Ben Brazil is located in the University area of Belfast just down from the students union and opposite the shell of what was once The Elms. The dining is Brazilian style churrasco, or meat on sticks, but with a Bangladesh twist. Upon entering we navigate past the salad and hot sides self service area, and are seated at our table by the bar. We’re given little drinks coaster size discs that are red on one side and green on the other. As the men come round with different hunks of barbequed meats on skewers, if your disc is green they’ll slice some off for you, if it’s red they will stop until you return it to green.
We were brought out some chips in a bowl to share and advised to help ourselves to the salad and hot sides area. The chips were fine but nothing special. The salads were nice and fresh featuring a mix of classics like Florida salad and Caesar, and some different dishes like a spicy beetroot salad. The hot sides were fantastic too with spicy potatoes and lemon, onion rice. After that came the meat! 
The meat comes round thick and fast – Beef, Chicken breast, Chicken thighs, spicy beef, sausages, wings, Pork, chicken heart – Yes chicken heart – and finished off with a cinnamon covered pineapple. All the meat was of great quality and the BBQ style cooking gives it a lovely texture and taste. Some of the meats were spiced and it gave them a slight kick and distinctive flavour, I believe this is where the Bangladesh influence was most prevalent. The BBQed cinnamon pineapple was a great finish to the meal and a taste revelation, I’ll definitely recreating that on my BBQ during the summer. If I had a criticism it would be that it’s all over too quick, it’s very easy to fill up quick on that much meat and before you know it you’re nursing a full belly and wondering if you could possibly fit in a desert (I couldn’t). Also I would like to see the red/green system used to better effect, after a while we kind of forgot about them and just sat back until we were full before protesting that we’d had enough. I did enjoy Ben Brazil and its mountains of meat on a stick, so for me I’m turning my card to green!
