The Skeptical Diner: Fogo de Chão
If you’ve never before been to a Brazilian-style churrascaria restaurant, get ready to expand your horizons. A heavy-hitting national — and Brazilian — chain known as Fogo de Chão has opened a sizable outpost at 645 Hennepin Ave.
“We think there’s a huge renaissance that’s happening in the downtown area,” said Fogo’s corporate manager, Andy Feldmann. “We had a lot of people from Minneapolis who were dining in our restaurants in other cities and they kept asking, ‘Why are you not in Minneapolis?’”
The concept is relatively straightforward. When your little circular place-card is flipped over to its green side, guys with skewers of meat come to your table and offer you slices of pork, or lamb, or chicken, or beef. Or sausages. Or bacon-wrapped chicken. (You get the idea.)
When the card is flipped to red, the guys stop. Eventually — generally between a half and “several” pounds of food — the meat wins, and you surrender.
What sets Fogo apart from the other churrascarias I’ve been to (in Boston, which has a sizable Brazilian/Portuguese population) is that it’s firmly aimed at the non-Brazilian locals (i.e., no skewers of chicken hearts) and that it’s firmly planted in the “upscale” end of the food spectrum.
Before I get into all the Fogo details, a disclosure: my meal was comped. So please take my enthusiasm with the necessary grain of salt. Also, a credit: the photos that accompany this piece were taken by local photographer Becca Dilley — who also happens to be my fiance. [Check out her Flickr slideshow of the meal.]
At most restaurants, service is an integral but largely invisible part of the picture. At Fogo de Chão, the servers are front and center — the broad-belted gauchos who move from table to table with their sabers of meat aren’t merely waiters; they’re also chefs. It makes their ownership of their skewers rather more intimate than the average waiter at the average restaurant.
At its most intense, being served at Fogo is a little like being swept up in a school of anti-sharks. Rather than attempting to eat you, they are by contrast incredibly focused on trying to serve you meat. When the tide of servers is in, 14 or 15 people can be working the aisles in a hurricane of meat and glassware.
But the servers are good about bypassing tables that sport red placecards, and are — to the very last — extremely clued in to the difference between “attentive” and “intrusive” service. If anyone decided to start a Marine Corps for waitstaff, the Fogo de Chão folks would be shoe-ins. And would probably make decent drill sergeants.
“The culture here is a team environment, so it really shifts the focus to the guest entirely,” says Feldmann. “You’ll never hear ‘Let me get your server for you.’ You’ll always hear ‘what can I get for you?’”
The meaty stuff they’re pushing ranges from “just fine, thanks” to terrific. Pork ribs and ribeye steak were decent, but both fall short of ideal. The former felt dry and overdone (but boasted an excellent spice rub and crust) and the latter felt underwhelming amid a menu of moister, punchier and more exotic offerings.
By contrast, a sirloin steak known as picanha was mouth-wateringly moist and flavorful. Cut in thin strips that diners grip with tongs to move from skewer to plate, it’s an engaging way to enjoy high-quality meat, and is the restaurant’s signature dish, emblematic of the gaucho culture the place celebrates.
“The most important thing is the gauchos, and where they come from,” says Feldmann. “A lot of these guys grew up on farms outside of Sao Paulo, and they really learned how to do this from their fathers, and they bring that culture with them. We really hope that comes through in the experience when they’re slicing that picanha, and that whole idea that they’re responsible for the whole cooking and serving process.”
A parmesan pork loin dish was a perfect marriage of tender meat and distinct but modest cheesey flavor.
Bacon-wrapped chicken somehow managed to taste more like bacon than bacon does; the moist bird is a perfect blank slate and moderating influence for the salty intensity of the pork wrapping.
And regardless of what you think of the dozen or so different kinds of meat kicking around the restaurant, you’re likely to find at least a few that you really enjoy — and once you’ve made your preferences clear, your waitstaff will steer them your way whenever possible.
At many meat-focused joints such as Fogo — old-school steakhouses, for example — non-meat related items have a tendency to fall by the wayside. Fogo attacked this traditional shortcoming with a vengeance. From the bread (little pate a choux cheese bread puffs), to the sides (heavenly grilled bananas and scallion mashed potatoes) to the desserts, Fogo doesn’t skip a beat.
The salad bar — a reluctant afterthought in the other churrascarias I’ve been to — was stellar. From sun-dried tomatoes to artichoke hearts to insalata-style offerings (like fresh mozarella) to manchego cheese to fresh parmesan served inside a giant hollow parmesan wheel, the salad was long on creative flourishes and little luxuries. This might be presumptuous for an omnivore to declare, but it seemed like the sort of salad bar a dedicated vegetarian could groove to and rally behind… even as his or her compatriots gorged themselves on meatier offerings.
The desserts deserve a special mention. The house specialty is a papaya cream (see photo) that you don’t eat so much as slowly inhale — its velvet-smooth texture glides across your palette, its journey lubricated by the cassis liqueur gingerly poured over its top during its presentation. Even under normal circumstances it would be fantastic, but after eating 20 or 30 pounds of meat, it’s pretty much the only way to enjoy dessert without busting your gut.
And the creme brulee we tasted was perfect — the top was crackly and tasted of roasted marshmallows, the torching having been done to perfection. Many creme brulees suffer from having a giant pile of eggy custard concealed under a tiny crust; the ratio at Fogo is perfect.
Also worth a mention is the house caipirinha, made with cachaca and as refreshingly punchy as one can imagine.
Dinners at Fogo are a flat fee; $38.50 for the full monty of meat and salad, and $19.50 for those sticking with the salad course. With dinner, a drink, tax, tip and dessert coming to around $60 a person, Fogo de Chao is not going to be my casual dining destination for an average weeknight.
That said, it’s the sort of place that would be at or near the top of my list for a celebration, a meal sponsored by generous visiting relatives or a business dinner. It’s expensive, but the food and service are so uniformly excellent that the value remains good.
It would also be a killer place for a second date. Go once with a friend to get acquainted with the slightly unusual serving style, and then impress your crush with your confident mastery of the meat / no-meat kung fu style of dinner enjoyment.
Part of that enjoyment, incidentally, is portion control. Learn to relax and use the red side of your card liberally. As I discovered years ago in Boston, meat hangovers are not only real, they’re no joke. But with a little pacing and discipline, you too can come out of a Fogo meal happily fed and looking forward to your next crack at a papaya cream dessert.
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I used to love the meat on a stick at Mojito damn shame that they forget to pay taxes or whatever….
Hearts on Sword…whaaa??? just kidding I loved em…so would it be suffice to say that this is the Benihana of Brazilian Steakhouses.
Similar to PF Changs the applebees of chinese and Olive Garden the perkins of “Eye”talian.
Or is it not dumbed down quite that much…it is downtown afterall.
I was also there Saturday night (around 7pm-9pm) and really enjoyed it!
Wow, it’s like dying and going to meat heaven.
If you’re not careful, it can be like dying and going to meat heaven and then dying again for real. Pacing oneself in this kind of environment is a critical combination of discipline and insight. It’s almost like a sport.
But not really like a sport.
I’ve been to similar restaurants in other cities and have experienced the meat hangover so beware.
I have a question - in those other restaurants the waiters were instructed to bring the cheap meat to the table before the expensive meat so the customer would be full and not eat the better stuff. Is this the case here?
To be totally honest, I wasn’t analyzing the order in which meat appeared… but the first two pieces were the most underwhelming. So, perhaps.
That said: they were really good about bringing over the meat we said we liked. I probably got 4 slices of tasty stuff for every 1 indifferent quality slice I got. No complaints here.
We ate there last Monday nite and everyone came down with food poisoning. ;( Sad, as we really had a great time.
Food poisoning at Fogo? Not likely. Move over Capital Grille, fine dining resides at 645 Hennepin Ave. Come hungry and request the house specialty pichanha right off the bat. It’s unexplainable! And that Salad bar! Finally a reason to come downtown again!