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4801 North University Avenue
Provo, Utah
801.224.4774
www.tucanos.com
Taste 4 stars
Value 3 stars
Service 5 stars
Price range:
Lunch
Adults: $11.95
Children 7 ?12: $5.95
Children 6 and under: free
Dinner
Adults: $18.95
Children 7 ?12: $7.95
Children 6 and under: free
Distance from temple:
Provo Utah: 3.4 miles
Tucanos is a lively, loud, friendly, all-you-can-stuff-yourself-with Brazilian grilled cuisine establishment. The Friday and Saturday night wait can be long, but they will call your cell phone when ready, so you can shop in the nice Riverwoods shopping area. Other nights you will often be seated immediately.
Once seated you start at the “salad bar” which has a wonderful array of salad fixings (including many exotic and interesting tastes), prepared salads (pasta herb salads, marinated mushroom salad, Brazilian pea salad, salmon rice salad, broccoli rainbow salad, etc.), soups, rice, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and other hot items. There is more than enough here to fill you up. If you're on a diet, as I am, there are enough healthy offerings to prevent you from feeling at all deprived.
Then comes the real fun. The restaurant is chock full of servers who carry around enormous skewers of cooked meats. They come to your table and offer a slice of their wares. You are given a “cue,” which is a small, wooden, stop-light-colors painted cylinder. When you want more meat offered, the green side goes up. When you can't eat another bite or just want a breather to eat what's already stacked on your plate the red side goes up.
Featured meats are turkey wrapped bacon, sweet and spicy chicken, garlic parmesan top sirloin, brown sugar glazed ham, prime rib, wings, and more. My favorite treat is the glazed pineapple. Amazing. Ask for a couple of slices because they don't seem to bring it around as often as the meats.
As a dieter, this also worked well. I filled up on fresh veggie and salad, and then had very small tastes of all different kinds of meat.
One of the best things about Tucanos is the fabulous, friendly service. Even with multiple people waiting on you, I have been hard pressed to find anyone who wasn't helpful and friendly. On this trip a couple of our servers went out of their way to make sure we had a good time.
My only complaint was that I was not offered the complimentary birthday dessert and embarrassing song by the staff even though our waitress knew it was my birthday dinner. I could have mentioned it and I'm sure it would have been offered, but the truth is I was feeling quite unlike myself that night and actually preferred a more private affair. And I knew the unwelcome calories would have been a temptation.
Tucanos is not a cheap night out, but it's worth it. We went there the week before my birthday to take advantage of a free dinner coupon I had received in the mail. If you go to the restaurant web site, you can join the birthday club and get a free dinner during your birthday month. That makes the cost for a couple a lot more palatable.
Alison Moore Smith is a 61-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 40 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons. She is the author of The 7 Success Habits of Homeschoolers.
I LOVE Tucanos! The birthday certificates are wonderful. Luckily my daughter and I both have August birthdays, and I graduated from BYU during August, so we were down that way to take advantage of the birthday certificates. I usually find a good excuse to be in Provo sometime during August every year, actually.
The glazed pineapple is my favorite, and while they do have many healthy choices, I leave stuffed every time. The selections are just so numerous and so delicious. How can I not try them all!?!
You graduated LAST August? What was your major, Sharilee. That is awesome.
That is the ONLY time I did not leave stuffed. I did try them all, but I just took a taste of most.
Actually, it was August of 2005. I finished my coursework before that, but I came an walked through graduation in August of 2005 so that my kids could get all excited about higher education! It was fun.
I finished my bachelor’s degree through BYU’s Independent Study program, so I have a Bachelor of General Studies with an emphasis in Family Life. I really was just looking to get a degree so that I could on to law school. I have represented myself for years, even through the trial, have studied the statutory code and legal books and have absolutely fallen in love with practicing law and wanted to help women going through high conflict divorces. They are very misunderstood.
However, just about the time I graduated I also began to discover the law of attraction and the power of intention and in the process discovered real and lasting joy and peace. The truth is that women will never find peace in the court room. Unfortunately, the law isn’t set up for that. The only way we can find true peace is to learn to nurture it within ourselves and learn to create it through our perceptions, our understanding of the God’s plan, and staying in tune with Him. So . . . I became a professional Mediator instead, which I absolutely LOVE as it is much more positive and actually another really good option for helping people create more peace in their lives. It was also really good for me and my family because I did not have to relocate my kids for law school, the practice of mediation itself is more flexible than a law practice would be, and the salary is virtually the same. My intention was to setup the Cache Mediation Center over the next few years and have it up and running so that when the kids are raised I could do mediation as my full-time employment (which meant mediate for two weeks, travel for two weeks, mediate for a month, travel for a month!)
However, now that I have my Book Wise business going I am really having to determine if I want to spend the time and effort to build an actual business with it (Cache Mediation Center) or if I just want to continue to mediate here and there as requested. I do enjoy mediating, but I also enjoy many other things, and since the income won’t be required I’m not sure I wouldn’t just as soon stay involved in all of my other volunteer projects. In fact, if anything I may end up setting the Cache Mediation more as a non-profit for low-income families. Of course, if I’m not going to do anything with it I need to let someone else use the name and get it going. There are several mediators up here wanting me to get it going so that we can all mediate. I think they want me to get it started because that’s what I do— organize new projects and get new organizations off the ground. I really just want to focus on my kids and other things right now, though. Starting a business from scratch takes a LOT of time and dedication, and as I’m sure you can hear in my voice, I’m not committed to full-time mediation right now. I LOVE my flexible life and I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to give it up!
I don’t know— lots of decisions. I’ll think about it later. I have a 10:00 that I’d better run to!