Fogo De Chao

This is an account of the last of our three 2011 Restaurant Week outings. My wife and I enjoy food and we love to explore new places. Additionally, cooking is my hobby, so I am always looking to try something new and then try to replicate it at home. We like to frequent the local places (Sanctuary, Al Vento, etc) and stay away from the chains (we do like some of the higher end chains like...+READ This is an account of the last of our three 2011 Restaurant Week outings. My wife and I enjoy food and we love to explore new places. Additionally, cooking is my hobby, so I am always looking to try something new and then try to replicate it at home. We like to frequent the local places (Sanctuary, Al Vento, etc) and stay away from the chains (we do like some of the higher end chains like Kincaids). Our normal meal is an appetizer or two, a shared salad, two entrees and a shared dessert. I explain this because our third restaurant week excursion was to Fogo de Chao. We had been given a gift card to Fogo quite a while ago, but we just couldn’t see ourselves at the “all-you-can-eat” scene. When we saw Fogo on the Restaurant Week list, we figured it was a good time to get it over with. To make things worse, we booked for a Friday night because we figured we’d need to sleep it off. Yet, we knew Friday night was going to be crazy busy. Our expectations weren’t high.

We arrived for our 7:30 reservation a few minutes late and were amazed at the number of people waiting. You couldn’t even see the bar, much less get through to order a drink. The hostess explained they were running about 10 minutes behind, and she gave us a device that would flash when our table was ready. We found a place to sit to the left of the bar and expected a long wait. About 5 minutes later we were seated at a nicely located table.

Our waiter appeared and welcomed us to Fogo. He asked if we had been there before and when we explained we hadn’t, but we had been to other similar places, he skipped the usual explanation and settled on explaining what they had available. He presented a list of the meats available and an extensive wine list. We explained we liked Malbec and he smiled and recommended a couple. When we were selecting he actually encouraged us to purchase a less expensive one as he thought it was better wine. It was excellent.

Fogo was huge, loud, and extremely busy last night. Yet, where we were seated was really quite nice. My wife and I could talk without shouting and never felt confined.

With our water a bread basket with something resembling a mini popover/ gouger arrived. Slightly cheesy, warm and flavorful these were wonderful start. Soon our wine arrived and I was pleased with the selection. Off to the Salad Bar.

Salad bar is a bit a misnomer as there are very few salads. Smoked salmon, prosciutto, salami, asparagus, hearts of palm, imported cheeses, baby red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, multi color bell peppers, pesto, French bread, etc. All of it was fresh, cold and much better than I expected. We ate our first course and agreed it was too bad we had to restrain ourselves as we weren’t as young as we once were. Our bread and water were constantly, but unobtrusively replenished. As we were finishing our waiter stopped and asked we were enjoying our food and if we needed anything. We said everything was fine. He once again asked if we were enjoying his wine recommendation and was pleased when we said we were very pleased.

As soon as our salad bar plates were removed, new plates arrived along with three side dishes. The side dishes were mild garlic mashed potatoes with a bit of chopped green onion and shredded cheddar, fried polenta squares with parmesan, and cooked bananas. All were well prepared, but nothing amazing.

I’m sure most folks know the meatfest these type of Brazilian places are. Turn your disk to the green side and the “gauchos” stop and offer one of the 10 different meat selections available. Turn the disk to the red side and they leave you alone. Now, I expected the meat to be okay, but I must admit I truly enjoyed the beef served. It reminded me of the beef I used to get 30 years ago. It had the nice char, sweet, juicy, slightly fatty taste of beef before the heath police stepped in. Bacon wrapped tenderloin, great sirloin, garlic beef, succulent rib-eye, top sirloin, and tender filet mignon. All were good, some were excellent. Perhaps a bit over salted, but delicious. Our waiter would stop any time we were resting and ask if there was anything special we were waiting for. Whatever we requested arrived in a short while. “Lamb, would you like the chops, or the leg?” “Pork, would you like the ribs or the parmesan encrusted loin?” , “You must try the Linguica sausage”, “Have you tried the dark chicken or the bacon wrapped breast?” This guy, and all the staff were amazing for how busy they were. My wife had requested the lamb and he came back twice to make she had received it. He was a very conscientious guy who seemed determined that we have a good time. At one point he stopped and checked on something and stated “…you folks are so nice and patient…”. It was great to have someone who truly seemed to be happy looking out for our enjoyment.

You have little tongs to hold the meats as the gauchos slice it and you request how much of everything you want. This allowed us to taste a wide variety, without over doing it. Okay, we over did eat too much, but we’ll work out extra hard the next couple of weeks. Even with restraint we were stuffed.

Our waiter stopped and asked if we were interested in dessert. We both claimed to be content and then he mentioned his favorite was their flan – my wife loves flan, so the flan and the chocolate mouse cake were ordered. Both were very good, we ate all of the flan and ½ the cake. Again, our waiter checked back and asked if he could do anything. We said no thank you, please box the remaining dessert and bring us our bill. He cleared the table and arrived back with the boxed dessert and the bill. He thanked us for coming and said he enjoyed serving us.

We paid he bill, leaving a generous trip. Someone else picked it up as we prepared to leave. Once again asking if we had a good time and thanking us for coming.

Strange, we started out with high expectations for Meritage and low ones for the chain Fogo de Chao and after our dining at each place we came to completely different conclusions. I guess it just goes to prove that you need to approach all dining experiences with an open mind. There will be plenty of opportunity to judge things after the fact.-COLLAPSE / REPLY (33 Replies) (by RGT, created March 5, 2011)