Restaurants that specialize in "churrascaria" — a style of barbecue from southern Brazil — are typically lively spaces, where faux gauchos wielding saber-like skewers navigate between crowded tables.

Green Field Churrascaria, on the other hand, has a more hushed atmosphere. Here, you’ll find dark-wood furniture, plenty of space, and diners quietly tucking into heaping plates of food.

Maybe that’s because the fixed-price menu ($9.95/lunch; $19.95/dinner, weekend, and holiday meals) has so much to choose from. For the churrascaria, waiters visit your table to slice chunks of meat off skewers brought straight from the barbecue pit. Within five minutes, you’re likely to be offered sausage, chicken legs, pork loin, roast beef, sirloin, bacon-wrapped chicken, skirt steak, and steak kebab with onion. To control the pacing of the carnivorous onslaught, you’re given a small wooden "traffic light." To bring on the skewer-bearing waiters, you put the green side up. You flip the red side up to signal a pause — say, to hit the hot buffet or the salad bar.

Which should be done, because the buffet and salad bar are quite worthy of investigation. In fact, the hot buffet is at times even better than the churrascaria. Standouts include costela de mandioca (falling-off-the-bone-tender beef rib with yucca) and arroz a eva (rice with bacon, green peas, eggs, and herbs).

The salad bar features numerous varieties of salsa, onion-laden salads (such as green beans and onion), greens, and malonesse de batata (potato salad with mayonnaise, corn, and carrot). There’s also a random selection of sushi and sashimi, including eel, salmon, tuna, red snapper, California rolls, and flying-fish roe.

Should you be so disciplined as to leave room for dessert, it will cost you an additional $4. Offerings include Brazilian flan and coconut mousse, as well as the more-usual chocolate cake, cheesecake, and tiramisu. However, the banana empanadas found in the hot buffet also make for a sweet (and inclusive) finish.

Beverages also are not included, and are of the decidedly non-alcoholic variety. A virgin caipirinha ($4.50) and Brazilian tropical juices ($3.90) are the most exotic of the numerous options.

Green Field Churrascaria, located at 80 Brighton Avenue, in Allston, is open daily, from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Call (857) 559-9000 or visit www.greenfieldchurrascaria.com.