Gauchinho Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Asheville

My boyfriend and I were visiting from out of town, and wanted to go somewhere special and delicious for our anniversary dinner. We saw that this new steakhouse had recently opened and decided to give it a try. What an absolutely wonderful experience! To start with every single person that worked there was so friendly and so happy. Literally everyone had huge Smiles on their faces all the time, and those were genuine smiles. It's so wonderful to dine at a restaurant where the people working there are so happy to be there.

Next, the salad bar was packed full of fresh healthy sides including various different types of salads, smoked salmon, rice and beans and mashed potatoes that were all nice and hot, and delicious chimmichurri sauce that you could bring back to your table to have with your steak. There were also a number of different types of cheese which is one of my favorite food groups!

Then the meats! Definitely the showstoppers. We tried almost every single one that came to our table and were not disappointed in any of them. The house special is phenomenal, and we enjoyed that a number of times throughout our dinner experience. The filet wrapped in bacon was probably the showstopper. The filet was cooked well, as was the ribeye and the flank steak. The team serving made sure to ask us how we like our steak cooked so that when they came to bring steak to our table it was cooked to our liking every time. That kind of service is phenomenal! If you have never been to a Brazilian steakhouse, each person at your table gets a little circle that is red on one side and green on the other. When you want them to come to your table with more meat you have it flipped up with the green side showing. As soon as we put ours on green people were at our table almost immediately.

Meal also came with a small side of Brazilian cheese bread, which I absolutely love. It also comes with a plate with fried bananas coated in cinnamon and sugar which were delicious.

Because this restaurant is very new, it was not very full when we were there for an early dinner around 5:30 p.m.. there was one table with about 20 people celebrating a birthday party, and they all had Smiles on their faces. There were probably five or six other tables that had groups anywhere from 2 to 6, and at no point did the staff seem overwhelmed or stressed.

When I made the reservation online for our dinner, it asked me if we were celebrating anything in particular. I marked that we were celebrating an anniversary, and at the end of our meal the team brought out a creme brulee for us for dessert that said happy anniversary on the plate. It was such a wonderful Extra Touch!

I also would be remiss in not discussing the delicious white sangria. I have an orange allergy so when I told our server that she brought the bartender over to talk to us about all of the ingredients in the sangria to make sure that it was going to be good and safe for us. The sangria he crafted for us was delicious! We ordered an entire pitcher and drank every single drop. My boyfriend, who is not normally a huge wine or sangria drinker, loved it so much that he wanted to see if we could buy a pitcher of it to take home with us! (sadly, we couldn't)

Location-wise, it's located in a strip mall type area right by a crumble cookies. It's at the end with lots of parking available. Everything inside was very clean and sparkling. We absolutely recommend this to everyone! It was a great experience, and we will definitely be back when we are...

First off, this place has a 5 star rating with 18 reviews at this time. That is very telling of what you should expect, and that is what was delivered 10 fold. Atmosphere was very nice and spacious, didn't feel like we were crowded and a clean place. It wasn't 100% perfect, but honestly, a good 95%... and on Valentine's Day at that. If you want to give the love of your life the meats, great choice.

I guess I'll put a disclaimer... this is a vegan's nightmare but you could still be satisfied with the salad bar. Also that this is obviously a place you wouldn't go to every day or every week... I mean you could for sure if you have the means to do so at about $55-65 per person... but you may develop some health concerns from stuffing all the meats in your face too many times.

As soon as we hit the door, we were impressed by the front of house staff. Very personable employees that were extremely excited to have us, explained the concept and led us to our seats. The wait staff were all extremely upbeat, checking in on us and assisting us with requests etc. Those meat swordsmen though, not all heroes wear capes. They were all very professional and very happy to drop off whatever animal they had with them, oh, and the grilled pineapple.

The Food SLAPS!! ... Do you have dreams of cooking and consuming entire barn yards of delicious walking meat sticks? Do you want to both love and hate yourself at the same time after you have endulged your appetite. GAUCHINHO has you covered on all those fronts. Pigs, lambs, cows and chickens all join the party in your stomach.

I have no idea what those Brazilian bread things were, but they are interesting in a good way. I found myself eating one after another, trying to figure them out. There was a huge salad bar with a ton of stuff on it, but I laughed at it just because I was there for MEAT. The mashed potatoes were a good palet cleanser... sounds weird but thats how it worked out. Garlic beef tenderloin, filet, bacon wrapped filet, flank, ribeye, garlic pork, lamb and some Brazilian sausage from the gods and I'm sure I missed some others.

All those pros, where is the room for improvement? Well here are just a few takeaways from our experience.

The rice given as a side had 0 flavor, almost like not enough salt in the water. Bacon Wrapped Chicken tasted fantastic, but I found the Chicken a bit dry... I still ate like three pieces of it so obviously not bad. The Garlic pork tasted very good but was also on the dry side for me. The ribs were probably my least favorite as I didn't find them to be very flavorful and the cut they used didn't help.

100% would recommend for carnivores. If you are a member of PETA, you may want to avert your eyes... or...

We were seated and had the rules explained to us. Seemed straightforward. We got the sides from the salad bar, came back, and flipped the cards over to green which indicates we wanted service (I.e. wanted the staff to stop and offer us meats).

After about 3 offerings (we accepted all of them) I flipped both cards to red so that we could have time to eat what we already had and not waste the food in case we got full off of it. However, staff CONTINUED to come up and offer us more food with red cards on the table. I saw them look directly at the cards multiple times and then still come up and offer us more meat. We must have said no about 5 or 6 times before they stopped. In an ordinary restaurant this would be fine, but here they literally went out of their way to give customers an on/off switch for service and then just completely ignore the concept and keep asking if you want more food anyway. Why even have the system at that point???

The pricing was also very unclear. Maybe I just missed something but I didn’t see the price printed anywhere on the menus and at first didn’t even realize it was a buffet and thought we were being charged per entree. It also wasn’t made clear that the desserts cost extra, but the prices on them weren’t too outrageous.

The sodas also come in cans which was very out of place with the otherwise ritzy atmosphere of the restaurant. Refills, of course, would cost extra. The canned soda thing is also baffling because I literally saw a soda fountain (with all the exact same coke products they serve in the cans) installed behind a little counter near the back. Is this just for the staff to drink? Was the soda fountain broken? If it’s broken, why are there reviews from 7 months ago on here also saying that they served canned sodas? Isn’t it kind of bad for the environment to buy so many Aluminium cans when you can just use the soda fountain to fill infinitely reusable glass cups?

Definitely will not be back. Questionable...