Restaurant Review: Texas de Brazil

I know a lot of people have probably heard of or even been here, but Danny and I went last Sunday for the first time ever to celebrate our 1st Anniversary. Let me just say, if you haven't ever heard of this place and want to go, be prepared...you are going to spend over $100 for 2 people...and that won't include drinks. We knew this going in (thank goodness!) and had prepared ourselves. But it's somewhere that Danny has been wanting to go for a long time, so I said okay, lets just go.

Now, I am not much of a meat eater. I'm not a vegetarian because I do eat meat, but it's not normally something I crave. I was very much looking forward to and planning on only eating from the salad bar (no meat and it is cheaper if you only eat that!). We had both also agreed that we weren't going to get drinks, only water, to try and help keep the cost down.

So we got all dressed up. Danny wore nice jeans and a polo, and I wore a dress (the same dress I wore to our wedding rehearsal a year ago! it still fits! yay!), along with the strand of pearls Danny got me for Christmas, and my brand new pearl earrings he had given me that day! (He's such a good hubby, always spoiling me!) I love when we get dressed up, because it's not all that often. And I felt so grown up going to a restaurant that actually does have a dress code.

When we got there, they have a parking lot with valet service right next door. We didn't have the guy actually park our car, but you can park in that lot too for a fee. I do think Texas de Brazil needs to hire a new guy or talk to him about customer service. You see, this parking lot is connected to another one, and the only thing to mark where ours ended and the other began, was a very faint yellow painted stripe. Mr. valet guy didn't tell us this. So Danny parked in the "other" lot that we didn't pay for. Luckily the attendant there came out immediately and said we couldn't park there. We could have been towed! So we moved the car (thanks mr. parking attendant!) and started on to dinner.

I have to say, when you walk into this place, it is amazing and gorgeous. Beautifully painted red walls, plants, and nice bar...it was all so nice. We were a little early for our reservation, so they told us we could step inside and they would come get us in a few minutes. So we went to the bar. At this point we had both decided, what the heck. It's our anniversary, we are both going to have a drink and we are both going to get the full experience of this place (meaning I was not just going to eat salad).

I decided to get a drink called "The Beach Bum" in remembrance of our getting married on the beach (that was my excuse anyway, it just sounded really good!). And it was. I need to figure out what all was in that thing and have Danny learn to make it. So we barley had to wait and they were coming to get us to take us to our table. The hostess was so friendly and cordial and explained to us the process of how everything worked.

Then our waiter came up and was very friendly and explained everything to us again and said if we had any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

So here's the process. You go up to the HUGE salad bar and get anything and everything you want, and then go back and eat it. When you are done, each person has a little card that is green on one side, and red on the other. Basically, green means bring me food, red means no thank you. When you are done with your salad, they bring you a clean plate, and that's when you flip your card to green. At this point, a bunch of guys walk up to your table and they all have different kinds of meats on a skewer. They tell you what it is and ask if you would like to try it and you go from there. And let me tell you, when you flip that card to green, within about 30 seconds there was a line of 5 of them waiting to get to us, it was crazy! We learned very quickly that we could not just leave it on green, we had to turn it back and forth.

The food was AMAZING! Even the salad bar was wonderful, which Danny had not been looking forward to (I wanna save room for the meat!). He even said at one point he wanted to go back up to the salad bar again. Which, I was not sure if we could keep going up there or if we were only allowed up there once, but oh well, we had plenty of food so it was fine. I have found out that I am in love with fillet mignon (I have to take the bacon off though, yuck!). I was a little annoyed that everything seemed to come with bacon wrapped around it. But I just took it off and then ate my food.

My overall review of this place is 4.5 stars out of 5. The only 2 things I did not like were the valet guy, and the fact that they let a guy dressed as a thug into this place to eat. And we were not the only ones that did not appreciate this. Several other tables stopped and just stared at him as he walked by. Guy was wearing very baggy shorts and a plain white tshirt untucked and wrinkled. Not trying to sound like a snob, but if I went to the effort to dress up and follow the dress code, and I am paying $100+ for a two person meal, I expect you to turn someone dressed like that away.

Texas de Brazil
101 N. Houston
Fort Worth, TX 76102