We have been frequenting Minas for several years, though it had tapered off recently due to general finances. Last night we had a reservation to celebrate my husband's birthday. We arranged a babysitter for over night so we could enjoy a nice, expensive dinner date without our 5 year old.

We arrived a bit early, maybe 15 minutes. The hostess gave us a choice between two tables and we selected one, sat down, and got situated. We went to the buffet for plates and some sides, then flipped our card to green and started receiving meat from the gauchos.

As we were cutting into our first pieces of meat, the hostess approached our table. It turns out there was a larger party coming in and she didn't realize they needed our table. She asked if it was okay for us to move (we didn't actually have a choice) and then said she would help us move our plates to the new table. She grabbed a tray, took our plates and walked away to the kitchen while telling us we could get new plates. We stood in the middle of the restaurant not knowing which table we were supposed to move to, and wondering why our food was taken away. She returned telling us which table to go to like we should have already known, and then disappeared. The server brought us water and apologized for the hassle, then we got new plates and waited. And waited. And waited. It was a long time before the gauchos came around again, and the items we had on our original plates never actually came around a second time before we left the restaurant. While waiting for meats to come around, our server came to check on us and asked if we wanted something in particular. We said we were waiting for what came, and she then "reminded" us that we can visit the buffet upon noticing our clean plates. We already did the buffet, we were done with the sides and felt she was speaking down to us. I also felt because we were a small table in the corner that we saw less selection than normal because the gauchos ran out of most items before they got to our table, and they didn't then start where they left off to ensure all patrons were seeing the full variety. The server did ask a couple of times if we wanted anything in particular, but we didn't. We wanted to enjoy things as they came.

I've worked in restaurants before, I tried very hard not to let the hostesses error ruin our meal, as did my husband, as we realize it was a bit of a one-off situation, but I didn't feel it was handled appropriately. If we hadn't started our dinner and were asked to move it would have been no problem, but we had started, and she took away food we were literally about to eat when she had us change tables. I'm glad this wasn't our first time visiting, but I'm 99% sure it will have been our last.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, our original table didn't even have a party sat at it until about 5 minutes before the server brought us our bill.