FOGO Brazilian BBQ - Grand Indonesia — Restaurant in Jakarta

2nd time visiting, and it's still hard for me to rate them 4-star, let alone 5-star. And this time round, I finally learned a lesson.

Don't try to be nice, by only ordering what you think you can eat. Don't ever think to give a test-round of every single meat you will like or less like. Instead, BE GREADY! When the server come over to your table and slice that juicy meat in front of your face, DON'T SAY STOP until they ask. In fact, tell them to keep on slicing until you have "more meat" than what you think you can eat.

Why? 'cause everytime they serve you a single meat, it'll take a decade for them to serve that same meat again to your table. Sometimes, you won't be able to even order same type of meat for second time. They DON'T CARE how long you'll wait for them to serve your table again. The "more meat" you order the first time, is to accommodate the waiting time for the next time they come to your table. And, it is better (okay) for you NOT to finish what you order, rather than experiencing to wait for more than 30-mins for the server to approach your table again.

This second time I was here, I arrived at 16:00. The first 10-15mins, they served 2-3 type of meat. And, as usual, I tried to be nice and decent by only ordering the portion I could eat. Until it reached 16.37 when I realized, I wouldn't be getting all type of meat I should've had, when the server kept on looking away from the eye-contact/ hand-wave that I made to them, even tho it was not too crowded like the first time I visited. I knew that 15mins before my time's up, there would be staff handing offer the bill and usually would offer for what meat I would like to order again before the pineapple was served. But this time, even until 17.00 sharp, no staff approached our table until 17.06 finally the staff with EDC machine came over and ready to charge us. The flag on our table was still green (not yellow), I asked her whether it's my mistake or theirs. She acknowledged that it's their mistake but if I didn't pay that exact minute, I would be charged extra. Amazing right?

After that fuss, the pineapple was finally served. But look at this rotten pineapple they tried to serve. This will be my last visiting Fogo.

(For the food quality, I would simply give 3-star. But for the whole...

Went there for lunch with kids and we had a great time. We went there primarily for meat and what we got was both good and disappointing. On the buffet table the choice of pure meat is very very limited and mostly bone. However, waiters keep walking around the tables with straight from the grill giant skewers with meat cooked with a variety of marinades and this meat is 100% delicious (but sadly not in free service so you have to wait quite a bit between servings).

On the buffet table the choice of food is very limited and when we were there (12pm) the vegetables were cold. Only 2 options of drink (iced tea and iced lemon tea) and NO WATER (you need to pay extra for water). On the plus side loads of options of sauces.

Deserts: the signature grilled pineapple is a MUST TRY the rest is OK but again not much variety: waffles and jelly and only one kind/flavour of ice-cream . No toppings for the waffles like jam or chocolate or honey or anything just jelly. And only one choice of fruits (watermelon). On the plus side there is a popcorn machine! Kids loved that.

Staff was kind and professional. For non Indonesians English seems to be spoken by most waiters and staff. Place was clean and the atmosphere pleasant although the AC was a bit too cold.

Overall a bit overpriced (170k per person over 110cm tall) but a good experience all the same with tasty food. Important: make sure you BOOK one day ahead for lunch as the place is packed and fully booked early in the day. I used Google Map button to book it...

It's been a while since my last visit to Fogo, and... color me surprise, Fogo nowadays feels more like an Indonesian BBQ than a Brazillian BBQ.

The meat are all smeared with sauce. Rendang sauce, gulai sauce, even Korean samyang sauce. The only authentic Fogo meat remaining is the garlic meat. And even then they are mostly, if not all, quite spicy for some reasons. The dipping strangely is also extra sweet. The chimichurri and salsa are sweet! Very weird, it doesn't feel like chimichurri or salsa at all. The sausage is all smeared in sauce, super-sweet BBQ sauce and the out-of-place Korean samyang sauce. What is this even? Except the garlic meat, all this sauce fetishism just makes the meat loses its meaty juicy taste.

Not to mention the ice tea and lemon are also extra sweet, and you have to pay extra for mineral water so you don't get full too soon, but it's just a classic AYCE trickeries in Jakarta, so whatever.

I really don't know what kind of niche Fogo nowadays is trying to fill in. Fogo has never been the place to dip into the most authentic Brazillian taste anyway, but today it appears to specifically cater to that sort of Indonesian taste where every meat has to be soaked in all that kind of sauce that washes away meaty taste.

If that sells, good for them (yikes for me, though). But one thing for sure it should rebrand itself to Indonesian BBQ or something. It has been very McDonaldized.

The good thing is if you're a senior citizen (lansia) the discount is pretty good. Only 80k...