Fogo de Chão — Restaurant in Lisbon

Randomly found this Fogo de Chao when walking around the area. It looked closed, but the glass door was open. We saw the menu outside, and it looked interesting. We walked inside and down the stairs. There was no host, but the staff downstairs helped us to a table. It was pretty tight inside. You have to turn sideways to get between tables. The restrooms were ahead of the stairs, past the TV hanging on the wall.

There were two salad bars. One with fried foods and appetizers, one with marinated and pickled stuff.

They give you three menu options - the cheapest one 23€ only gets you European meats. The middle one 27€ apparently gets you South American meats. The third and most expensive 29€ menu had everything. Bottled still water was extra charge of 1,90€ per bottle.

Meats were ok. The first three were salty and on the tough side. I thought they would be bringing out better meats for the picanha menu option. The only good meat was the beef rib. It fell off the bone and was so tender. The second round of beef rib was not as good. I feel like there is inconsistency here. Meats can be hit or miss.

Salad bar was pretty depressing. I was hoping for raw produce, like leafy greens or cucumber or tomato. They brought out so many meats in the beginning that I didn’t have time to check out the salad bar until halfway into the meal. I tried like two things from this salad bar.

Service was great though. They kept offering meats nonstop that I had to turn the stick over to red “nau obrigado” not long after being seated. The guy that explained the menu to us in English...

After having visited a Fogo de Chão in Beverly Hills and having adored the food I thought, why not try one in Lisbon. But oh boy, what a deception this was. The only thing these two got in common is the name, and that’s where it ends. You come in and go down the stairs to a cave where there are no windows and you can’t see outside. The tables are crammed on top of each other so it’s a claustrophobic experience. There are 3 options that vary in price for your all-in experience. Two of us wanted the most expensive option and two of us the cheapest but the whole table was forced to take the same. This wasn’t a good start.

The buffet was a mess, dirty and greasy cutlery that was touched by everyone. (That is normal at a buffet but you only realize how nasty it is when you pick up the spoon and it’s so greasy that it slips out of your hands). And it was sooooo small, barely any options, all dry and over baked. It was a sad excuse for a buffet.

The meats were nice, but not an out of this world experience…. It was just that, meat!

All in all this restaurant should not carry the same name as its counterpart in Beverly Hills, it’s like comparing a Rolls Royce with a Lada.

Oh and bring your ice skates, the floor of the place is so dirty that your chair slides over the floor and your table too!

I don’t understand how people can rate this so high, maybe their expectations are low…. But this is not worth the 30 euros per person we had to pay for the meat…. Definitely not coming back and you should stay away too if you...

Difficult experience. We took the most expensive rodizio with the best meats included. The staff had problems with english, so it was hard to understand what the offered meats were.

At first they were bringing a lot of sausages and cheaper meats, and it was just ok. Then some meats were really overcooked, dry and not pleasant to eat at all. We got also some good meats, but it felt a bit awkward to leave some meats on the plate and to wait for better ones.

Also it felt like if you put the red sign on the table, you might miss the best meats, so we were trying to look at the staff and what they are carrying to know which color to set on the table.

The salad buffet was not that great but not bad. We didn't quite understand why people would like to try out 26 different meat sorts, and not just order something really good instead. The place was not for us, but we wanted to experience rodizio.

If you want to eat several kilograms of different meats, this might be the...