Slaughterhouse Six: Revenge of the Carnivores

Vegetarian may want to stop reading now because the following contains descriptions of such animal carnage that this blogger accepts no responsibility for any consequences. Meat-lovers may want to start licking their lips in anticipation.

The Red-Hot Brazilian Charcoal Grill is a modest, unassuming little place on Adelaide's Gouger Street, unpretentious and basic in decor. However, for the unashamed carnivores among us, it represents a retreat from the over-hyped world of the sensitive, caring eaters and an atavistic throwback to when men were men and hoofed-animals were nervous.

For the princely sum of $32 Australian dollars, the diner can gorge on freshly grilled beef, chicken, barbecue ribs, lamb, sausage, pork, and kangaroo. Yes, kangaroo. To assuage some guilt, there is the option to add some grilled sweetcorn and salad to your plate in an effort to change its appearance from an explosion at a slaughterhouse to something resembling a food plate - but yours truly was quite happy to forgo the greenery and focus on the burnt offerings.

When you order, your server gives you a small card in the shape of a cow that's green on one side and red on the other. As long as the green cow s face up, the servers will periodically visit your table with a large skewer of some type of meat, dripping hot fat into a large metal dish. Armed only with very sharp knives, they will cut off slabs of protein as many times as you like until you flip the cow to show red.

The beef was beefy; the pork was porky; the lamb was lamby; and the kangaroo was... rooish. I have to say I wasn't over-excited by the roo on offer because it was a little chewy and had a slightly bitter after-taste. According to friends, this may just have been a by-product of how it was prepared, possibly due to a marinade and under-cooking. Nevertheless, I can now claim to have eaten "Skippy" and one more helpless animal can be stricken off my list of "things-to-eat-before-I-die."

After consuming a small herd of assorted beasts, my colleagues and I walked back to our hotel in an attempt to burn off at least some of the ingested protein and fat. We can but hope that was true.