your plate with the lesser foods like salads and plantains.  Pampas Grill seems to do only one thing really well and it is cook delicious skewered meat.

The restaurant is located in the large Bally's and Best Buy plaza on Venice and Overland. It may be hard to see from the street, but it's in the walkway between the Bally's building and a coffee shop.

Pampas Grill
3857 Overland Ave
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 836-0080