Texas de Brazil
International Drive, Orlando
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Dinner
(I should preface this by saying upfront that this will be the most detailed, extensive review out of this entire report... and it's only non-Disney restaurant I'm reviewing. I promise that I didn't plan it this way, but I just took SO MANY photos here because there was just so many things to photograph! All the rest of my restaurants, I took 1-5 pics. This one I took approximately 34,975,893 of them. So basically what I'm saying is: Don't get used to it!)
I arrived right on time for my 5:30pm reservation, and the place was pretty empty! I think I was one of the first reservations of the night. That being said, I still had to wait a while to be seated, which I found extremely odd. (Found out later that their computers were down!) But only maybe 10 minutes, then I was lead to a actually kinda neat table. It was against a glass wall that housed this wine cooler/cellar/fridge thing (I'm so classy)...
To my left I could look across this part of the restaurant and see the show kitchen where they prepare some of the meats...
My server was a girl named Raquel, and she was just the cutest, sweetest thing! She explained to me how everything worked, and brought me these adorable little baby Brazilian Cheese Bread rolls!
I ate exactly one of them. They were fine, but I was saving room for the good stuff!
Raquel also brought me my cocktail, which made her pretty much my favorite person in the entire world:
Don't ask me what it was or what was in it. Rum, that much I know, only because I always order rum beverages. I didn't take notes, because I thought for sure I could look it up online when I got home. Guess what? I was wrong.
Raquel also brought a couple of hot sides directly to my table:
Really crazy tasty mashed potatoes!
Fried Bananas with Cinnamon and Sugar!
And directly in front of my table was the bar where additional hot and cold side-dishes and salads are self-served...
To the far left you can kinda see the hot bar. which on this night had Brazilian black beans with chunks of pork in them, rice, steamed mushrooms, au gratin potatoes, and lobster bisque (ALL of which were delicious!). The lighted bar you see to the right wrapped around on both sides, and was full of all kinds of interesting cold salads and sides (including a potato salad that I couldn't get enough of!). Here's some pics of some of the things I got from these two stations:
Clockwise from Top: Some sort of cold shrimp, fresh mozzarella, sushi (California roll), Salmon with Capers and Mustard Sauce, Pineapple Carpaccio, and that AMAZING potato salad I just mentioned!
Lobster Bisque.
Brazilian Black Beans with Pork, Rice, Mushrooms.
More of that yum-yum nommy-nommy tater salad!
Mushrooms and au gratin potatoes.
Before long, the gauchos (the guys running around with skewers of grilled meats... think Ohana, but with 12 meats instead of just 3) began to approach, and the meat-fest began! Vegetarians and Vegans, ya'll might wanna look away now, because it's about to get real up in here. If meat is murder, then murder tastes DELICIOUS:
Yeah. Pretty much a carnivore's dream.
After I finally said "NO MORE!" that's when Raquel, bless her heart, tried to sell me on dessert. And I do mean "sell" as it's not included in the $46.99+tax price tag. Yep, you heard me right. NOPE, I'm quite happy with my included-with-my-dinner fried bananas for a sweet end to my meal, thank you very much!
She DID, however, humor me and bring the presentation tray over so that I could take a photo for all of you!
Pretty, right? For her trouble, I filled out a comment card for Raquel. On it I wrote: "Raquel is WONDERFUL. Give that girl a raise! Food/atmosphere is fantastic, too." (I should mention that Raquel was a newlywed, only married a week, and her husband works in the restaurant also. She dragged him over to introduce him to me after she and I had our phones out and were showing each other pictures/gushing about our cats. Yeah, me and my server totally became besties.)
Back to the food... Now I know that I haven't labeled the meats or the desserts. Frankly, I'm not sure I could have told you what they all were as I was sitting there, much less now, over two weeks later. However, for those who just NEED to know, I did find this handy-dandy graphic on the interwebz to sorta break it down for you:
So in summary, would I come back here or any other Brazilian Steakhouse? You bet your sweet petunia I would. I'm already considering revisiting it on the first night of my next solo trip. It was an absolutely awesome experience, and both the food and the service were out-of-this-world-AMAZING!
