If you must eat at Latina Xintiandi, smuggle in your drinks

This would probably be a better post if we ranked the top Brazilian BBQ places in town, but we date are married to someone who doesn't eat meat, so we don't frequent such establishments. But we can tell you with some authority one all-you-can-eat Brazilian place you should try to avoid, unless you are wealthy or very well hydrated: Latina in Xintiandi.

We know, we know, our fault for choosing a place in Xintiandi. Our mistake -- we are aware of that. But we were hungry, and our stomachs were in Xintiandi, so we ate in Xintiandi. (We were also weary and disoriented form yet another day spent shoe shopping throughout the city. Unusually difficult to find a simple and elegant women's dress shoe in Shanghai without a bunch of weird crap placed on it somewhere ... not even in Xintiandi.)

Anyway, so we knew we would be paying 128 kuai per person for this meal (non-meat eaters get to pay the same special price). And, yes, we knew that was around double what some Brazilian BBQs charge in this city. But it was late and we were frustrated, shoeless and tired. And earlier in the day we saw a Brazilian BBQ in Raffles and we had it in our head that we wanted to eat Brazilian BBQ from that time on (these BBQ joints usually have pretty decent salad bars, so they are oddly kind of vegetarian friendly). So, we walked in. That was mistake No. 1.

In addition to being hungry, we were thirsty. We ordered two Diet Cokes. That was mistake No. 2. It wasn't until after finishing one and deciding we wanted to order another that we looked at the menu for the price of a can of Diet Coke:

38 f*cking kuai

38!

OK, our bad for not looking before ordering. How about a glass of water? Sorry, we don't have glasses of water. Only bottles. She showed us a bottle -- the kind you get at the convenience store for 1.5 kuai. How much are they? 28. No thank you, we'll just wash down all this meat with the froth our anger is forming in our mouths.

Not the kind of place you want to lose your appetite, but 2,000 percent mark-ups are little excessive at an already overpriced all-you-can-eat joint.

Anyway, the food was fine, but no better than any other Brazilian BBQ place in town. There were plenty of people there that night, so if they can get away with charging these prices, God bless 'em. But Shanghaiist suggests you take your money elsewhere -- not that you are stupid enough to make the same mistakes we did, anyway.

Got a favorite Brazilian BBQ place? Recommend it in a comment.

Photo from Jason S.