• EAT: Meat . . . sometimes you just have to have it. When we feel the carnivorous call, Al Carbón answers it. Maybe it's the menus with their wood-burned, caveman-like images of fire. Or maybe it's just that they deliver to my neighborhood on weekends. If meat -- particularly steaks, burgers and sausages -- is what you crave, this Latin American steakhouse is for you.

Known best as a late-night pit stop for partyers (it's open until 6 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays), Al Carbón doesn't settle for simply grilling its beef; it heaps on super-flavorful toppings. Our favorite: caramelized onions and blue cheese, which you can get on the inch-thick burgers and beefy hot dogs.

My kids love the pincho de carne (beef skewers), with grilled onions and red peppers. The hot dogs also are kid pleasers, as are the smoothy-like juices like green lulo, a Colombian fruit that tastes like citrus.

Churrasco as long as a child's arm, served with a house salad and chimichurri sauce, keeps dad smiling. Salads include caramelized onion and blue cheese with mixed greens, tomatoes, mushrooms and a balsamic vinaigrette.

Don't miss Colombian side dishes such as whole grilled red pepper with balsamic vinegar and oil, fried yuca and morcilla (blood sausage).

• DRINK: Refajo, a Colombian cocktail that mixes Colombian beer with Colombiana, an orange soda.

• WATCH: Prime Cut (if you can stomach it), the 1972 crime thriller about gangsters and the slaughterhouse they use to convert their enemies into sausage, starring Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin and Sissy Spacek.

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