the meat pirates

If you don't already know this about me it's time you learned: I like pirates.

I like pirate figurines, movies with pirates, pirate-themed bumper stickers and other paraphernalia, dressing like a pirate, the episodes of the simpsons with the pirate, and skull-and-crossbones-shaped ice cubes.

Tickby likes pirates too, so we were pretty pumped upon entering Fogo de Chão in Santo Amaro and seeing the staff's uniforms. 

They weren't all-out pirates with peglegs and eye-patches - because this restaurant seems to take itself pretty seriously - but they wore knickers, holsters with wine keys and meat knives, and high pirate boots if i've ever seen pirate boots. They were like pirates hiding in plain sight from anyone who doesn't know as much as I do about pirates. They were ninja pirates.

In other evidence, I saw exactly 0 female employees there. 

Furthermore, there were way too many of them. the pirate-waiters outnumbered customers 2 or 3 to 1.

As Tickby and I waited for Mark to meet us there from work, the pirate-waiters surrounded our table -widely at first, but inching closer and closer with every passing minute. They kept a semi-frenzied activity going to keep us from noticing. But they were closing in. 

When I stood up to go to the bathroom, one pirate pulled my chair back and another pirate pushed it in. When I reached for my sweater, I swear three different pirates helped me pull it on. Every time I took a sip of water a pirate or two or six would come over to replenish my glass. 

Some people like being gang-pampered like this but I found it disconcerting at times. For example I dropped my wallet on the floor and almost had my head tramply-crushed by a stampede of pirate boots when I reached down to pick it up. I also found myself keeping my eyes downcast to avoid contact with pirates, who interpreted most movement as a signal to come over and put more cheesebread on the table. 

Tickby and Mark became too blissfully high on the pirates' meats to worry about the coup underway. Fully relaxed, their eyes glazed over, they began to talk about how they couldn't eat any more, but didn't want to stop. As a vegetarian I was immune to this noise, this pirates' 'table-side meat service' spell. I knew that something terrible was afoot, and the power of this knowledge made the room begin to tilt. As if we were on a slowly capsizing pirate ship.

Yeah it might have just been the sight of all that rare steak after the previous night's copious vodka fraudtinis making my stomach flop around. Add to that the effort of hiding the fact that I felt ill at the dinner table and the energy required to thank twenty-seven pirates per minute for their various solids, and you have an overstimulated altered state.

Or it might have been a pirate invasion.

In spite of such dark turns, I need you to know that I still like pirates. I mean, you wouldn't expect a kid who likes dinosaurs to stop liking them just because a stegosaurus ate his backpack. The kid who genuinely likes dinosaurs would understand that that's what stegosauri do.

Accordingly, I understand that invading tables and being mad fiendish is what pirates do. and I have nothing but respect for that.

the meat pirates provide you with a cow-shaped brochure that is a map of the most delicious parts of cows