Our Favorite Brazilian Import & Why: Fogo de Chão

(Gerry Furth-Sides) The experience is as straightforward as a gaucho campfire only magnified a thousand times and done in the most tongue-in-cheek, theatrical manner. We missed this friendly, personal dining feast so much during the pandemic it felt like a double gift to go back at the start of the holiday season.

A toast with their Fogo de Chão is also honored to unveil “Eulila,” a red wine blend specially created exclusively for Fogo by the award-winning winemakers at Viña Vik.

Passing gauchos are so attentive that they don’t even need to see your green or red disc on the table as they pass by with skewers or as they catch your eye from across the room.  The green disc signifies  “yes” (sim, for favor) to have them stop by and red for “no Thanks (obrigado).” The steady offer for more food is one of the churrascaria.

Even with only a few tables left at the end of lunch service, gauchos strut their stuff. Filets and steaks and ribeye of beef; lamb chops and lamb steak; pork ribs, snipped off at the exact slice you choose, rare, medium or well-done. A small plate and a pair of tongs at every place setting is there to nap the sliced off meat from the skewer when a gaucho snips if off.

We are paleos who adore pork, lamb chops and every cut of beef.  And you have your choice here. My dining companion, for example, likes the pork ribs plus lamb chop and lamb steak the best.

Baskets of Brazilian yucca-flour cheese puffs are on each table. The pão de queijo, put mini-popovers in mind with their paper-crisp exterior and spongy interior and are as addictive.

Also on the salad bar table is the familiar national dish of Brazil. The Feijoada Bar  half-pans are filled with warm Black Bean Steak Sausage and Farofa (Roasted Yucca Flour with Bacon) and “dirty rice” of rice with beans and special seasonings.  But, oh those seasonings.   This dish is a ritual every Saturday for all Brazilians. 

Fogo de Chão is a leading Brazilian steakhouse, or churrascaria, which has specialized for close to four decades in fire-roasting high-quality meats utilizing the centuries-old Southern Brazilian cooking technique of churrasco.

The company was founded in 1979 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and expanded into close to 50 locations in the U.S. in 1997 and Mexico. For more information, please visit Fogo.com. 

 

FOGO DE CHÃO –  133 N. La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills 90211 (310) 289-7755