The metro’s first female passadores help tame an old Elephant at Espirito Do Sul

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Brazilian-born husband and wife Edson and Leonice Ludwig, formerly with the Fogo de Chão churrascaria on the Country Club Plaza, are just weeks away from opening their own Brazilian steakhouse: Espirito Do Sul at 11900 Metcalf, in Overland Park, site of the former Elephant Bar.

This won’t be the first Brazilian steakhouse to operate in this suburban shopping center. Eight years ago, former Kansas City Chiefs star Neil Smith opened his own variation on the churrascaria theme: Amor de Brazil, next door, in the building now occupied by the Joy Wok Chinese Buffet.

Amor was a short-lived enterprise, but the metro’s other two Brazilian meateries, the Plaza’s Fogo de Chão and the Northland’s Em Chamas Brazilian Grill, continue to do for rotisserie-broiled beef, lamb, pork and chicken what the Joy Wok does for General Tso’s chicken and chow mein. Not at the same price point, of course, but all you can eat.

“I prefer to say,” Edson Ludwig tells me, “all you can experience. We’re not a buffet. We’re more like dinner theater.”

The most striking artful touch at Espirito Do Sul — which translates from the Portuguese, Edson Ludwig says, as “spirit of the south” — is what the couple calls a “Harvest Table.” Think seasonal salads, cheeses and vegetables alongside a hot station boasting eggplant parmesan, pasta offerings and the Brazilian rice-pork-and-beans dish feijoada.

All of that, of course, remains mere prelude to the broiled meats, served by handsome passadores wielding sharp knives and steaming skewers. But that tradition gets a tweak here, too. Leonice Ludwig, the restaurant’s co-owner and executive chef, says Espirito Do Sul will be the first Brazilian steakhouse in the metro to have female passadores working alongside the knifemen.

“I’m here to change things,” she says.

The changes to the Elephant Bar, a big space that had been closed for seven months when the Ludwigs took over the lease last summer, have been extensive. The Ludwigs, who say they’ve dreamed for years of opening a restaurant together, have poured a lot of money into Espirito Do Sul ahead of its December opening. Besides new floors, walls, tables and chairs, they’ve closed off the bar from the main dining room, built out three private dining rooms and installed a wood-burning fireplace. Naturally, they’ve also put two costly roasting ovens in the kitchen.

The couple moved to Kansas City in 2008, after a few years working together at a Fogo de Chão in Chicago. By then, Edson Ludwig was well into what would be a 15-year career with the company, having started at one of the restaurants in Brazil. The two worked together at KC’s outpost of the chain before giving notice earlier this year to start their own place. Both had long wanted to do their own version of a Brazilian churrascaria, using Leonice’s recipes. When a local investor, Clint Burkdoll, offered to partner with them, they bid Fogo farewell and signed a lease on the Elephant Bar space. (Edson Ludwig says neither he nor his wife was ever asked to sign a noncompete clause by their former employer.)

“We drive by this shopping district all the time,” Leonice Ludwig says. “I see what kind of traffic is going by here: a lot. I told Edson that if he wanted to keep me here in Kansas City, this is the building that I wanted.”

When the 262-seat Espirito Do Sul opens, the price for the churrascaria side of the restaurant will be $27.50 per person at lunch and $44.50 per person at dinner. That price includes both the meats and the Harvest Table, but Leonice Ludwig’s desserts will be extra. “I’m going to have a passionfruit mousse,” she says, “and a rich chocolate brownie topped with a brigadeiro. We’ll also have tres leches cake — although I use more than three kinds of milk — and both flan and crème brûlée.”

The bar at Espirito Do Sul — where you’ll be able to order the potent Brazilian cocktail known as the caipirinha — will have its own, more moderately priced menu, free of the roving passadores and their skewers of hot meat.

When Espirito Do Sul opens, the kitchen hours will be 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10 p.m. Sunday–Thursday, 5–10:30 p.m. Friday and 4–10:30 p.m. Saturday.