Plate Of Meat

Last Thursday night, I made my first trip to Red Bull Arena, the recently-opened soccer-specific stadium that's home to the New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer. The move from Giants Stadium to the team's new home represents a positive step for the historically unsuccessful MetroStars/Red Bulls franchise not just because of the sport/team-appropriate aspects of the stadium itself (e.g., natural grass playing surface, standard-width soccer field, no football lines painted on the surface, seating capacity appropriate for the sport, etc.), but also because the relocation from East Rutherford to Harrison puts the team's home a stone's throw from Newark and Kearny and Belleville, home to large groups of Americans of Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian, Uruguayan, Italian and Irish descent that helped make North Jersey into one of the historical hotbeds of American soccer. (Tab Ramos, Tony Meola, Claudio Reyna and John Harkes, bold-faced names in the history of soccer in the United States, all grew up in the immediate area.)

In particular, the new stadium is a short walk across the Jackson Street Bridge away from the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, historically a landing place for thousands of Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish immigrants. This means that spectators will find themselves within walking distance of a large number of ethnic restaurants in the Ironbound for pregame and/or postgame eating and/or drinking, in contrast with the utter lack of options in the immediate vicinity of the Meadowlands. (It should be noted that, though a major renovation is in the works, the Harrison PATH station is presently woefully unequipped to handle postgame crowds, making a postgame walk over to Newark an even more attractive option.) In addition to the variety of options available in Newark, Red Bull Arena itself pays tribute to the area's ethnic heritage in the assortment of food available at concession stands.

Because it was a weeknight, my friends and I didn't have time for a sit-down dinner at a restaurant before the game, but rather planned for a meal at one particular stadium concession: the Casa Seabra Rodizio Grill, a rodizio-inspired concession stand immediately outside one of the main entrances to the stadium and owned by a family that operates a number of restaurants in the Ironbound, including the similarly-named Casa Seabra.



That's the stadium at the left-hand side of the frame, to give you an idea of how close it is to the grill. As you can perhaps see from the menu shown in the picture, there are a number of sandwiches on offer for $6.50 each (linguiça sausage, pork steak, sirloin) as well as pao de chouriço (bread stuffed with sausage) for $4, but we each opted for the $10 rodizio platter including sirloin, linguiça sausage and chicken breast, along with rice and beans:



For $10 (i.e., barely more than you'd pay for a hot dog at one of the baseball stadiums in the city), this was a phenomenal value. The chunks of grilled chicken were a little dry, but that's a tough one to avoid when cooking large amounts of chicken. The sausage and (especially) steak were tasty, especially when eaten with some of the chimichurri sauce that was included with the platter. The beans were flavorful as well, and the rice was... well, it was rice. (In the picture, it's shown sprinkled with some Tabasco sauce, which we actually all agreed seemed hotter than normal Tabasco; I know Tabasco produces an extra-spicy hot sauce made from habanero peppers, but this was not labeled as such.) I'd heartily endorse Casa Seabra Rodizio Grill if you're making a trip out to the new stadium (unless you're a vegetarian, in which case you'll find little of interest there; I believe there are more options to you, like empanadas, inside the stadium); the only down sides are that the only utensil provided is a fork (a knife might be useful to cut the steak, and a spoon to scoop the beans), and the unnecessarily blaring music and hype-man trying to get the crowd fired up right nearby.