Restaurant Review: Boi Na Braza

I was extremely excited for this fine-dining Brazilian steakhouse in downtown Cincinnati called Boi Na Braza. I purchased a $50 halfpricecincy deal for the price of $25. The restaurant is located inside Carew Tower, right next to Morton's Steakhouse near fountain square. We entered and the decor inside was very nice and appealing to the eye.

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We went for Valentines Day for the $47.95/person deal (if you would call it that) which includes all you can eat salad/sides buffet bar + all you can eat meat. Buffets never feel fine-dining to me for one. So that was the first reluctance. I topped the mashed potatoes with marinated *shitake mushrooms and it was delicious, I'll admit. I will need to find a recipe similar to those marinated mushrooms.  The broccoli with cheese sauce was also good. We also were served some cheese straws of some sort, and bread as an appetizer, which were both nasty. We also were served some fried bananas at the beginning and we liked them. We asked our server to bring us more at the beginning of our meal, but he didn't bring them until the end of the meal. Um, thanks. 

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They have a green card/red card system - turn green over when you want them to bring meat, turn red over when you don't. Our green cards were turned over for quite awhile before anyone ever brought us meat. We had to keep getting like 2 or 3 plates of sides to hold us over before they finally brought us some meat. And I had to ask them to. I'm sorry, but if something claims to be all-you-can-eat, I shouldn't be waiting around for a ridiculous amount of time for my first helping. That seemed like part of the rip-off.... tell them it's all you can eat but don't actually bring them any meat until well into the meal.  

When they finally did bring the meat, we were so unimpressed. The meat was brought on swords by gauchos and sliced onto your plate. Just slices, not whole portions of meat. So if you only get a tiny slice, and then the gauchos are gone for 20 minutes, you are just screwed and without food unless you hit the salad bar back up.

This is what our gauchos looked like - kinda. {Source}

They serve 15 cuts of meat, such as sausages, parmesan crusted pork chops, filet mignon, top and bottom sirloin, beef ribs, lamb, and bacon-wrapped chicken. There was maybe one meat that was tasty out of everything, and I don't remember what it was. You guys know I'm a meat lover by all means. I don't discriminate. But what I don't love is flavorless, hard, tough, chewy meat. Especially when that is supposed to be the specialty. At a fine-dining establishment. Most of the steaks were tough and hard to chew, besides the filet which was just mush! And I love filet!!!! It is my favorite cut of steak. But not here. Maybe sauces would have made the meat better, not sure. And if you are waiting for a specific meat, you have to wait until that specific gaucho comes around, which could take forever. You may never even get to try all the different meats. We didn't get to try something called garlic steak I think.... I was waiting patiently for it with my green side showing, and I saw the gaucho look at my green card, and then keep on moving. Rude!

Oh, and there aren't free refills on lemonade or sodas.

Please, please don't waste almost $50/person on this crap food! This was one of our worst experiences ever! It put a bit of a damper on our Valentine's Day to be honest. The service was just bad - gauchos were rude, didn't smile or speak English very well, sounded like they were annoyed, (as I mentioned before) our waiter never brought us our fried bananas until the end of the meal, we had to wait forever for our "all-you-can-eat" meats to come out, and then on top of the bad service they had the nerve to add an 18% tip on my bill for only 2 people! Understandable for a party of 8 or more but not for 2. I used to work in the restaurant business and PJ currently does so we never scimp out on a tip unless it's justified, and this time was definitely justified, and we had discussed not leaving a high tip. But what do you know, we weren't given the option of how much we wanted to tip. We should have went to Morton's right next door. I'm telling everyone I know about my bad experience. I'm not sure if it's always this bad or because it was Valentine's Day. It wasn't like it was soooo crowded, so that's no excuse to me. I'm really surprised to read others' good reviews. We left wondering how they are still in business and how they continue to charge $50 a person and people keep going back. 

(And sorry about no pictures. Had to borrow some from the internet and their website, just to give you some visuals. When I got there with my camera I realized I didn't have my memory card in. Oh well, since it wasn't a nice experience anyway).

Never, never again!!!

*PJ once saw shitake mushrooms in a recipe, and called them shit-take. So that's what we always call them. Shit-take mushrooms :) Think of that next time you eat some, k?

Peace, and bacon grease!