Douglas Williams/Shanghai Daily

Xiao Jia (left) and Junior carve up the chunks of Brazilian style meat.

Churrascaria de rodozio (Brazilian barbecue) is the way the cowboys in Brazil partook of their repast after a long day in the saddle. The immediacy of their prime dietary ingredient, beef, and it being of such a central part to their lives might cause animal lovers to balk and vegetarians to weep, but around the world, this form of eating has hungry carnivores licking their lips.
So to Pudong and surely a peculiarly Shanghai phenomenon: Across the road from an ever so British school and next door to a French supermarket, Green City Latina Restaurant & Bar serves Brazilian food to appropriately international customers.
Michelle Luo gave up a glittering career in telecommunications to run this cozy family restaurant, taking a gamble on the place before it was even built, just more than one year ago.
"Many of my friends asked me why I was taking such a risk opening a restaurant when I had no experience but I knew, with the location, that it would work," said Luo. And work it clearly does. The night Shanghai Daily visited, a Monday, it was packed and more salivating customers were flooding in.
The ambience is good: casual, comfortable perhaps even homely; the perfect antidote to either an agitated parents' night at the school or the shopping trolley hell of the supermarket.
With these and the Shanghai Rugby Football Club headquartered across the road with sundry sports people, there engaged of a weekend, appetites stoked, the location, location, location theory is borne out irrefutably. Authentic Latin tunes drift through the satiated chatter before the band strike up about 8:30pm.
Six nights a week, a Filipino three piece band "On the Way" play comfortable covers comfortably. Thursdays there are salsa classes upstairs (when it reopens) and salsa dancing downstairs.
Most people will be familiar with the drill, a large salad bar: coleslaw, corn, beetroot, pasta etc.
And then chaps come round with the churrascaria de rodozio and carve hunks of steak, pork, lamb and sausage etc., onto your plate. The salad bar in Green City Latina is ample and showed no signs of tiredness, the meat cooked but not incinerated. It's not a high brow form of eating but sometimes, it's precisely what the doctor ordered.
There is a testosterone driven element to steak houses of scorning vegetables, theorizing that salad compromises one's sexuality and that red meat is manna but it is overlookable.
Luo has found her change in direction: "A lot of fun, totally different. I use the experience I have in business to implement the ideas that I have for here. I know what I like in a restaurant, it's interesting to now see things from this side as opposed to the customers'.
We have been quick to adjust things. I have put a lot of effort into this restaurant and it seems to be paying off."
The upstairs part of the restaurant, currently being refurbished, will reopen next month. A kiddie menu and a play area add to the Sunday lunch appeal.
All you can eat lunch is 68 yuan (US$8.40), dinner is 98 yuan, outside functions can be catered for.
Find the restaurant in the Jin Qiao Green Leisure and Sports Center.
Tel: 50306672