If you are a vegetarian with a dainty appetite, Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steak house, is not for you. But if you like your meat, Fogo de Chao will be your culinary nirvana.
For a fixed price ($44.50), each diner receives a paper disc with a red side and a green side. When the green side is face up, the super-attentive waitstaff comes around with 15 different cuts of chicken, beef, pork and lamb and serves you at your seat.
"The waiters work as a team," explained manager Andrew Feldman. Each table does not have its own waiter; all the waiters work together.
And even the diner helps out by grabbing the meat off the skewer with a pair of tongs. Every waiter is also a chef and cooks the meat he serves.
In addition to the meat parade, dinner includes a salad bar, which wasn't so much a salad bar as it was a meal bar. It featured everything from smoked salmon, Italian meats and cheese to and apple salad. And for the more traditional-minder diners, there was a through selection of vegetables. My personal favorite salad-bar item was the basil dressing, with which I liberally drenched the contents of my plate. My cheese-connoisseur dining companion was partial to the golf-ball-sized pieces of mozzarella.
In case the salad bar and the meat weren't enough to fill you up, the meal comes with fried bananas, mashed potatoes, polenta and warm cheese popovers, which are all constantly refilled. Rice and beans are also available upon request. Despite a long-time aversion to bananas, the table favorite was the fried bananas, which added a Brazilian flair to the traditional meat and potatoes.
Although each meat was delicious, what stood out the most was the sheer quantity and variety. At one point, I had six different kinds of steak on my plate. All the meat is minimally seasoned to bring out its unique flavors. The table consensus was seconds on ribeye and pass on the sirloin.
For desert, which is a la carte and about $7 a dish, we had a molten chocolate cake and a Papaya cream, which is apparently the most popular desert in Brazil. While the Papaya cream would not be my usual desert preference, it was refreshing and provided a nice contrast to the intensely rich chocolate cake.
We left the restaurant uncomfortably full, the meal was well worth the pain.
