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| - I've heard people rave about Brazilian steakhouses, and I finally went with high hopes, but left really quite disappointed. My overall impression is that Samba is a steak and other assorted meats buffet, but a pain in the ass because you have to wait for someone to come by and cut off an appetizer-sized portion of meat - and you pay through the nose for it.
The taste of some of the food is ok. You start with a buffet of salads, breads, stews. I got some chicken tort (not good), Wisconsin cheeses (good, but you can get them anywhere in the area for cheap), and cheese-filled rolls (excellent). But you should probably not fill up too much, since the real experience is in the meats and pineapple that the servers bring to your table.
At Samba, you flip a big red/green plastic thing to indicate when you want food. If you have it green side up, then servers will come by your table and cut off a modestly sized piece of meat or pineapple and so on, until you flip your thing back over to red so you can eat. The sausage was quite good. The leg of lamb was cooked well, but the meat was a bit too gamey for my liking. The top sirloin was disappointing as hell - there were a couple decent bites, but the slices I got were mostly overcooked and some pieces were loaded with inedible gristle. The pineapple has cinnamon and sugar, and just tastes like warm pineapple with cinnamon and sugar (assuming you get a piece with cinn and sugar on it, which only outside pieces have). I was greatly disappointed by a few of the meats, like marinated flank steak and honey chicken. With the exception of the sausage which was quite good but not special, I was overall pretty disappointed. I am not Brazilian and am not an expert, but I have had Brazilian food before. If you didn't tell me that Samba was Brazilian, I would never have guessed it was supposed to be.
Critically: Caipirinhas are like the drink of Brazil, and the one I had at Samba was the worst one I ever had. That's disappointing since they're one of my favorite cocktails.
The service was sloowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. We were there at a 5pm on Thursday (they open at 5pm) and the place wasn't getting full until we just about finished our meal, but it still took forever for our drinks to get refilled, get our bill, etc. I don't blame our waitress so much, it seemed like she just had a lot of tables to take care of. I think if you're charging $37 or whatever a plate, you can afford to hire adequate staff.
Overall, as many other Yelp! reviewers have already said, the quality of food does not justify the price. My fiance and I had two dinners, two Caipirinhas, and a fountain drink, which cost us over $100. And it was in no way worth $100, let alone even half that. If I were to ignore the price, I'd give Samba 2 Stars, but I can't rate them at any more than 1 given the high price for pedestrian food.
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