Beijing Restaurant Review: Latina Grill

By Oscar Holland

Images by Holly Li

Black bean stew, or feijoada, is to Brazilian cuisine what kimchi is to Korean cuisine. Or what ketchup is to British cuisine. It can go with anything, and it often does.

So before we get to Latina’s barbecued meat – which is surely the reason why you’d visit a Brazilian churrascaria – we must first pay homage to its feijoada.

This is not because the staple stew is particularly difficult to get right. It’s more that getting it wrong would be damning. To make another cross-cultural comparison: feijoada is to Brazilian restaurants what bread is to Italian ones. It doesn’t indicate the overall quality, but if it isn’t good, you should probably stand up and walk away.

Latina’s feijoada is good. Superb, even. And the restaurant also passes the second litmus test of authenticity by stocking Guaraná Antarctica, which, if you don’t already know, is your new favorite soft drink. It is Brazil’s second-best-selling soda (after Coca Cola, naturally), and for very good reason. In fact, paying a visit to Liangmaqiao’s burgeoning Grand Summit building might be worth it for this alone.

While you’re there, we suggest getting some barbecued meat. Because this is Latina’s raison d’etre – its succulent, slow-cooked forte. The restaurant specializes in putting cuts of animal onto skewers and rotating them on an open flame. In Shanghai, where there are five branches, Latina has been doing exactly that since 1998.

So stop pretending to thumb through the à la carte menu and just order the all-you-can-eat-barbecued meat (RMB228). To do anything else would be missing the point. (Unless you opt for the ‘deluxe’ option which, for an additional RMB70, also includes seafood, grilled mozzarella and – believe it or not – more meat: Argentinean sirloin and tenderloin.)

Your barbecue odyssey begins at the buffet, however. Here you’ll find a comprehensive selection of vegetables, stews, pasta dishes and feijoada (we mentioned that, right?). Tempting as it may be, overloading your plate would be foolhardy. The best is yet to come. And when we say ‘best’ we mean ‘barbecue’; and when we say ‘come’ we mean ‘delivered to your table by a friendly man with a large knife.’

And so it begins. Wave after wave of meat arrives – short rib, rib-eye, skirt, lamb leg and more besides. Some is cut directly onto our plates; some must be secured ourselves with mini-tongs. But all is tender and consistently flavorsome. We recommend that – amid the beef blitz – you keep an eye out for the picanha, a popular cut in Brazil that butchers elsewhere incorporate into the rump or loin. It’s easy to spot: just imagine what a Swiss roll would look like if it was made from beef.

Emerging with a curiously enjoyable case of the meat sweats, it becomes clear to us that a simple two-question test is all you need to determine whether you’ll enjoy Latina Grill: Do you like excellent barbecued meat? And are you unusually hungry?

Daily, 11am-11pm; 201, 2/F, Grand Summit Building, 19 Dongfang Donglu, Chaoyang 朝阳区东方东路19号 (8531 5287)

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