Bayanda Mzoneli

About Bayanda Mzoneli

Bayanda Mzoneli is a public servant. He writes in his personal capacity.

The other day, on 22 July to 01 August 2011, in my capacity as a parliamentary liaison officer for the then Minister of Public Enterprises, Mr (now Dr) Malusi Gigaba, I was part of the study tour undertaken by the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises to Venezuela and Brazil.

#TW: Vegans stop reading.

This is not meant to give a belated account of the trip. The official 18-page report of the study tour, including its objectives, findings and recommendations can be read on pages 4016 to 4034 on this link to the parliament website (Parliament of RSA, Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports, 2 November 2011). However, it is worth mentioning that the one of the state owned companies that were visited was Venezuela’s state owned oil company, that seems to have drawn the interest of some in the western hemisphere.

In-between the meetings, the kind staff of the SA Embassy in Brazil at the time, hosted a lunch for some of the delegation. Brazil’s good reputation, for visitors, precedes it in many respects, the lunch occasion sought of compounded it. Another compounding factor was the visit to Livraria Cultura, a huge multi-storey bookshop in Sau Paulo. It looked like a university library. I digress.

I do not recall the name of the restaurant, what I do recall is that the lunch started with an empty plate in front me, and servers with different cuts of meat walked around the tables and occasionally left generous cuts of meats on my plate and the colleagues on my table.

A me from 14 years ago did not struggle with mobility, intermittent chest pains and appetite. Eating meat was not a guilty pleasure, it was a blissful pleasure. Growing up sharing meat, with peers, at traditional functions, where the pace of one’s chewing, and the ability to auto-cool flaming hot chunks of meat, determined the overall share one consumed, had honed my accelerated eating skills. Those skills were to be later sharpened further by comrades and friends at Mangosuthu Technikon. In those days, going to KaMdladla, KaMax, Ezitolo ezibomvu or ekhehleni kaBB, were all exciting moments, but the limited budget meant that the eating speed would determine the overall share one consumes.

In Brazil in 2011, I could not keep up. The rate at which I consumed the meat on my plate was slower than the rate at which servers were refilling it. One of the colleagues from Embassy noticed my distress of trying to outpace the refills, and began to deter, in Portuguese, the servers from refilling my plate. She then explained to me that the coaster next to me is not for placing my drink, I should flip it to the red side to deter the servers, then back to the green side to invite them to refill. I was relieved and in awe.

As someone from a rural place, I had since became familiar with a buffet. But the normal buffet, a patron has to stand from their table to go refill in serving stations. A buffet that comes to the patron’s table was extremely convenient, that it was just pure meat adds to the bliss. I have since learned that this bottomless meat buffet is called rodízio, its other name is churrasco.

I then inquired with the Embassy colleague whether there is such a deputy heaven in our home country, South Africa. She speculated that she had heard there was one but was not sure. She said it was called Carnivore or something like that. And I thought to myself, that is such an apt name. I made a mental note to search for it, find it, no matter where it is, and relive that moment. So, I did.

The Carnivore Restaurant is at Muldersdrift. For someone, like me who hates driving, and going out, I have no idea where Muldersdrift is, all I know is that it’s an eternity drive from Montana, in Pretoria. It is so far that if it was not for their 011 number, I would not believe it is still Johannesburg, I would suspect it is North West province. But it’s also not far from Lanseria Airport, which itself is also really far.

When I first went to Carnivore, it did not disappoint. Instead of a coaster with red and green, they use a flag. When you need a break from the meat refills, you put the flag down, as some sought of surrender. The interesting twist that Carnivore adds is that they have game meat, Kudu, Zebra, Springbok and others. They also serve crocodile meat, which, some allege, might tune down disproportionate affection, to proportionate levels, if the tuning might have been tempered with.

It has always bothered me that there could only be one restaurant that does this style of grilled meat buffet. Earlier this year, I visited Brazil again, in a different capacity, with a different delegation, which I’d rather not detail, lest Tebza’s colleagues salivate. On the last evening, of the visit, the hotel staff helped me find a restuarant with the rodizio. I was so disappointed in my stomach capacity. The meat was just too good. Upon my return to South Africa, I did a deeper search for Carnivore’s competitor, and found one in Melrose Arch, called Rodizio Grill. So, I went. Though their variety is not as wide as Carnivore, but it’s still good, and I suspect it is a little closer than the remote Carnivore in Mudelsdrift. Obviously, there are people who’s genre is the seclusion, or is it privacy, that Mudelsdrift offers, and thus worth the drive for them.

I recently learned that there is a restaurant at Baia Mall in Maputo that also does rodizio, which makes sense given the historical link with the Portuguese, that Mozambique shares with Brazil. My recent internet search also seemed to hint that there might be a restaurant that had rodizio in Cape Town, but I was not interested to look further on it since I am likely not the target market.

Both Carnivore and Rodizio Grill charge R365 per person for the meat buffet, excluding drinks (as of December 2025).

I could say the rodizio is a great buffet to take someone for a date. But make sure that you take the kind of person who would eat at least R350 worth of meat. Do not let capitalism win, by taking someone who would be full at the first serving.

Of course a Shisanyama probably still works out cheaper, for a similar amount of protein, but the rodizio is still an awesome experience to have, once in a while.