Meat in the Window :: Fogo de Chao, River North, Chicago

Bring the Meat On! :: Fogo de Chao, River North, Chicago

Sides :: Fogo de Chao, River North, Chicago

Salad Bar :: Fogo de Chao, River North, Chicago

Yesterday we went to Fogo de Chao, the Brazillian meat mecca. The way this place works is that everyone pays a flat rate and it’s all you can eat. The main attraction is the Brazillian meat. Each person gets a round disk with one side red and one side green. Flip it to green and these guys will come to your table and offer you meat – unlimited amounts of 15 different kinds of fire-roasted meat – sirloin, filet mignon, leg of lamb, pork tenderloin, etc. The meat is carved from the skewers right at your table. Flip the disk to red and they chefs will passs you by as they circulate through the dining room. Flip it back to green and they’ll come back to offer you more. Awesome.. but how much MEAT can you actually eat!? It’s a little overwhelming, even though the meat is of the highest-quality and tastes really good.

Each person also gets unlimited trips to the salad bar, which had a really great vegetable and cheese selection along with other things, and each table also gets unlimited sides of garlic mashed potatoes, crispy, fried polenta, and fried bananas. So you can just imagine how stuffed we all were last night! The service was great, very attentive. At the end they actually tried to pursuade us with dessert. Not happening.

Fogo de Chao was a cool experience but I don’t think I could handle it more than maybe once per year – because of the vast quantities of meat consumed and because of the price.