Carson Rodizio: An American’s Perspective on Brazilian Barbecue!

The Brazilian barbecue is like a celebration: the preparation usually involves hours of conversation, beer, music, and a strong spirit of joy – and the American Blake fell in love with it! Here, it is also traditional to use skewers in the barbecue preparation, a habit that is different from the Americans.

Therefore, with the idea of turning any American grill into a Brazilian barbecue, Blake created the Carson Rodizio company and partnered with a Brazilian company to manufacture an adaptation that is added on top of the grill to roast delicious Brazilian barbecue with rotating skewers, seeking to bring Brazilian culture to the USA!

To learn more about Carson Rodizio, an interview was conducted with its founder, Blake Carson!

What made you fall in love with Brazilian barbecue?

He says: “My passion started with football. When I was 4 years old, I was living in Germantown, Tennessee, when I saw some kids kicking a ball on a field. I admired that sport and I remember asking my dad who the best soccer player of all time was. He didn’t know anything about soccer, but he shouted the following name: Pelé!”.

Blake says that he had the opportunity to do an exchange program in Brazil when he was 14 years old to play football, but he ended up being conquered by something different… The barbecue!

“That gathering, that thing that lasted for hours, that meat… I didn’t really understand what it was, but I loved it! When I returned to the USA, I went to university and got a job at a Brazilian steakhouse. From that job, I began to understand the concept of barbecue and learned to grill Brazilian barbecue”.

How is Brazilian barbecue in the USA? Is it very successful?

Blake responds: “The Brazilian style is the best in the world for me because of the expectation it creates. It is a spectacle different from any other way of grilling can provide. We serve the executives of Disney World at Typhoon Lagoon because the Disney Culinary Director also believes it is the best style of barbecue in the world! Here in the USA, it is still an exotic and new way of cooking. However, it is growing consistently, as seen by the constant demand for our products, even in difficult times.”

When asked about the mixture of Brazilian and American cultures in barbecue preparation, Blake says he loves to see the union of cultures happening and tries to inspire as much as he can: “It’s always fun to see how new cultures match their flavor profile with the Brazilian style of grilling over charcoal. For example, people love pork loin in the USA and now they love it even more, as the fact that the meat is spinning makes it more tender and with a more sophisticated taste in the mouth than if it stayed still on the grill, American-style,” he says.

In addition, Blake described what, for him, forms the perfect barbecue: “The first factor is the equipment, of course. The second is a great group of people. Great equipment + great people + great chefs and talented musicians = the perfect barbecue”.

How did Carson Rodizio come about?

“In my view, Brazilian barbecue is much more about people, conversations, having a beer… It can’t just be about grabbing some burgers, eating, and leaving. No! I wanted to transform this culture of American barbecue into Brazilian barbecue,” Blake reports.

From that, Blake began developing some prototypes and started a very large movement on the internet. Seeing this movement, Sandro, a partner at a Brazilian company, contacted him and they began talking about Blake’s barbecue ideas.

He says, “We developed the ‘Carson Kit’, a device that adapts American grills to a Brazilian rotisserie. You can find a Carson Kit in almost every part of the American territory! Besides the US, we sell to countries like Australia, Canada, Mexico, Israel, Arabia, Dubai, and almost all of Europe!”

He also adds that the Carson Kit is very easy to use and explains, “You attach the product on top of any American grill, and it is adjustable in depth, so it fits both smaller and larger grills. With this, you can actually transform that gas or wood-burning grill. Another option is to build a brick base on the ground and place the Carson Kit on it, so it rotates and makes the rotisserie barbecue.”

To conclude the interview, we asked Blake about his opinion on Tomasi’s product quality: “Tomasi’s product quality is as sexy and industrial as it gets. When you send products to the whole planet, they need to be built very well to withstand constant use over many years. Tomasi’s quality products have undoubtedly withstood this difficult task.”

We thank Blake for the interview and for sharing his experience with Brazilian barbecue! If you enjoyed Blake’s initiative and want to learn more about Carson Rodizio, you can access his website by clicking here.