Texas de Brazil - Syracuse — Restaurant in City of Syracuse

The meat can be really good. The flank is to die for. The filet mignon is good. The parmesean pork is also good. The sausages are amazing. The rest is all middling, including the extensive salad bar. Drinks are expensive, as expected, and they offer a huge selection. The drink menu is comically large. They are accomodating if you want something that is not on the menu as well.

I hope the bartenders are tipped out properly, because if you consider the litany of server-related things your personal server does not have to do, a heavier percentage of tip should be rendered to the bartender. Just my opinion, of course.

Some of the skewer bearers would make the odd choice of asking a single person at the tabke if they wanted their particular offering and took their answer as table consensus. If you're willing to yell in public, you might catch their attention before they vault away to the next table. Some seemed a little but in agony to be doing what they were doing...I don't blame them. How much walking do you suppose these poor folks do in a shift? The maître d', on the other hand has been a joy both times I visited. They seem very capable of picking up the slack wherever and whenever the non-traditional wait staff drop the ball.

The decor is confused. Fake iron worked ceiling box-outs were an interesting choice...but when you hang extravagantly large chandeliers from such a brutally industrial ceiling...you end up wondering if someone is trying to say something. Add to that, you are plainly and obviously in a shopping mall. The part of the mall you're in is newer construction, so things are at least in order and somewhat modern. That being said, the emptiness slowly creeping into Destiny is most apparent ironically in their newest area, the Canyon. A whole section in the Canyon is unfinished still...years after completion. That section is right accross from TdB. It checks all the boxes for "big place to take the office or family to show them a fun time"...but so does Olive Garden. It ends up feeling corporate and vanilla, if not a little sad. Not to mention that the dining room is a single, very large room... so when it is packed it is very loud.

All in all, Texas de Brazil is it a cut above your typical steakhouse experience. Absolutely. It's all you can eat, the servers bear gifts of meat in a never ending parade of knife and skewer and freshly cooked meat. It's all good food. Nothing is bad. Then you get the check. Let me tell you. It is most certainly not twice as good as KPot, but it was most certainly twice as expensive. Once I see the tab like that, after an experience such as the one described, I end up with a sense of disillusionment similar to what I experience eating somewhere like Cheesecake Factory...which is ironically just down the hall. It's not my thing. If you want to try and impress someone by covering an egregiously large tab, this is your place!

If you want an all-you-can eat meat experience, ask yourself if cooking your own food is a drawback or a plus. If it is a definite drawback, then Texas de Brazil is your place. If cooking your own food is not a drawback, KPot has better food (in my opinion) and is right around half as expensive with comparable drinks.

Not to mention... you don't have to be interrupted every five minutes to try and communicate with someone who refuses to make eye contact and identify the best way to let them know you would or would not like what they are offering based on what they were saying as they approached the table in a very loud restaurang while you were trying to listen to your friend about the work week they just had. If this was about the show and entertainment of people bringing you food, and you focused on the experience the whole time, it's fun. God forbid that you have a conversation at the table that warrants any level of concentration.

I've ranted about this place enough. I'll be going to KPot from...

We went to Texas de Brazil on Monday, 4/15, right at opening. We did not have a reservation, but were seated very quickly by a server after host #1 passed the ticket to host #2 who passed the ticket to server #1 who pawned us off on server #2. Very confusing!

This isn't the first time we've been to this location, so we pretty much knew what to expect. We have also been to the Rochester location many times and know the servers very well. Hmm...I probably should write a review about that location sometime as it has always been better than the Syracuse location (still no sushi on the salad bar though - see below for context).

The salad bar is very good. Everything is cold that should be. I do wish they would add sushi as other locations have. The hot bar (potatoes au gratin and a new - to me - fish dish) were very good.

The meats - the whole reason you go to Texas de Brazil were decent. The filet mignon was inedible - fatty, gristly, and not a good taste. The standout of the evening was the garlic and spicy sirloin! My favorite meat, flank steak was excellent - juicy and cooked just right. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with all the beef. The picanha was a bit overdone each time we tried it. The sausage came out crunchy and far overcooked. Sure it shouldn't have any pink, but it had a 1/4 inch ring around it of just plain crunch. No juices at all were left in these usually delightful hunks of meat. I didn't try the lamb, pork or chicken options that were offered. We never did see the pork BBQ ribs make an appearance.

Service was...well, they need to work on their training program. The training server was very intentional about letting us know all about the upgrade options by listing them even after we had placed our drink order. She also provided a whole list of items that we didn't need. We let her do it since it was apparent she was training. It wasn't really annoying at that point.

From that point on, the training server ignored us, while the trainee serviced our table. The trainee (I regret not getting her name, but I'm guessing management can figure out who she is from this post) kept our drinks filled and did it more promptly than any other server we've ever had at Texas de Brazil! She provided that yummy cheesy bread to us several times. She offered to clear our plates from the table when it appeared we were done with salad. This has never been done at the Syracuse location before - Rochester always did this. She made sure we were enjoying our meal and, as per normal, asked if we wanted any meats to come on by that we didn't receive or wanted more of. Major kudos to you, trainee!

We attempted to tip the trainee who was very professional when refusing the tip as she wasn't allowed to receive tips. I am so sorry we put this new server in an awkward position of having to refuse our tip due to what I assume is corporate policy. The training server saw there was an interaction with the trainee and scurried to our table to inform us that we were not allowed to tip the trainee as she makes a "far higher" rate than any others. Makes sense, but she's still in the service industry and on tipping extra, a guest should always be allowed. She explained what we already knew about the gauchos also being in the tip pool. We were planning to tip the trainee and add a tip for the entire team. This was not allowed.

We did not escalate this to a manager, but found it quite inappropriate for anyone to tell us whom we can and cannot tip. Our meal was good. The service was excellent from the trainee. She's a good one, you better keep her. And yes, to answer you all, we still tipped 20%. It's the right thing to do. It wasn't right for Texas de Brazil to refuse us the option to tip a stellar new employee.

No photos of the evening. Y'all know what meat and...

First and foremost, our waitress Judy and her trainee were very pleasant, and courteous. Judy explained the menus and did the desert presentation flawlessly. Sadly, the restaurant was understaffed, as Judy was busy with all the other tables, to be attentive. We had been in the mall a week ago but did not have reservations that day and were unable to eat there. despite numerous tables set, but empty. Therefore, we made reservation for Mother’s Day online. We proceeded to eat at another restaurant. When we left the mall, we walked by the restaurant about 2 hours later. There were still many empty tables and only had about 6 tables in service. On Mother’s Day we arrived about 10 minutes early. Our party of six had to wait approximately 25 minutes to be seated. Due to the staff needing to clean our table which had already been vacated by the previous party, and sat untouched for most of our wait time, as did other vacated tables. The salad bar was worked over and many items from the on-line menu were missing. The items that I tried were very good, however, the prosciutto, which lacked flavor. Upon being seated Judy offered us sparkling water and still water. We had one of each not realizing that they were $6.50 apiece. At that price we would not have ordered an extra bottle and actually opted for a soft drink or table water. The plantains were very good. The mash potatoes were cold but flavorful. The Brazilian cheese bread was extremely chewy and reminiscent of raw dough, but tasted good. The gauchos were friendly but few and far in apart. They brought the same three or four meats in the first few rounds. The garlic steak was so over cooked that it was like beef jerky, each time we tried it. The bacon wrapped chicken was extremely dry and reminded me on Griswold family chewing on the Christmas Turkey. The Brazilian sausage was excellent. Perfectly cooked and nicely seasoned, but only made one appearance. The flank steak was the best meat offered and fortunately it came around several times from the start. It was only after asking a few times and accompanied by a fairly long wait that they brought out some of the other meats. The leg of lamb was OK at best. The pork ribs hardly had any meat on them and again were reminiscent of the Christmas Turkey. The filet mignon, even at rare, was very chewy. The beef ribs finally arrived after we had already ordered desert and the dishes were cleared so we did not get to try them nor the lamb roast. To our disappointment they were also out of bacon wrapped jalapeno. When ordering desert, Judy, the server was delightful. She was knowledgeable of the deserts and was good at the upsell of the liquor to pair with. Sadly, it again took long for the cheese cakes to arrive, but tasted pleasant. Our party consists of 6 people, and our bill came to nearly $400 dollars. That is with only having one alcoholic beverage and two sodas and 4 cheese cakes. Over all we were disappointed. However, I do have to mention that the staff was trying and was pleasant but stressed. Most likely due to this pandemic they are understaffed and over worked. They had a sign advertising all positions. It was also Mothers Day, so they opened at 1200 hours compared to 1600 hours. Due to social distancing, they do not have many tables, compared to the picture on the web page of this particular location. With this in mind, one has to wonder of the level of service, when the restaurant is open to full capacity.

I will chalk this up to the pandemic and employers finding it hard to find help, let alone good help. Judy tough, was a gem. I might return in the future when life...