El-Vaquero

This place is buzzy and fun and the food is great. They come around throughout the night offering just about every meat product you can think of until you literally can’t move! They have a great salad bar too. Service is good. If you sign up for their newsletter/​email, then there are random good deals all the time, last minute booking deals and the like that can work out really cost effective. Rarely do you go there/​drive by and the place isn’t busy full of hustle and laughter. I tend to go here with friends for a catch up, not a romantic dinner. Be mindful if it is busy as they do keep you to slots and will ask you to make a move if there is someone in the next time slot waiting for the table. But by that point, you have more than your fill and you can move on to a local bar or the pub across the road.

Regulary eat here, love the place! Staff are wonderful & food is amazing.
My husband & I, have taken friends here, family members (one of which is from Dominican) who all walk away full & cannot wait to go back.
Best time to book is the first sitting, this way you can guarantee a nice seat, best food (before everyone else has got their hands on it) & a good evening.

El-​Vaquero means ‘cowboy’ in Spanish but there is nothing cowboy about this place (no horse meat here!). I visited on a Sunday afternoon with friends and initially there was some query about our booking; then a delay to get seated and then we were asked to move to another table — an inauspicious start.
Having frequented Rodizio Rico I was familiar with the concept: help yourself to the salad/​buffet bar and then the meat will start coming until you can eat no more. I must say, and I am no ‘foodie’, that the meat was superb; just the right flavour and to my liking and the selection varied. I was a bit disappointed with the limited choice of hot food at the buffet but the salad was nice enough. The service wasn’t endearing or attentive but no major cock-​ups. I had the profiterole caramel for dessert (yes, I made room) but that was nothing special and I must say, tasted highly processed. Seating area was cold and there were a couple of gas heaters going full blast. I still say that Rodizio Rico has the edge in terms of atmosphere and service (most of the time) but would certainly recommend this place. Wouldn’t visit on the fly (unlikely to get a table) but definitely a place to visit for an occasion/​celebration or large group of people.
I’ll give this place 4 stars: Around £80 for 3 including barbecue meats and salad buffet, three soft drinks and two desserts: perhaps not the cheapest but certainly not the most expensive. There was a noticeable lack of atmosphere and service was somewhat lacking but generally a satisfying dining experience, well my stomach thought so!

I have been driving past this place for a long time and meaning to give it a try. Every time I pass it’s packed with people and the one time I did try to get in on the spur of the moment without booking I was turned away. As you can see then I had high hopes for this south American barbecue restaurant that has an all you can eat salad bar and waiters that bring various different kind of meats around and cut them from the skewers until you beg them to stop. Upon being shown to our table we we’re asked if we had been before and when we said no it was explained to us that it was an all you can eat Brazilian barbecue restaurant. Ok a bit picky I know but why then is it called El Vaquero (Spanish) and not O Vaqueiro (Portugese) for The Cowboy? I would imagine the owners are very much NOT Brazilian. Never mind I thought and we ordered our wine, which to get a vaguely decent bottle came in at £30, and headed off to the salad bar. The salad was really very nice with a tasty and varied selection including fried plantain, avacado etc. After the salad came the meat onslaught all different kinds but tellingly and very dissapointingly for me no pork of any description which is a real shame as I love bbq pork, even the sausages were beef lamb or chicken. The biggest problem however was that it just wasn’t very good, the majority of the meat was bland and not well seasoned the honey and mustard chicken was nice but was very fatty pieces of what I assume was thigh fillet. When you consider that you pay just under £25 per person for this I was not impressed. The poor value for money encourages you to stuff yourself in a type of debauchery akin to the final days of the Roman empire, all that was missing was a chaise lounge and someone feeding me grapes. All in all with wine 2 coffee’s and service the bill came in at £90, for this type of food in this zone 4 location that is vastly over priced. They really need to up the quality to justify these prices, I can only assume it’s always packed with first timers like us, or people with too much money.

Great food, I mean really great, try it.
Staff are sweet but frankly incompetent but try to overlook that, if you order two beers they will bring one, if you mention that you actually ordered two, they will bring two (making a total of three) you get the idea. Forget desert, they will never bring it, just don’t bother.
The salad bar is lovely, fresh and inviting. The meat is terrific and fish can be ordered in advance.
This place is so busy you can’t get a table at the weekend.
This is partly due to how good the food is (did I mention this?) but also partly due to the fact that Whetstone on the whole is a gastronomical wasteland with mainly bad restaurants with a (very) few exeptions.