Why Outback Steakhouse is the most popular restaurant in Brazil

But even then, it’s not big enough. Not for Brazil, and not on a recent Monday.

Hostess Kalany Nunes, 19, surveys the line for lunch, several dozens deep.

“This is Outback,” she explains. “It’s very chic.”

As a son of the suburbs of heartland America, I’m no stranger to the shopping mall culinary circuit. Red Lobster, Olive Garden, TGI Fridays, Chili’s — I know and celebrate them all. When I was growing up in Wisconsin, my family’s idea of dining out often came down to a question of Applebee’s or Pizza Hut. But nothing prepared me for the scene now unfolding before me: A throng of people excitedly awaiting their chic experience at Outback Steakhouse. And doing so in a country where I never would have expected it.

Few things evoke Brazil more than beef. The country slaughters about 30 million head of cattle per year — and it’s still got more cows than people. It produces more beef than anywhere outside the United States. Meat is sizzling everywhere, all the time. On busy urban streets. On the back of boats. Outside banks, inside prisons — at funerals. When thousands of supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brasília in January, a man was spotted amid the chaos and tear gas grilling and selling meat.

Despite that culture, America’s riff on Australian barbecue has gained extraordinary cachet in Brazil — a love affair that is only deepening.

For five years running, the chain has been voted Rio de Janeiro’s most popular restaurant. The polling service Datafolha has named it São Paulo’s most popular shopping mall eatery. In the past three years, as the coronavirus pandemic decimated Brazil’s restaurant industry, Outback expanded rapidly here. Brazil now accounts for 83 percent of the chain’s international revenue.

The frenzy has even sparked a knockoff restaurant. Outbêco opened in 2020 and has swept Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, despite its self-inflicted syntactic challenges.

“Outbêco Strokehouse,” several outposts call themselves.

Some days, it felt as if I was one of the last people here who wasn’t eating at Outback. In my four years as Rio bureau chief for The Washington Post, I’d opted mostly for traditional Brazilian churrasco, which routinely delivered some of the best cuts of meat I’ve had — so good, in fact, I found myself increasingly baffled by the lines outside of Outback.

How had this American restaurant serving inauthentic Australian barbecue come to dominate the country with perhaps the world’s finest churrasco?

On this Monday afternoon, I decided to find out for myself. I drove to the São Paulo shopping mall in search of Brazil’s largest Outback. Finding it, I got in line and, along with the others, waited to be admitted inside.

Turning away from rice and beans

From Brazil’s earliest days, this has been a rice-and-beans country. The combination stitched together a nation of vast and varied terrain, profound diversity and steep social inequality. Rich and poor, Black, White and Indigenous — it didn’t matter. Brazilians ate rice and beans.

But in recent decades, the traditional Brazilian diet has begun to change and fracture across class. As the demands of modern life have left less time to cook, the middle and upper classes are increasingly choosing “global foods that are less healthy,” one researcher noted in a study. In the past two decades, the National Association of Restaurants reports, food consumption at fast food restaurants rose 70 percent. It is now estimated that by 2025, the typical Brazilian will no longer eat rice and beans as often as five days per week.

“It is losing its importance,” said Fernanda Granado, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “And this doesn’t just affect our health; it’s the loss of our culture.”

Researchers note that American restaurant chains have benefited from, and helped reinforce, this dietary transformation. McDonald’s, with 2,595 burger joints, is now Brazil’s third largest chain, according to the Brazilian Association of Franchising. Subway, with 1,861 locations, is sixth. And Burger King Brasil, with 1,255, comes in at 11th.

Outback, which sources much of its meat in Brazil, just opened its 150th restaurant in Brazil. But its status here is better measured in prestige than prevalence.

The first Outback in Brazil, which opened in 1997, appears to have been transported straight from the American suburbs — the same green slanted roof and ample parking lot perched along a busy road. It then quickly expanded to São Paulo.

The Bloomin’ Onion, Aussie cheese fries, beers in frozen mugs: Such American delicacies were “not known before we arrived,” reminisced Pierre Berenstein, president of Outback in Brazil. “From day one, the restaurants were packed.”

But in the years since, the restaurant has risen from the roadside to the perfumed halls of the Brazilian shopping mall. One now sits atop Shopping Leblon, the fanciest mall in Rio de Janeiro’s toniest neighborhood. Family meals can easily top $100 — big money in a country where average monthly income is around $340.

The chain’s entry into the shopping mall — in Brazil, a thriving and coveted destination — has brought it into direct competition with the country’s traditional restaurants.

One was Estrela do Sul. A classic churrascaria, Estrela do Sul focused on grilled meats, served with rice, beans and vegetables.

“Everything was quality,” said owner Renato Caumo.

But Estrela do Sul, with nine locations in Rio and São Paulo, was getting killed on business. Saddled by taxes and rising food costs, and squeezed by new competition, Caumo’s restaurant suddenly seemed stale and expensive by comparison with the flashy American chain. He’d see his regulars now dining at Outback.

To Caumo, the food there wasn’t great — “a lot of fried food and a lot of bread” — but he recognized that many Brazilians were in love. Even his own kids were asking him to go.

“Outback is style,” he said. “It has glamour.”

Estrela do Sul couldn’t compete. It wasn’t long before it started closing outposts. The last holdout, in a Rio shopping mall, shuttered in 2021. That restaurant finished with fewer than 1,000 Google reviews. The neighboring Outback, meanwhile, has inspired nearly 10,000.

“An impeccable experience,” says one reviewer.

“Undoubtedly,” opines another, “the best restaurant.”

Caumo sighed. Estrela do Sul was a family-run restaurant. Nearly 50 years of business. A true Brazilian experience. Now, it’s done.

“Everything,” he philosophized, “has a beginning, middle and end.”

‘The land of the kangaroo’

Walking into the world’s largest Outback Steakhouse, it takes me a few moments to gather my bearings. The interior is dark and loud and huge. There are 550 seats and several environments — the VIP suite, the kids’ play area, a place to bring your pet. Waiters are singing to diners celebrating birthdays.

This was a “a journey to the land of the kangaroo,” Berenstein said of the Outback experience. “A journey through important points of Australian culture.”

Fake crocodiles cling to the ceilings. The image of a koala dominates one wall. Artifacts of apparently Aboriginal provenance adorn another. The menu promises steaks fresh off the Australian grill and encourages diners to choose their “Outback moment.”

For a restaurant founded by four American business executives who intentionally avoided visiting Australia because they didn’t want to risk spoiling their vision with authenticity, the theme has been known to irk actual Australians. “Outback has nothing to do with Australia,” said Australian food critic Besha Rodell. “Zero. It is a wholly American invention.”

My fellow diners, however, are eating it up.

In one booth sits Maurício Godinho, 32. He considers himself an Outback connoisseur. He prefers other locations to this one, which he feels sacrifices service for size. But any Outback, he says, is better than no Outback. He’d eat at the chain every day if could, he said, and can think of only one time he regretted it. He was in the United States. The pizazz of the Brazilian Outback was noticeably absent.

“It was terrible,” he says. “Worse than bad.”

The decision that day had been between Outback and Cheesecake Factory. He still thinks of what could have been.

“I regret it so much.”

A few tables down sits Giovanna Scannerini, 21. To get here, she has traveled more than an hour from the city of Atibaia, a drive she makes at least once a month. “Always worth it,” she says. This is a new, modern Brazil, she says, and she doesn’t want to keep eating the same foods.

“Imagine eating the same thing every day for 21 years,” she says. “Rice, beans and some meat: I’m sick of it.”

But it isn’t just the food, I came to realize, that has made Outback so popular here. Whether by accident of fate or shrewd marketing, the chain has become a cultural touchstone for many Brazilians, more experience than meal, where people can indulge decadence and celebrate life’s biggest milestones. A birthday. A job promotion. Even an engagement.

Waiting in line outside, checking his Outback app, is forklift operator Thalles Ivan, 30. The first time he went to Outback was six years ago. That night, he asked his girlfriend, Laissa Inara, to marry him. She said yes and is now seated beside him, alongside their 2-year-old son, Arthur.

Inara is unemployed, and the couple doesn’t have a lot of money. But they make a point of returning to Outback every month to celebrate their relationship and the family they’d built.

“We remember the beginning of our story here,” Inara says. “It’s a place where we feel good.”

After they’ve waited for nearly an hour, their name is finally called. They head inside, sit down with Arthur, and order the barbecue ribs.

Data on Outback restaurants and opening dates was provided by Outback. Locations coming soon or whose opening dates were unknown were grayed out in the maps.

Graphics by Júlia Ledur. Video editing by Joseph Snell. Photo editing by Kenneth Dickerman. Story editing by Matthew Brown and Reem Akkad.