Hungry City: Churrasco That Rises Above at Paladar in East Harlem

There they are, the racks of meat on skewers as long as harpoons, inexorably turning. This is churrasco, Brazilian barbecue, opulent and austere at once, the meat scarcely adorned and tasting only of itself, salt and fire.

Elsewhere in town, at sprawling Brazilian steakhouses with white tablecloths and marble-topped buffets, waiters parade the hot skewers through the dining room, brandishing knives, and cut the meat so it drops as if from heaven to your plate.

Paladar, which opened in East Harlem at the end of 2017, is more modest. The pay-per-pound steam table is stainless steel, the plates disposable. Orders of churrasco are placed and picked up at the counter, on plastic trays.

But what meat: taken seething off the grill, juices racing, and sliced seemingly by swords. No monolithic porterhouse here; diversity is the mission, from beef blackened all along the perimeter and pork loin like a pocket prayer book to bronzed linguiça (sausage) swollen with garlic, chicken breast trussed in bacon and dense little chicken hearts.

Start with picanha, or top sirloin cap — the cut of beef most coveted in Brazil — lean but sealed under a thick band of fat, much of which dissolves into the flesh as it cooks. Then maminha, or tri-tip, its stores of fat in winding snowy streaks like alpine trails, and costela de boi, beef ribs, roasted on the bone and as rich as steak.

Salt — less ornament than emphasis — is the only interference. Should you require more, a vivid housemade chimichurri is on hand, along with a liquid blaze of malagueta chiles and cachaça (sugar cane liquor) that scours mouth and mind.

After the beef, pork loin functions almost as a palate cleanser, reassuringly mild, with the barest trace of its anointment with lime and white wine. More striking is bacon wrapped so tightly around chicken, it becomes one with the flesh in the crucible of the grill, a caramel-dark crackly skin.

Nothing else at Paladar quite rises to the level of the meat. The steam table is bountiful if not particularly memorable, with daily offerings that might include a stroganoff of salted beef and mushrooms, its sauce a meld of cream and ketchup — a Brazilian appropriation of a Russian aristocrat’s dish, here earthier and less zealously pink than other versions I’ve tried.

Still, beans and rice are all you need as a backdrop for the churrasco, and are both improved by a spoonful of farofa, a crunchy dust of toasted manioc flour mined with crumbled bacon.

Gutyerre Viana, the owner of Paladar, was born in the rural Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. When he was a child, his mother, Carmen Viana, came to New York to work, and he was raised by his grandparents until he was old enough to join her.

For a decade, he saved money while waiting tables and walking dogs — sometimes corralling 12 at once — hoping to open a restaurant of his own. Now his mother runs the kitchen at Paladar, alongside a fellow native of Brazil, Cleber Rocha.

Mr. Viana has outfitted Paladar with a Tomasi churrasqueira (grill), powered by gas and made in Brazil. He relies heavily on ingredients imported from the country, not entirely trusting their local equivalents.

To make pão de queijo, near-hollow orbs that suggest cheese spun into air, Brazilians in New York sometimes have to settle for kneading Parmesan into the dough. Mr. Viana insists on queijo de Minas, a cheese made in his home state, with a clean milky taste akin to mozzarella’s.

For deep-fried crescents of pasteis de carne, which flake at the touch, the dough itself comes from Brazil — perhaps infiltrated by the shot of cachaça that some Brazilian cooks swear by, to keep the dough from taking on too much oil and foundering in the fryer.

To drink, there is Guaraná Antarctica, a Brazilian soda like ginger ale yearning to be cider. It’s fueled by a caffeine-rich berry from the Amazon, once used by indigenous tribes to hunt all day without succumbing to hunger.

Go easy on it, because you need your appetite here, all the way to the end, when it’s time to ransack the cold case for Ms. Viana’s desserts, like a trembling pudim de coco (coconut flan) or a slab of bolo de cenoura, a carrot cake in which the carrots have been pulverized until all that’s left is their hue.

At the counter you may find a few brigadeiros, truffles molded out of butter, chocolate and condensed milk, and their cousins, beijinhos — the name means little kiss — in bridal white, swapping chocolate for coconut. Even the condensed milk is Brazilian: sweeter, lusher and quicker to comfort.