Estancia Brazilian Steakhouse

Three salad bar areas: salad, meats & cheeses, and hot sides and soups. Including candied bacon. Typical Brazilian Steakhouse bringing meats around if you want them. Do not pass up the flaming cheesecake for desert. Service was plentiful.

For starters the service here is incredible. The various staff are attentive, knowledgeable, and friendly. They really do make sure your experience is top notch, even going as far as pushing your chair in while you sit. The atmosphere and vibe feels classy, and is definitely a standout in Leander. The unfortunate part about this experience is that the food doesn’t live up to the expectation set by the service, atmosphere, and price. The salad bar and hot bar are decent, and overall honestly offer better food than the star of the show; the meat. The first meat, top sirloin, was actually decent. It’s worth noting that you can request a specific meat and they will bring it by. The picanha was also pretty good, but it varied from piece to piece based on seasoning. Some things like the pork rib were absurdly overcooked and bordered on inedible, and other things like the bacon wrapped filet was neither tender nor well seasoned. Overall the meats were underwhelming and could definitely be cooked and seasoned better.

Beware of the bait and switch. The pricing in the lobby and online says $47 per person but yet they try to throw in some Monday night special they give you a free dessert but it’s also $8 more expensive. We went there with the intention of celebrating a birthday at $47 a person and then for birthdays they give you a free dessert instead we paid 16 extra dollars and got a dessert we didn’t even want. Very deceptive place.

We are frequent visitors at the Arboretum Estancia and we’re very excited about one opening just right down the road. While the reception and service was great (constant refills, polite, fresh plates), there leaves many things to be desired at a restaurant of this price point. 1.) The tables are too close together. This one feels bigger than the Arboretum, but why is my chair hitting the back of someone else’s chair when I pull away from the table to get up. And my chair is constantly being bumped from behind from passers/servers. Absolutely unacceptable. The arboretum has this issue too, so, not just an issue at this location. 2.) The hot foods at the buffet being under a glass and half of them unlabeled made you hav to open up the trays to see what was inside. 90% of the time the labels were wrong, so you were really forced to open up every single one. Which meant a lot of loud metal clanking. 3,) The recipes are different. The lobster bisque was weirdly sweet, and the eggs just tasted….different. 4.) Turn the lights DOWN. I assure you people can see without the bright lighting. 5.) The meats were inconsistent - sometimes the picanha would be seasoned. Sometimes it would not be. It kind of sucked having to eat through a big chunk of unseasoned meat to try and go for a hopefully better piece. Hate to waste food. But sick knowing we sent a lot and I’m force feeding myself for another shot at Russian roulette meat. All in all, for what it is and what we paid, I feel like 3.5⭐️ is a fair rating. Maybe we will try this location again further down the road when they have had time to read reviews and recalibrate (if they care to)

Wow, what an experience. Every time you turn around there is someone there to take care of all your needs. Then there is the food, incredible. So much better than all the other Brazilian style restaurants.