Well, I’m going to simplify things for you. Pampas Brazilian Grille meets and exceeds all of those criteria and is currently winning the war for my title of “Best New Restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip.”

For those not familiar with the Brazilian grill concept this is as traditional as they come. A business-sized card is placed on your table with one side red and the other green. It starts with the red side up and that’s when you sample from the all-you-can-eat “pre-meal” buffet of salads, vegetables, soups, cold meats, and more.

Hot Brazilian appetizers are also brought out during this portion of the meal including fried banana (with a hint of cinnamon), fried cheese, and pastels, slightly spicy dumplings also fried. Yeah, you can worry about your cholesterol later.

Flip the card over to green and the grilled meat starts coming out of the kitchen on skewers and is carved right at the table.

The all-you-can-eat grill selections at lunch include bacon wrapped filet and turkey, roasted chicken breast, fresh ham with grilled pineapple, Brazilian sausage, pork ribs, skirt steak, sirloin, and more while the dinner selections include all that and add more cuts like lamb and noble sirloin.

The parade of meat on skewers is a delight and a mini-argument broke out at our table over which was the favorite (we settled on a tie between the juicy and tender bacon wrapped filet and the mild yet mouth-wateringly flavorful Brazilian sausage). But really there were no losers in the bunch. Everything we sampled (and sampled… and sampled again) was still sizzling from the grill, cooked to perfection with not the slightest hint of dryness that occasionally accompanies grilled meat, and absolutely delicious.

The service was impeccable. Although the servers with the meat skewers roam the room and serve multiple tables with the grilled delights, we never spent more than about a minute without something on our plate and in fact had a hard time keeping up: just as we were starting to really dig into the sausages here comes the ham and pineapple and right after that the skirt steak and on and on.

The dining room is a warmly lit stone, wood, and foliage charmer with a full bar, a private room for large parties, and a casual café area.

The meals themselves come at a fixed price - $18 for lunch and $29 for dinner and that includes all-you-can-eat appetizers, salad bar, and grilled meats (beverages, dessert, tax, and gratuity is extra). That’s about on par with the better buffets in this town and you’ll find better service, higher quality food, and a generally superior dining experience here than you will at any buffet.

The restaurant is located in the Desert Passage mall (soon to be Miracle Mile) at the Aladdin (soon to be Planet Hollywood), just inside the Harmon Avenue entrance. If you park in the main structure out back, turn left and follow the mall toward Harmon Avenue. If you come in are walking in, bypass the current construction confusion out front and enter along Harmon Avenue.