Samba Loca - Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Carrollton

We arrived a few minutes early for 7:00 dinner reservation. Told we had to wait for a while and we can’t have a table as the open table is being held for someone with a reservation, apparently not us. There is noone else waiting to be seated. We wait. This is a new restaurant, and we want to give them a chance. We look around. The food score, a rating by the dept. of health required to be posted in a visible area, is missing. 10 minutes later – seated at the same table hostess told us we couldn’t have. It isn't very clean. Waitress comes with water and menus. After a wait, she comes back and asks if we want drinks. We ask if there is a wine menu, which she finds for us. Wait wait wait wait wait. Waitress brings us a bread basket. But no bread plates. Waitress comes back in about 10 minutes – no drinks, they only have 2 bartenders tonight [Friday night, small restaurant and not a ‘bar’, so 2 should have been fine, but they are so slow] We order appetizers, our meals, and a wine we ask to be served with the meal. Wait wait. Drinks arrive. Taste like they opened a packet of sour mix powder and shook it with some unidentified liquor – has foam on the top of the "margarita." Waitress walks by often, but does not check with us. Finally we wave her down – tell her the drink is terrible and send it back. She returns to tell us that one of the entrees is not available. My husband tells her he will have whatever I am having. Wait wait. Waitress brings us the bottle of wine. We tell her, again, that we want it with the meal and to please keep it chilled until then. Since she is there we ask her what the food score is. She tells us it is posted up front. She looks. It isn’t there. She tells us she will find out from the owner. Wait wait. We have been here almost an hour and have been served one basket of bread and a bad margarita. After another 10 minutes we get our appetizer, but no plates. We ask for plates. Oh! She gets us 2 plates. Another 10 minutes goes by. Waitress comes to tell us that our meal will be up next. She clears the appetizer plates. Finally our meal is delivered. But no silverware. A few more minutes goes by and the waitress comes back with the bottle of wine, which had obviously been sitting in the ice bucket the whole time as all the ice is melted. We ask for silverware. Oh! She goes and gets it. Then returns to open the bottle of wine. Which she can’t open. Finally takes bottle to the back. Comes back in a few minutes with the opened wine bottle. After an hour and a half we have received our meal! We have wine. We have silverware. We have food. And it is okay. Nothing wrong with the food, but not worth the wait either. We decide that we are not even going to attempt to order a dessert or coffee, but that turns out to be a non-issue. Although plenty slow about taking orders and bringing food, plates, silverware, they are FAST when it comes to the bill. We aren’t even asked if we WANT dessert or coffee – the bill is plunked down on the table while there is still wine in the glasses and food on the plates. At least we won’t have a long wait for this! But, sadly, the bill is in error. We are charged for 3 entrees – the two we were served as well as the one that was ordered originally but not available. My husband doesn’t wait [we’ve learned] but goes to the waitress at the back and tells her the bill has an error. So the owner comes to our table to apologize that they did not have the entrée we ordered. We explain that we are not upset that they did not have the entrée. We do not believe we should be charged for food we did not receive. After a few minutes we get the bill again, and this time it does not have the un-delivered entrée listed. We also received a discount on our meal. However, we’ve been here for nearly 2 hours and have not been treated courteously from when we walked in the door to the completion of the meal. And, illegally and a little scarily, we never do find out...

On Monday night, My family and I ate here, hoping to enjoy a "fine dining" experience. I have to say that the large piece of rolled out, white construction paper added on top of our linen tablecloths felt very "un-classy." If it were due to the virus reasonings, a bare table top would have been much more enjoyable. We ordered one of the craft cocktails. The liquor pour was a little too heavy, though I know this isn't always such a negative thing. However, for us, in this atmosphere, we missed out on enjoying the actual, amazing sounding flavors of the drink. The serving staff was not seen very frequently and our basic needs were not being met. Communication as to why would have been nice, for we are understanding people, and servers ourselves. Though we could not see what was going on in the back of the restaurant, from what we could tell, it was a fairly slower night.

It seemed as though, responsibility was being shared regarding running food and for the girl that ran ours, she is the reasoning behind me sharing our overall experience (I'm not a frequent reviewer.) This same girl, was one of the very few, seen throughout our time (because she was standing at the corner of the bar, eating, while flirting with a customer.) She first delivered our bread, so we did ask her to bring out the "regular" butter that we originally asked our waiter for when he gave us the option. Once she delivered our meal (our server still had not made an appearance,) so we asked her for steak knives so we could actually eat our meal... when she came back, we did need refills, and our server was still not around. So, I laughed and genuinely stated, "I'm sorry, I know you're not our server!" Once bringing our drinks to us, we thanked her and went to carrying on the conversation we were having.... Here's the thing, she never turned and left. She just STOOD there, starring at us in silence, for an unbelievable amount of time! After making multiple looks back and forth between each other and her, completely confused, I laughed and said, "what?!" She then proceeded with an overall cocky attitude and said, "can I get you ANYTHING ELSE?!"

At this point, we were still in total shock, for I have never had such an experience at a restaurant. Her actions couldn't even be justified as to why she would act like that. Again, as a server myself... helping your fellow teammates when a guest wants something is a common rule. In this case we actually had "needs." We were not, by any means, being "needy." When she left us, she went straight back to entertaining that same guy at the bar, discussing and laughing at what she just did. My family and I began discussing what just happened. Never have any of us been so disrespected by someone, EVER, and this is not ok.

Because we know these things can be changed, and the food was great... I am not suggesting that we won't ever be back or that someone shouldn't try this restaurant... maybe we just picked a bad night. However, regarding her, that does not make any excuse for how she treated us. After asking my server when leaving, he stated her name to be "Ana" or...

I visited today 5-21-2025 for lunch with my family and was sadly disappointed. My word, just overpriced, unflavored food I could have made in my kitchen. I ordered a ribeye in which I questioned was it a NY strip. Anyway, there was nothing flavorful about this piece of meat. I salted each cut. There was I don’t know what on the plate, with it that in my opinion should have been used to COOK with the steak to add flavor. The house salad was simply greens, chopped tomatoes, feta, and hard croutons. The Mac and cheese noodles were buried in a cheese sauce. I’m so disappointed with my dining experience. I spent $45 + $8 Tip for a steak. Ridiculous. My son had salmon. I prepare a better slice of salmon in my air fryer at home. His asparagus was dryly done with a sprinkle of whatever was on top of it. Just terrible! My daughter had the shrimp pasta, the restaurant didn’t have any Parmesan cheese to go with. The noodles didn’t appear fresh neither did the sauce! She chomped down on a large piece of a garlic bulb that was in her sauce. Horrible. My son in law ordered fish and red beans and rice. It didn’t look appetizing to me. Service was as expected. Restaurant space was nice. Friendly folks, but I will not go back to overspend for under seasoned food. No...