Novilhos Brazilian Steakhouse
| Address: | 901 Fairview Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109, USA |
| Phone: | +1 206-494-3375 |
| Site: | novilhos.com |
| Rating: | 4.3 |
| Working: | 5–9PM 5–9PM 5–9PM 5–9PM 5–10PM 12–2:30PM 12–2:30PM |
Location
Photos 100
Reviews 7
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Rick Nielsen
I visited the Seattle, South Lake Union location and found the food to be good and the staff excellent. We were treated very well and would definitely return. The wide variety of both cold and hot foods on the first course, salad bar for lack of better word, was very good. It looked and tasted like it was house made and not simply scooped out of a bucket like many buffet places. The sides that are served at the table (garlic mash potatoes, cinnamon bananas, fried polenta, and cheese rolls) were delicious but the cheese rolls are best eaten warm. But they will refill what ever you want of the sides so its not a concern. Of course the star of the dinner show is the wide selection of meats that are brought to the table on a skew (giant sword) and if its small the server will slide it off the skewer onto your plate or if its larger cut a piece off and you take it with a small tongs and plate it yourself. After reading several complaints in earlier reviews I believe I can answer of few of them from what I experienced: The hand carved meats are seasoned on the outside of the meat and if you are first from the skewer you will get all the seasoning on your piece. One of them had large kernels of salt on the meat and it was a bit salty. If you are the second slice on you get no seasoning and its a not very flavorful beyond what the meat itself is. We were lucky to be seated near the kitchen door and so we got very hot meat first off the skewer and it was very flavorful. I was able to try all but one of the choices and for my tastes would highly recommend most of the beef cuts and the lamb shank. I found the Brazilian sausage to salty and tasted like something from the coolers at the grocery store. The chicken was well seasoned but was from an old chicken and tasted like it. The lamb chop was nicely season but very small and thus difficult to eat and a little over cooked. The bacon wrapped filet mignon was from an old, tired, cheap cow. It was difficult to tough, it smelled and tasted like old beef. It was the often lesser cuts of beef that surprised me as they were well prepared and tasted delicious. The flank steak was fabulous, tender, moist and well seasoned. If you want to eat a vast selection of meats and other foods this is the place to go for a nice relaxed buffet style meal. The staff was great and we had a wonderful evening. You almost feel like royalty with servants bringing you meat until you tell them to stop. If you are looking for a great piece of meat paired with the perfect sides Seattle has a few great places that will far better suit that desire.
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Jennifer Primrose
Okay, in quite a predicament for my review here. The food was very good. The manager...for lack of better words, was a di**. We are visiting Seattle from California and bought a groupon to try this place. Didnt realize that the fine print says we have to wait 24 hours after buying to use it. Which, okay fine...but the way he dealt with this was ridiculous. He brought over someone elses groupon, pointed at the fine print and said that it says right there. Then he ROLLED his eyes and walked away! I said, "excuse me" five times before he finally stopped and turned around. At that point I was steaming mad and so close to walking out. After explaining how awful he was being he offered to give me a $30 discount (pretty much the same as the groupon) so we agreed to stay...mostly because we already ubered over there. End of story, food was great, service horrible (we had to pour our own wine), and then he only gave us $25 off the bill. Whatever.
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Charlee Anderson
I have never felt so creeped out from a restaurant in my life...until now. Besides the food tasting bland, the servers were overly attentive in the worst way. First of all, our main server - who didnt show up until several minutes after we were seated - decided to greet us, and by us, I mean ME, by looking me up and down while saying, "Welllllll helllllooooooo thereeeee," and every time he passed by, hed continue to look me over. While I got all of the attention from the other servers as well (though not as creepy), they also barely gave my boyfriend the time of day. (For the record, I was not wearing anything revealing, just shorts and a button-up shirt.) It was ridiculous. We practically hightailed it out of there. I cant speak for the location in Bellevue, but I definitely would NOT come back here.
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Keith Mariner
For this location only: A reservation was made about a week in advance for a very special 1 year anniversary dinner. Around 10am the day of our dinner, I was told that they were cancelling my reservation because they had been having difficulties with the grill since Sunday. Because they offered to move my reservation to their other location, I am providing an extra star, but because they decided to notify my less 12 hours before hand, I cant feasibly see me rating them higher. I have less than 6 hours to plan something again that was planned for a week and have to cancel other plans that evening if I am to keep the dinner reservations. This would be my first time trying this restaurant. Not a very good taste left in my mouth thus far.
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j spain Greene
As time has passed, Novilhos has gone from being a quality churrascaria to more of a novelty, tourist-type place. With Fogo de Chao on the east side and several other good local churrascarias, theres no reason to come here for mediocre service that is very pushy about drinks, desserts and add-ons. Dont get me wrong, the "gauchos" that serve the meats on swords tend to be quite charming and lovely...its the rest of the service that is sketchy. And rodizio is not an inexpensive proposition in the first place - about $45 per person for all you can eat. Its a fair price, but still not cheap! I dont need a pushy server on top of it all! I prefer other churrascarias for this reason.
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Erika Silvestre
his was my first experience with Brazilian food. I, myself, love all kinds of food, so I had a feeling I would enjoy this place. The staff was courteous and professional. The food was tasty, delicious, and visually appealing. However, there really was nothing special about any particular dish that was offered that spoke to me. Im not very picky at all, I loved all the food, especially the lamb, it just didnt leave a lasting memory. The parmesan chicken was unfortunately quite dry as well. We waited at the bar while we were seated. The bar area was very memorable, however, and they have happy hour so I definitely will be back to see what it has to offer :)
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Mike Kloss
I had very high expectations for this place, especially after the high recommendation from a friend. The food was great, but the service was severely lacking. Our server didnt even take our drink order until we were more than halfway through our dinner. He tried making up for this by comping one of the dinners (and dessert). While I appreciate that he tried to fix the situation, it still impacted our enjoyment of the meal overall. He initially tried blaming the poor service on our table having been switched to him partway through, though other than the hostess, he was the first person we saw after being seated.
