Fogo de Chao, various locations

A person in upper management at the company I work at told a group of us about Texas de Brazil last summer and it sounded fantastic, so I mentally decided to check it out online, then forgot. But when my mom and I went on a cruise I saw an ad for Fogo de Chao, and it looked like a similar place. And Lo! There were two relatively close! This time, I mentally filed it away for a cold winter weekend night out.

Both of these restaurants are 'Brazilian Steakhouses' called Churrascaria. They serve meat cooked in the traditional Gaucho way: flame cooked, lightly seasoned very very prime cuts of good beef, pork, lamb and some chicken. They serve 15 different kinds of meat.

It is not your usual restaurant. Here is how it works: there is a fixed price per person that includes the 'salad' bar and all the meat you care for. It does not include alcohol or dessert. I'm not sure about sodas, but our teas were included. You go in, they explain the menu, you hit the 'salad bar.' When you are done, they give you a fresh plate.

This is where the fun begins. Each person has a small card; one side is green and the other is red. Up until now, the red side has been facing up. But, wait! You want meat now, right? Put the green side up and all of a sudden there are dozens of Brazilian men dressed as gauchos holding 2" long skewers of meat speed-walking towards you! No kidding, it was less than 10 seconds between the time Matt turned his card to 'green' and he had *3* guys standing there slicing meat onto his plate. They ask you how done you like it, and they start carving.

Then, turn the card to red really fast, because there are more guys headed your way! Sometimes that doesn't stop them, if they see you making eyes at whatever they are carrying they will stop anyway. The one we went to in Baltimore was huge, and there were probably two dozen of these guys speed-walking through the place, they have a set circuit they go around.

The service is fantastic, there are other waitstaff other than the gauchos that fill your water, bring fresh plates, and at least 8 times we were asked if everything was up to our liking, etc.

The breakdown of the menu:

• The 'salad' bar is more like an antipasto bar: marinated artichoke hearts, sliced red and yellow bell peppers, tomato and mozzeralla salad, proscuitto and parmesan, and olives olives olives.
  
• They have 15 types of meat: prime, top, and bottom sirloin, ribeye, filet mignon done two ways (one is bacon-wrapped), beef ribs, seasoned pork tenderloin and another in crusted parmesan, pork sausage, two types of chicken, and lamb done two ways. My personal favorites and I will highly recommend the pork sausage Linguica, the Picanha beef (my absolute favorite), and the parm-crusted pork.
• The side dishes included parmesan popovers, fried bananas (which I could happily dine on anytime), a very good cheesy mashed potatoes, and toasted slices of polenta.
  
• If you are a wine person, this is the place for you. The different rooms are separated by floor-to-ceiling wine racks. The expensive stuff is behind glass, probably in a humidity and temperature controlled room. Everywhere you look is wine.
• The dessert menu (if I recall correctly) included flan, cheesecake, ice creams, a chocolate cake, creme brule, strawberry cream and (what we had) papaya cream, which was glorified ice cream, but very very good.

The cost is high enough ($46.50/person) that we won't be back for a while. It was a serious treat for us. When we do go back, we will check out the one in Washington, DC, instead of Baltimore if only because of the traffic. We can hop the Metro into DC and walk, which will be a lot easier and cheaper than driving into Baltimore.

Fogo de Chao, Churrascaria

Houston, TX; Dallas, TX; Austin, TX; Philadelphia, PA; Chicago, IL; Atlanta, GA; Beverly Hills, CA; Washington, DC; Minneapolis, MN; Baltimore, MD; Indianapolis, IN; Scottsdale, AZ; Miami, FL; Kansas City, MO.

AND

Six locations in Brazil.