Headed here with Groupons, and whilst I've not have good experiences with Brazillian food in the…read morepast, I decided to try this place after heard good things about the Rodizio Grill. Places with supposedly endless supplies of meat carved at your table. However, based on my experience, I fail to understand how this business stays viable.
We arrived at 1pm. There was only one other party, and they looked native brazillian. We were shuffled to a table in a very tightly packed area where getting out would be difficult. We asked if we could re-locate and reluctantly the guy serving us agreed.
A major difficult is that the staff say very little and presume you understand exactly how this whole Rodizio Grill works. Where more people came in during lunchtime with their Groupons, the confusion on what to do was repeated, and the waiter absolutely looked like he was tired of actual businessa and having to interact with people. Whilst I try not to always judge a place on service, this person interacted with customers with borderline contempt. It's fair enough if you're stressed. But this is your job, and to ruin my perception of the business is not any fault of mine.
Anyway, to make things worse, we arrived just after a powercut had taken out the electricity. It was quite sunny outside which made the interior look all that much darker. We were not told anything regarding this, just to start helping outselves to the salads and other buffet style food laid out in the back of the shop. It's incredibly difficult when you can't actually see anything! Not to mention it took about 30 minutes for any meat to start appearing...
Onto the meats. Given the description of the voucher, I was under the impression that the meat would be cooked to order. However, meat comes around in cycles every 10-15 minutes and you don't get a choice! It's either Yes/No to that round. As non-beef eaters, there were then rounds we couldn't partake in. The one highlight of the experience is that the grill chef noted this and didn't offer us any more beef and went out his way to substitute beef rounds with either pork chicken or lamb.
That said, the variety is not as wide as the groupon claims. Not once did chicken heart appear. And some meat was near on inedible. What we did get to try were lamb, pork sausage, pork shoulder, chicken thigh and pork belly. A lot of this was tough, chewy. However when meats came around again, they would sometimes be better or worse. Either way, it was disappointing. Not to mention we were asked a few times whether we had finished, the first time after only having had 2 meat servings. Almost felt like we were being rushed out. The salads/rice/beans were good, but were nothing special. We felt the meats were supposed to be the attraction, but were not good enough, whilst being filled with salad that were actually a lot better.
The cocktail was good, but again, I thought we would get a choice. But all you get is Cachaça, which I can't complain about, since I love it. Also the dessert is just an Iceland style chocolate gateau. Disappointing to the max. My dad asked if were could have instead the blackforest gateau right next to it. We were strictly told no. I was surprised, as it wouldn't have cost them anything more, and bought them some goodwill.
In all we didn't feel well treated during this lunch and would never go back again. The Groupon choice was restricted to items not clearly explained at the start, service was abrupt and contemptuous, food not near good enough to serve to paying public. I really wanted to have my mind changed about Brazillian food, but this only cemented my bad (personal) experiences with it. Other Groupon holders seemed to be going through a similar experience as eye contact said everything. How this company even managed to sign up to Groupon given the horrendous difficult making a telephone booking is beyond me.
