Not everyone speaks great English here, but this is the sort of restaurant where if you enter looking even slightly lost, someone darts out from behind the counter to give you a tour of the place and show you how it works. Pay at the end. Obviously cafeteria food is not going to be the most sophisticated cooking ever executed, but it's better here than you might expect. Brazilian food tends to be a lot of meat and potatoes, or meat and rice, or meat and yuca. Beans play a significant role.
Stews are popular, and stews tend to get better the longer they simmer.
The total spread is three steam tables' worth of food, and it changes from night to night. Another night there was a full tray of boiled cornmeal mush, much like polenta. The other trick is to save room for the meat. A hardwood-charcoal fire crackles in a big ventilated steel fireplace, over which several spits of meat are turned by a guy who, if you don't speak Portuguese, can pretty much tell you which meat is which, and after that it's all pointing. As soon as you show up with your plate, he'll pull a spit off the fire and shave off as much as you want with a foot-long carving knife.