Barbacoa Roppongi Hills — Restaurant in Tokyo

I have been going to Barbacoa for lunch, for dinner, for the weekend lunch etc. for over 15 years in various locations around Tokyo; Marunouchi, Shibuya,. Shinjuku, Roppongi Hills, you name it and I have been there. I usually go about once a month. While this review is posted under the Ropoongi Hills location this applies to all of them.

Barbacoa was my favourite restaurant, and I hate to use "was" instead of "is". But things have changed and as of this past Saturday after going to the Roppongi location "was" is the word that I have to use now. I have never taken the time to write a review on any restaurant but I am now as I loved Barabacoa and I would love to see things change.

They used to provide great service and value for money, but over the past 3-4 years the service and quality has declined significantly.

For example, they used to offer water, Oolong tea and coffee as part of the all you can eat lunch or dinner. That is gone and has been gone for a few years. In April the price increased by about 25% and yes I understand the impact of inflation but the service has gone down. They often forget or ignore requests for meats that you want or if you request to cook a certain cut of meat a little more. This has happened a lot at locations like Shinjuku, Marunouchi and Roppongi Hills which are the three that I go to the most.

They no longer consistently change the plates for the customer mid meal like they used to. I had to ask for that this past Saturday. They have often skipped over our table, walking past and not bringing meat even though our puck was indicating we're open to receiving meat. These type of things have happened multiple times at multiple locations over the past several years.

In terms of the quality of the meat, which was Barbacoa's main thing over its competitors, I feel that it has gone down over the same time period, the cuts you get and the quality of them are more hit or miss now when it used to always be excellent. The salad bar is still fine as it always has been but I am not going there for the salad.

All in all, the last time I received decent service and felt that I got value for my money was about 3-4 years ago.

I am sorry to say but now there are other Churrasco restaurants that provide better service and better value for the money. I once loved Barbacoa, but know I cannot longer...

1st time visit after came out the Mori Museum, staffs are friendly & explained the dinning process, ¥8500 dinner all you can eat for 2 hrs, variety of veggies buffet, self serving, then turn the button green side up for the staffs that carry the different meat around to see you, they will come up & tell you what kinda meat it is & cut for you. Simple & easy.

But gotta wait some time for them to go around though, so don’t eat too much buffet & bread at first! Hold on & wait for the beef! LOL

I’m on a mostly beef diet after COVID, some parts of the beef quality is good, some parts are bit too dry & hard I gotta spit out. I can’t tell which is which, tried 5 varieties & got full.

Chicken heart is delicious, well seasoned, fresh & chewy, good muscle protein. Didn’t get to see some lamb chop though… I was waiting for it to come around but after eating for 1.5 hr, still didn’t see it.

I still like traditional methods of ordering the foods I want & how I want it, no long waiting, just directly from a menu & put it in front of me, instead of this kind of long wait & eat, then see what I’d randomly get type of eating style. Feels like I pay a high price to get randomly rationed food by luck… kinda wasteful.

Also, got interpreted couple times while eating & watching Podcast when the meat staffs came by, one of them was obviously not happy that I need to take out an AirPod to hear him what kinda meat it was, neither of us was happy with this gesture to be honest. I got interpreted of my show & he felt offended somehow.

This place is great for large group gatherings, not for single or couple nice dinning mood. Very Brazilian...

We start to feel bit tired of Japanese food after 7 nights in Tokyo, so we decided to try this restaurant, we know it’s similar like Fogo De Chao but still expect something unique since it’s in Japan.

The waitress and staffs were very nice and friendly, our waitress knows we are first time customers so she explained how the things work. They have the “ 2 hours all you can drink “ plan which is kind of interesting concept to me.

The buffet has several different kind of salad and they all taste good and fresh, a little bit surprising there’s no smoke salmon but I had enough salmon in past few days, so I’m ok with that.

The meats are good and the servers are also very attentive. The dessert part is bit disappointing, most items tastes ok, just not my favorite…. But then I found they have ice cream machine, that made it a happy ending of the night.

We had a great time here and would like to visit here in the future, highly...