U Samba? Cafe

U Samba Café is a nice surprise not far from the Hollywood Casino in Aurora. The ambiance makes you feel very cozily nestled in a small café in São Paulo or Rio. We started with Cheese Bread and Fried Polenta. The Cheese Bread was light, but not very exciting. The Polenta was nice and crisp and tasty. For entrees we ordered the Beef Steak with Onions (Bife Acebolado) and the Shrimp Bobo (Bobo de Camarao) Both were excellent and nicely presented. We finished off with Prestigio Cake (Chocolate Coconut) and Passion Fruit Mousse, as well as chocolate and coconut Bön-​bons. All were great! We had Guarana Antarcticas to drink to top it all off. Our waiter was very friendly and attentive and the chef/​owner came around and asked about our meal (thankfully one of us spoke Portuguese!!). Great night that brought back sweet memories of Brazil. We want to come back and try some of the other dishes. Overall, a nice culinary adventure.

Went for the for time today and loved it! I am from Brazil and this food is very authentic. I finally found the perfect place to feel a little bit more at home. Highly recommend it!
PS: service is also great! Nice family.

I was dog sitting in Aurora one night and wanted to try something different. I’ve never had Brazilian cuisine so I was curious to try it. We went for the stew and it was absolutely delicious. I love that they have all different types of sauces to add but it didn’t need much! After we kept eating it, we grew more and more addicted to the taste. We got one of the appetizer combos and liked some of the things and didn’t like others. The service was decent but we didn’t feel like it was well explained to us being beginners to the cuisine.
I would definitely come back to try more menu items or to eat that stew again.

My girlfriend and I decided to check this place out one Friday night. I am glad we did! Great food, happy and attentive people, hot peppers, delicious desserts… how could you go wrong?! Worth another trip.

Very good, local eatery! My boyfriend and I went on a Friday, about 8pm. Luckily we got to sit right away :)
We ordered an appetizer of fried balls, the cheese one was good. We also split the steak rolls! Delicious!
We shared key lime pie for dessert, very creamy.
Service was great, very attentive. Will be back!

What a gem. Homestyle Brazilian food that deliciously reminds us that there’s more to Brazilian food than giant steak platters. Coxinhas (chicken croquettes), couva da mina (garlicky sauteed greens), Bobo de camarão (shrimp in a coconut sauce), so delicious, affordable, and flavorful. Transports me to Brasil. I love this place so much and Aurora is so lucky to have it. Obrigada pela comida, U Samba!

Very good appetizers; we’ve ordered them to go in quantity for parties and hosting at home instead of buying frozen at the grocery. This is very much a family business so I think the service is very personal — and not at the level of a professional wait staff. (The red wine was served cold!?) Prices are very reasonable. This is not a steak house but I’ve had the excellent steak sandwich and tried most of the hot sauces and love all of them. Desserts are also excellent.

My friends dropped by here for dessert because we were interesting in having key lime pie. They were very generous with the slices for $ 5. They even plated the pie and drizzled cream on top for a beautiful presentation. This key lime pie was sweet but missing the tart of a traditional pie, but I still enjoyed it very much. The texture was thick pudding and very creamy.
It was late on a Tuesday night and there were no other customers in the restaurant. I thought it was cool that they had motorcycle racing on TV. I’ll have to come back sometime and try their main menu.
Free street parking on New York can be easy to come by, but if not then there’s the casino parking lot on Rivers to park in.

I felt like a tourist in Brazil with their nice menu with PICTURES for each item. Very interesting, learning Portuguese language. The pictures were really helpful, easy for me to decide what to order :)
Very nice and colorful decorated restaurant with their traditional touch of Brazilian. Didn’t expect to see this in the heart of Arora. It’s a small restaurant so only one server was there. He did an excellent job gave us the best service. He was so sweet and friendly, very knowledgeable about Brazilian food but he is from mexico :)
Our party of 3, ordered a few different kinds of drink to start. Mom ordered a Brazilian beer called «Palma Louca» $ 4.50 and it was very good. it’s a light beer so I loved that. I had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa/​2013 $ 7.59 and the last drink was my favorite «Caipirinha» $ 9.99 this drink was so delicious and refreshing with their fresh ingredients: Alcohol from sugar cane (cachaga) mixed with a lot of lime, sugar and Ice.
We all enjoyed the food. We had limited time before the show at the Paramount theater so we didn’t order appetizer or dessert but only the main course was perfect for us.
I loved my dish «Beef Stroganoff» sweet curry sauce with tender beef worked well together, a crunchy taro fries and white rice completed this dish beautifully.
If you would like to experience some Brazilian culture and have a great authentic Brazilian food, please check out U Samba? Café. This place won’t disappoint you. Enjoy!

Small Brazilian restaurant in Aurora downtown. Great place to hang with friends or family. It serves typical Brazilian family-​favorite dishes, differently from the large and popular Brazilian steakhouses around Chicagoland. I strongly recommend the place for a better taste of Brazilian most traditional dishes.
We tried the ‘coxinha, empanada and bolinho de bacalhau’ appetizers (chicken, beef and fish salty fried pastries respectively) and they’re very good. Kids also enjoyed having them. For the main entrée we had the Full Size ‘Feijoada’ (stew of beans with pork) which comes served with white rice, colorful bell pepper vinaigrette, sort of green collard with bacon salad and farofa (toasted flour) on the side. The feijoada portion was good for 3 people with all sides included. We’ll come back for sure.

This was my first experience with Brazilian food, so in all fairness I’m not sure if I don’t like Brazilian food or just the food at this café. My overall impression, and that of my wife was nothing was particularly flavorful, yet nothing was distasteful. I compared my meal with what I would expect in a very good military chow-​hall; it was food. The service was very good, and since I’m not sure of why I didn’t care for the food I’ll lay down 3 stars. Good luck U Samba Café.

This is my favorite restaurant in downtown Aurora. It’s great for families and also for a grown-​ups’ evening out. Every time we’ve eaten here, the food and service have been outstanding.
If you go on the weekends, order the feijoada (black bean stew) — it’s unbelievably good. The collard greens are so perfect. You also can’t go wrong with any of the appetizers. The sampler gives you a taste of some of their more popular appetizers so that you know which ones are your favorites on your next visit (spoiler alert: the ham & cheese churros. Oh my goodness). On their cocktail menu, I’ve only tried the caipirinha — it’s delightful.
If you are stopping for dinner before a Paramount show, make a reservation and leave plenty of time — when things get busy, the food can take awhile. It’s worth the wait!

My husband and I went last week for dinner. Small place, but clean and appealing. Service was attentive and friendly. Ordered beef rolls. Came with fries, rice and beans. I can do without fries. Would rather beans and rice be seasoned and mixed together as they were kind of plain for our tastes. Husband got the special, beef, carrot and onion mixture. His was sort of plain as well and seemed to have been cooked earlier. He felt the same about the fries. My salad was the out of the bag kind… very ordinary with out of the box croutons. Really, i can pass on that! We really wanted to love this place, but… just missed the mark for us. There is just too much competition out there in the restaurant market to be so-​so.

Good food. Ok portion sizes

Went in to sample Brazilian food for possible review on my blog. The table service was good. The food was good, but something was missing that I recalled in the food I had in São Paulo, in Recife, at Taste of Brasil in Oak Park, and at Brasil Legal in Chicago proper. It was weird that the cook made rounds at all the tables, except mine. Big determining factor for whether I would blog about U Samba.
The chicken in the coxhina frango was flavourful yet had a creamy texture. The same was the case with the empada. Although I ordered the empada with cheese, it came with chicken. I really liked the empada, though. The pastel with chicken was my favourite snack. I ordered the estraganofe frango (chicken stroganoff) and got estraganofe carne (beef stroganoff) instead. Rather than show out, I ate all of it and it was surprisingly tasty.
If you’re out near Aurora and want to try some Brazilian cuisine, U Samba may be the spot for you. Nice experience, but Aurora feels too «Deep South» for me to return.

* Service was friendly and attentive
* Authentic
* Freshness/​quality good, protein prep needed to be a bit better
* Flavors were OK — no major complaints, but not overly inspired. A few components of both dishes felt like an afterthought.
Not every dish needs to be a star, but recommended, or, the ‘most expensive on menu’ plates should impress.
We really want Samba to do well — very nice ownership, a welcome addition downtown, and we do love central/​south american — but our first experience felt mediocre. We will give it another try!

What I liked:
Gnocchi was soft and delicious
The rolled steak was flavorful and the sauce was delicious
The sangria was strong and flavorful
The special naranha drink was delicious
The server was friendly and helpful
The placemats are colorful
The hats the servers wear are perfect for the concept
Collard greens were very tasty
What I disliked:
The door opens directly to the small dining room– freezing out everyone
The motion detector light at the front
Kept flashing on and off
The dinner napkins are small and speak loudly to very cheap and not functional.
The salad is ugly lettuce and supermarket croutons. The dressing is served on the side in the smallest ramekin I have ever seen– half ounce?
No specialty dressing? Like a brazilian?
No just stuff like casear, ranch, blue cheese.
The appetizer sampler was just edible
Twice the manager tried to deliver
food to the wrong table
Summary:
Convenient to the paramount theater
Hoped for specialty brazilian– found
Mediocre concept confusion.
Tried it.
Won’t be back

Having visited Brazil, I can attest to the authenticity of the food and drinks here. It’s wonderful to get Brazilian food in my city! Try all the appetizers, the grilled chicken, and the desserts. On the weekend, get the fejouada, a stew of pork and black beans with farofa and rice. Delicious!!! As an added bonus, it’s a cute, clean restaurant run by a friendly family who will teach you some words in Portuguese!

This is a completely charming small restaurant in downtown Aurora. The food was wonderful and quite authentic. We had the Feijoada – which tasted just as good as we remembered from trips to Rio. The lime pie was hit and the sangria and the caipirinha hit just the right notes. The personal service by the family also felt very Brazilian – full of humor and warmth.

The café has really brought Brazilian home cooking to Aurora. I’ve eaten here 3 times already, the food is absolutely delicious and cooked with love. The wait staff is always welcoming and extremely attentive.

We had the surprise delight of dining at U Samba on 09÷05÷15 before a show at The Paramount Theater. As a bonus, the restaurant offered us a discount on our entire bill when we presented our theater tickets for the evening!
The service was attentive, friendly and helpful with the menu. The manager/​owner (?) as well as the chef came to our table as well to make sure we were having a wonderful experience. Also, the nicely decorated ambiance was reminiscent of authentic Brazilian restaurants we enjoyed in Brazil!
The menu choices are indeed authentic and scrumptious with a wide variety of options. Numerous appetizers and sampler options are offered. There are seafood, poultry, beef, pasta and vegetarian options. There is a variety of more highly seasoned to less seasoned choices. They have an alcoholic license and presented Brazilian cocktails as well as beer and wine.
The cuisine was flavorful and well-​prepared! It was such a welcomed opportunity to enjoy Brazilian food that is not one of those over-​priced, skewer-​laddened Brazilian steakhouses!
While the cuisine is Brazilian, the menu does present an array of choices that any purist American palate would savor! The price point is mid-​range and even has inexpensive sandwich options. We highly recommend this and commend the proprietor for enhancing the restaurant options in Aurora. Theater-​goers, Casino patrons (this is just west in the same block as the Casino), and locals should patronize this new spot and enjoy its specialness!

Was excited to try this new place downtown Aurora. We ordered food to go from work. It was delicious! We tried various things & they were all prepared fresh. The chicken was tender, & the breaded then fried chicken breast was crunchy & not soggy at all. The lime pie was absolutely amazing. Would highly recommend.

What a fantastic and exotic cuisine. My only knowledge of Brazilian cuisine is the Brazilian steak house where you feast on meat after meat after roasted meat. U Samba café explores southern Brazilian cuisine with luxurious sauces, melt in your mouth stuffed gnocchi with Italian roots and black bean and pork stew, only available on weekends, with a rich and complex sauce. The owners are eager to share their cultural knowledge of what they cook and are helpful in navigating the menu. Definitely save room for dessert. The flan slowly dissolves in your mouth in a creamy stream and the lemon pie is creamy and just a little tart to accentuate the citrus flavor. We will return to try other menu items in the near future.

Never tried Brazilian food before and it was DELICIOUS! They have a great selection of food and even give you the option to buy one of of most of their appetizers.
My husband and I got a couple to split and everything we tried was great. Not to mention the staff was incredibly friendly. So excited to have this place open in Aurora.

I’ve only had their food delivered so I can’t speak for the restaurant itself (it looks kinda small when I’ve driven past it) but I really enjoyed the foods! Everything I’ve had has been new to me in one way or another.
I recommend their cheese ball thingies. It’s been a while so I don’t know the name but they were very tasty.
Mostly everything from here that I had was deep fried and delicious. Order and enjoy!

Awesome authentic Brazilian food, great service and good price! What else can you ask for?
Must try, deliciosa comida!!!

Wow. This was so flavorful! I hadn’t had Brazilian food before so it was fun to try different foods. We started with the coxinhas-​a fried potato dough ball filled with chicken-​that were delicious. We ordered yucca fries. I love yucca so this were a guaranteed good thing. They come with bacon. Then we moved on to the feijoada – black bean, three meat stew. If there were enough room in my stomach I would have been finished every bit. They came with collard greens and rice. As if that weren’t enough – we ordered coffee and what I call flan. It was so creamy and we savored every bite. The coffee was REALLY strong, but that’s what I was hoping for.
The staff was so nice and they seemed happy to explain and recommend anything to help us. The manager told us he has imported all products or gets his contact to ship products from Brazil.
Try it!

Very good! Nice family run business, food was great, clean atmosphere & friendly.
Only minor complaint is the limited menu options, but what they do offer is great! Will definitely come back

Awesome place! The food was great. It exceeded my expectations! The only suggestions that I would have for improvement is that being Brazilian myself, I expected the salad to be served on the same plate as my dinner (I’m being picky) and that the fries would be like my grandmother made them, freshly cut and pan fried. I also would’ve loved to hear more recent popular music from Brazil and not the standard Brazilian songs that you hear whenever you go somewhere «Brazilian» in the U.S. I guess it’s because I crave the Brazilian connection. The experience itself was like being home again, though, I left the restaurant feeling as if I had gone to visit someone’s house. Everyone there was so friendly, that we were even having conversations with other tables.
Will definitely go back there again to try the feijoada and bring my whole family!

First experience with Brazilian food and it is delicious. They have many small appetizers that are very good, you could easily just eat a dozen of them and call it a meal. I’ve been there twice now — 1^st time for the Friday & Weekend Special Feijoado which was very good, I especially liked the pepper/​vinegar salsa that comes with it. 2^nd time I had the unstuffed gnocchi, also very good but a little disappointing that it doesn’t come with anything besides gnocchi (like bread or side salad).
I think a lunch menu would be a welcome addition. Still new so only a dinner menu — which means dinner prices at lunch hours. Also, wine or booze of any type would be good. A frosty brew with Feijoado would fit right in.

I tried Feijoada for the first time at USamba today and I must say it is one of he best I’ve ever had. Congratulations to the chef!!! Elaine (the owner) put me into Lemon Dessert — it is my favorite now. Wonderful atmosphere! They make you feel at home.

I was so excited. Something new and interesting in Aurora. Everyone was nice. The place was decorated appropriately. Some of the table items were cheap, but I get that. Invest in the food. WE came for the food. Lots of listed appetizers. Unfortunately, one of the traditional items (pao de queijo pequeno), they are out of. It’s cheese bread. How are you out of cheese bread? Ok. fine. We got the kibe and coxinhas (beef and chicken stuffed croquettes). They came with a side of chopped peppers in vinaigrette. The only thing that helped them from being a bland lump of fried dough were the peppers. The two most interesting looking entrees are only offered on the weekends, so we choose the bife a role (steak roll with carrot and bacon) and the breaded fish. Everything came with a pile of plain white rice, a bowl of bland beans, unseasoned fries, and a salad (iceberg lettuce with a few tomato pieces)
It was all so very bland. No spark at all. So much looked like cutting corners. Everything was edible. It was ok. But we won’t be going back.
A brand new restaurant that felt like it was the last week open.
$ 35 was a high price for what we got.