Pampas Churrascaria, in the Desert Passage mall at the Aladdin, has an earthy interior of wood and stone. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.

What do you get when you cross a buffet with a steakhouse? As much meat as anybody could possibly want with a meal.

It may sound like the perfect made-for-Las-Vegas hybrid, but the Brazilian grill/rodizio/churrascaria genre is not unique -- or even new -- to Las Vegas. In an uncommon bit of truth in advertising, it was indeed born in Brazil, a product of that country's renowned beef industry. And the tradition has been promulgated in Our Fair City for quite some time by Yolie's on Paradise Road and for several years by Samba at The Mirage and rumjungle at Mandalay Bay, plus a few others that have come and gone. Pampas Churrascaria at the Desert Passage mall at the Aladdin is the newest to come to town.

If you're not familiar with Brazilian grill/rodizio/churrascaria, here's how it works: Servers bearing Zorro-proportioned skewers (those would be the "rodizio" part of it; the skewers go into the rotisserie for cooking and are removed for serving) bring the meats -- primarily beef, naturally, but others as well -- to the table, where the server and the customer work together to get it from the skewer to the plate. That part of it seems to be different at every restaurant, but at Pampas, the server begins to cut the meat from the skewer and tells the customer when to grab it with the little pair of tongs that's part of each place setting.

And so, you eat. And wait for the next skewer-bearing server to come by. And the next and the next and the next until you've eaten your fill.

To facilitate the process, Pampas has another neat little convention that we haven't seen anywhere else -- a disc (red on one side, green on the other) with which you can indicate to any passing server whether you'd like him to stop or not.

I'm guessing the discs are common in Brazil, since this one was emblazoned with the name of a Brazilian product -- beer, if memory serves -- but while they make things a little easier for the servers and the customers, they don't completely smooth the process. We were eager to try all of the meats available, but some came along twice before others appeared once, so we still sent the server of the multiples on his way. Some didn't make it to our table until we were just about finished, and some servers started bypassing us for more recent arrivals -- understandable, but still annoying if we were waiting for something we hadn't tried.

On the other hand, occasionally a skewer-bearer or our main table server would ask if we'd like something repeated. We bypassed most of those -- this was, as I said, a lot of meat-- but we did indulge in seconds on the bacon-wrapped turkey and bacon-wrapped filet mignon, which are served together (on different skewers) in smallish cubes and were tasty, tender, juicy and in nicely sized portions.

What else were we served? There was flatiron steak, which was overcooked and dry. Tri-tip, which was both moist and well-flavored. We also liked the lamb, pork sausage, the twin skewers of spicy and nonspicy chicken, and the sirloin.

But I've let the cart get ahead of the steer here. Dinner started with a basket that contained rice croquetas, cheese puffs and fried bananas. Then we were invited to go to the salad bar, where there was a bowl of salad greens with accompanying dressings and one of Caesar salad (both pretty good), plus smoked salmon, marinated mushrooms, water chestnuts and a nice couscous.

There are hot dishes, too, either with the meat or before, with roasted potatoes, mussels, a stew that looked like the Brazilian feijoada but that we didn't try, plus well-seasoned black beans and rice, which were a delight in and of themselves.

And a skewer of grilled pineapple -- brought around the room just like the meats -- provided a nice dessert and a bit of a digestif.

The tab for all of this: $34.95 per person, plus tax and tip.

We also wanted a bottle of wine to wash down all that meat, but a flier left on the table that listed bottles available at discounted prices didn't offer anything of interest, so we asked if there was another list. And then we saw why it isn't brought automatically: It's printed on a big wine bottle -- bigger than a magnum, but whether it was a jeroboam or a Methuselah or whatever, we had no idea. Kind of a gimmicky thing, but the list was decent enough, all things considered, and we enjoyed our 2004 Peter Lehman Shiraz ($36) from the Barossa Valley of Australia.

We also enjoyed Pampas, and were only mildly surprised that it was pretty well packed -- in Desert Passage, which can be problematic for restaurants.

There are, after all, a lot of meat-eaters in this town and among its tourists, and Pampas does meat right.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@reviewjournal. com.