Texas de Brazil - Hawaii — Restaurant in Honolulu

TLDR summary: Pros: awesome salad bar (tons of tasty veggies and big selection), good sides are included with AYCE (plantains and cheese bread are the best, beef rib and filet cuts are the best meats, couple lamb, chicken and pork meats in addition to beef. You can get as much of each meat that you want.

Cons: meats servers mostly hover around the main dining area and do not come to the lower dining area equally. You need to ask waiter to send specific meats. A few items in the salad bar weren't stocked. Price of $75 not really worth it unless you know what meats you want. Dessert and drinks are NOT included with AYCE. This is a salty meal, the meats are WELL seasoned (except the beef rib which was refreshingly under seasoned). And the prepared veggies are also well seasoned, in addition to the cured meats, cheese, olives and pickled veg, and beans.

Longer detailed summary: This place is advertised as Brazilian BBQ where there is staff walking around with skewers of meat. While this is true, you are expected to request the waiters to come to you with the meat. This was my first time here in a party of 5 for a friend's birthday. We were seated in the lower dining room which is set up for larger parties greater than 4 people. The main dining area has mostly 2 and 4 person table tops. The waitress (who was very nice and sweet by the way) told us that there are 16 kinds of meat and that they would all come by our table. Initially only a few cuts of meat came by, chicken came by twice before the good beef cuts came by. We saw some waiters with cuts we had not seen before come to tables next to us and then go back to the main dining area, why wouldn't they stop by our table too???? They had beef rib (which was imo the best cut, extremely tender and not over seasoned) but they did not come by our table at all during our 1.5 hours there, we had to request if they even had it towards the end of the meal. The 2nd best cut is the filet. Their signature cut "picanha" is decent, some were chewy. They also has a couple chicken cuts and a pork cut which i did not try. They also had a couple lamb cuts which were good. But the filet and the beef rib were the best. I wish I knew this, I would have just asked for those cuts, but of course they send the lesser cuts first. When you are seated there is no plate on the table, only 2 forks, a pair of tongs per person, and these utensils were placed directly on the table, ewwwww, I hate this becauae it is unsanitary. The salad bar is great! Lots of selections of different kinds of veggies, roasted veggies, picked veggies, pineapple, couple cured meats, couples cheeses bacon, rice, beans, mushrooms. However, the rice was constantly empty, and so were the bread slices. These things should be stocked constantly at a $75 buffet line. There are some sides included with the AYCE price: mashed potatoes, fries, Brazilian cheese bread, and my fave the fried cinnamon and sugar plantains. Service was decent, our 2 waitress team checked on us and filled our waters, but when we requested the beef rib and the filet near the end of the meal the beef rib took 10 minutes to come and the filet never came, we were full already by thay tike anyway. Bottomline: you need know what meats you want, there is no list of meats to refer to, and you need to ask your waiter to send...

This was my first and last time eating here. For starters, had a hard time calling in a reservation was transfered and had to explain everything a second time, a headache but whatever.

The whole party arrived 10 minutes prior to our reservation, where we were greeted by probably the most unfriendly hostess I have ever come across. Not once did I see her smile at a single customer while my party and I waited in line to check in. We get up to her and are informed that they are running "15 minutes behind" and this was 5 minutes prior to our reservation. We all go sit outside to wait. It was nearly 40 minutes after our reservation time that we were finally seated at our table. While walking to our table a server cut right in the middle of our party without a care in the world. No excuse me or nothing and mind you we were not walking spread out, like 2 or so feet between each.

We get to our table, meet our waitress, Katie, she was absolutely wonderful. She was very attentive and friendly and just great all around. We never saw the bottoms of our glasses the entire time we ate.

We then go to the salad bar, which was the saddest and most pathetic salad bar I have ever seen. There were almost no plates, no salad (see picture), little of much else, and food was everywhere now I understand that we were there towards the end of the dinner rush. For a restaurant that charges $70 a person, I think they can afford a full time salad bar attendant. It was so bad I was questioning the safety of the food at the salad bar if that is how they allow it to look.

We are back at our table with what scraps we could get and felt safe enough eating from the salad bar. The carvers begin to come around with their selections of meats (which was about 7 of the 16 offerings). We all grab some and begin eating and let me tell you I have never been so disappointed in a "steakhouse's" meats. Literally every single piece of meat I got was 70% fat, sorry I didn't get a picture of the pile I had amassed.

The bacon wrapped chicken breast was very good and flavorful. The best part of the meal was actually the fries. We had to get seconds of those for the table. The lamb chops had so much seasoning (lemon pepper, I believe). We all could only eat a little bite of them. We all decided to grab a piece of the parmesan crusted pork loin which looked and smelled great. Just as I am taking my first bite, my friend across the table sees a hair in his piece of pork loin. I nearly vomited hearing and seeing the hair. It was a long, thick black hair inside the meat where the skewer was. I had to spit my piece out and could not eat anymore. That pretty much was the end of our meal none of the party felt like eating after seeing that.

At one point the manager (I believe) comes to the table and asked how everything was but the way in which he asked seemed compulsory and not like he would actually do anything or really listen. I wasn't going to waste my breath on him after so much of my evening was wasted by him and his restaurant.

I have never felt so disgusted paying a few hundred dollars for a meal that was this bad. There are much better steakhouses that are way better all around for the same price. I will not be going to this...

Well this was my first time here and I so badly wanted it to be a great experience,Unfortunately I was disappointed. Let me start off with, I made reservations for a birthday, i informed the host upon arrival to remind them it was a birthday dinner. We sat down and was greeted by a waitress and she asked if this was our first time. Of course we said yes and she started to explain the process of how things went. This was an A.Y.C.E place. meats would come around and you can take what is offered or request for something specific. She also explained that you flip your card green for meat and red to stop the people from bringing meat to you. She then asked if we wanted water to start and gave 3 choices. I said regular water and she brought spring water in a bottle for us. Ok but she failed to tell us they charge. $8 for water. So we kept our card on green as instructed and went to the salad bar,the choices on the salad buffet are ok, alot of Mediterranean type food basics stuff all was ok. The hot buffet consisted of au gratin potatoes,rice,sautéed mushrooms and lobster bisque which was good. We sat down and waited. Now into 15 min we are greeted by Nico who turned out to be the best person serving there. He was so friendly and very personable, he should be a waiter. Anyways he brings over sausages on a skewer asks us how we were and made small talk we loved him. Now we wait another 22 minutes and guess who comes around. Good Ole nico he asks how things were so we tell him that the sausage he gave us was delicious but that's all we had. We watched everyone on the top level get meats but they never came in our section. He said he would check and ask waitress. She came over and asked us if we would like anything specific and we said we would like to try something. But we'll done and medium if they could. Now 30 minutes go by and we get a guy coming around serving lamb leg we passed on that, then it was alot of chicken and some meats. The guys who bring the meat maybe came once every 15 min and we specificallytold the waitress who informed them well done meats, they ended up coming around with fillet mignon but it was purple rare pieces. Sirloin was rare, rib meat was good but we had the outer part of it. we did ask the waitress why the meats kept coming out rare and she was unsure as she said she informed them. We asked her for specific meats and it never came.Long story short we paid 200.00 for 7 slivers of meat and 6 sausages, and no birthday dessert. If it wasn't for Nico I would have given this a 1 star. Super...