Texas de Brazil — Restaurant in San Juan

On my way to San Juan I eagerly anticipated my visit at this restaurant. I have wanted to go for the longest time, due to the many different kind of meats. A couple of days ago I finally saw an opportunity. A coupon was available online where it was stated that a dinner course meal, that is valued at $60.00, with the coupon it would come out to the total of $38 dollars per plate. We invited a couple of friends and we all agreed to buy the coupons to share a meal. There was an established limit of 4 coupons per table, we thought we would not be able to go since we were a party of 5. We contacted Texas de Brazil and no matter manager Joshua to the rescue, he was very nice and waived this rule for our group. And we made a reservation for a Tuesday.

The coupon/deal stated the following, “Pay $38 dollars instead of $61.99 for dinner in a 3 course meal that includes: Salad Bar + Selection of meat without limit + 2 Side dishes (mashed potatoes and “amarillos en almibar”) + 1 dessert + soda. Option available from Monday to Thursday.

We got there and we were immediately seated. We ordered two passion fruit mojitos, unfortunately they messed up our order and brought two regular ones. No matter we told the waiter to just replace my wife’s mojito with the passion fruit, I gladly drank the regular one. They brought the drink and our group conversed. The place is really nice and looks fantastic. We swung by the salad bar which had smoked salmon, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, salami, shrimp etc. We really liked the shrimp. And the lobster bisque was delicious. Of course, due to the pandemic there were stipulations in place to avoid any type of infection which was great. Due to establishment rules a button that is placed at every table lets the staff know if in said table the customers want meat, we made sure that it was always green. We tried the flank steak which was savory. The lamb, Filet mignon, pork loins although some of us skipped some of the offered meats. After a while, even though the button was green, we noticed that after 10 minutes… 20….30 they stopped serving meat at our table. Since the coupon stated we were offered a dessert we opted to eat it, since the evening was dying out due to the lack of service.

We opted to look at the dessert menu, and it was clarified that the dessert course was a New York style cheesecake which we were surprised since it was not stated in the coupon. It was elaborated to us that we could not eat any of the desserts in menu. But hey cheesecake is cheesecake, so we were more than happy to eat it. They provided a piece for each of us, the problem was, it was frozen. We asked if we could take it home, they told us it wasn’t allowed. That the least to say was bizarre. We felt horrible leaving food on the table, but we could not eat it, it was too hard. We opted to pay our bill, which it turns out that soda on the coupon means one cup of soda. Although all these little slights showed up during our evening, we certainly did not let it ruin it. The total of our meal was $237.55. 2 cokes were $7.00, the coupons came out at a total of $190.00 and the two mojitos were $24.00. We paid $47.55 and even though we weren’t happy with the service we left a $33.15 tip. We were very nice to the staff said thank you, paid and left. After our meal we all felt that the service was affected because of the use of coupons vs normal pay. So, in conclusion our experience in Texas de Brazil was nothing special. It was disappointing, I say this because it is a very expensive place to go eat a meal. And if you pay $60 plus dollars for a plate, you want to make sure that it is valued as such. It was just like any other restaurant, the service was choppy, although the meats were great. Really could not say I would recommend...

Hello,

I really wanted to write this review because our experience in the restaurant was very far from what we expected from a Brazilian Steakhouse with a big name like this one. The first strange thing that happened to us was when calling to make the reservation the hosts did not speak Portuguese (nobody there either) and it was difficult to understand. We asked for a specific time and the host was ignoring the time and we ended up just accepting the time that they said. We thought that the restaurant would be booked (it was not at all 20% capacity when we got there).

The first that we saw at the host stand was 3 hostesses. One completely on her phone, ignored us. The other two engaged in a private conversation. We had to ask them for attention. We had to wait like 10 minutes for our table, again the restaurant was like 20% capacity. They seem ​not to care at all, we even saw a package of Pringles chips on the stand in front of them.

When we sat down the waiter took 5 minutes to come over. I went to the front to get more menus since they only gave one. The hostess was still having a conversation, I grabbed the third menu (the first two were visibly dirty). Back at the table, we ordered drinks. The server was not fully aware of the beers in house.

We got our drinks and the servers brought bottles of water (we did not ask for that). The server is polite, but she does not present herself professionally as none of the employees so far (we noticed a busser with shirt full untucked).

Meat service starts, I noticed that we do not have line napkins. I look around looking for a server to ask for them. She was engaged in a long conversation with another employee. The gaucho came around and I asked him to talk to her. She comes around and I ask for napkins she explains “we do not have more napkins. They did not wash them”. Then she goes over two tables in front of us and she takes the napkins from the tables.

We also asked for flank steak rare, at the beginning we were only getting overcooked meat. It comes around after a time.

The food tasted good, but in general the service was lacking and not professional at all. We see multiple employees with their phone on their hand, texting on social media. The gauchos had a non professional way to talk to us, no excuse me would you like…. One of them served a piece of meat next to me to someone on the other side of the table, he did not want to come around the other guest. In general, it seems more a “corner street restaurant” service than a $600 dollars bill dinner.

They seemed not to care at all and no management was seen.

The server brought the wrong bill as well. She charged us for all full rodizios even though we told her about the salad bar only on the tables. She fixed it.

The end I had to ask the hostess for the parking validation, but they did not offer it to us.

I hope that messanges will bring insight to this location. I have been to multiple Brazilian steakhouses and this visit is...

Sad experience, I had such expetations!!. The overall experience was sad. First the positive: The waitress was nice and the place is nice. Also the salad bar was ok, not a lot of options but good. The main reason to go... unlimited meat cuts to try. We had to wait to be seated eve thou we had a reservation made a week before going. The hostess staff looked abandon in their appearance. Once we got to our table we had to wait again because it was dirty. The waitress took long to bring the simplest things like soda (also the wrong one) We were asked how did we like our meat, (medium). We had to wait for a while to try the meats, the staff would pass by with the meats and ignore our table. There were not all the meats that they advertised and the ones we ended up trying were salty, overly cooked. Main cut that we wanted to try was the picanha. After hour and a half waiting, we asked the waitress, she got it for us, but still came short in the way it was cook and super salty. Got the first drink at the bar (classic Kaipirinha), it was really good. the second one was brought by the waitress someone else did it, it was horrible. I ended up throwing away meat, drinks and I by the time we were suppose to have dessert we were fed up and there were only two options (banana/chocolate), we wanted to leave. We did tipped really nice, thinking that the waitress had no responsibility for the bad food, drink, wait time, etc. Have to say water was good (usually they give you tap water which is really bad in PR). Also do not pay attention to the dress code, the restaurant is not worth smart/business casual code. The total we paid was...