Fogo de Chão Soho — Restaurant in London

I really love Brazilian Churrascaria (Brazilian style Rodizio Steakhouse) and was somehow excited to see Fogo de Chao finally landed in London. I have been to Fogo de Chao in Botafogo Rio de Janeiro back in January 2015 and I was slightly disappointed back then but at least it was still a fine dining experience. But my experience in Soho was such a traumatise experience and here are the reasons.

Wrong location and design: the restaurant is situated in one of the previous oldest Chinese restaurants in China Town. The restaurant is small and narrow which is completely unsuitable for a Rodizio restaurant when waiters are expected to run around with their food. What makes it even worst is that customers have to get to the buffet tables as well. You could imagine the nightmare in a small and narrow corridor, about 1 1/2 shoulder width. Worse still is the complete lack of wisdom to retain the dumbwaiters left from the previous Chinese restaurant where you see the waiters and waitresses queuing up at the already busy corridor to dump food and putting the dirty dishes in. It really is no fun to be seating next to that and experience the leftover food and dirty dishes from other customers! Needless to say, the tables are very small and hardly enough space to put our plates.

Food is not of the highest quality but somehow acceptable given the cheap setting in this restaurant but in no way anywhere close to the quality one would expect from a decent restaurant.

Staff: I really feel sorry for them. It must be difficult and stressful to work at a restaurant like this. I often see them bump into each other. They input my drink incorrectly which led to another waitress ordered wrongly for my second drink. Some of the waiters don’t know how to cut and serve properly in Rodizio style. They also lack awareness of the amount of food been offered to the tables closest to them and left those a bit further away in the cold as they have to return often to the kitchen after cuts but then returned to the same tables and leaving those farthest frustrating by waiting and only get the less favourite food passing through to them instead. At the end I had to ask a waitress that I had been waiting the whole evening for Picanha only to see they have been repeatedly offered to the other tables but not our end as we sat at the farthest. I requested the next serving to be brought to our end to which they obliged.

Overall an unpleasant experience and we only stayed for 1 hour 15 mins and we couldn’t wait to get out!

Food 6/10, service 4/10, ambience 3/10, value for money 5/10.

If you have never had Brazilian Churrascaria before, I am certain you would find it interesting and hence the overwhelming high rating reviews they get. I see some very low rating reviews and they are the ones who probably have experience and would not put up with this level of Churrascaria restaurant at the heart of West End in London. The real thing is much better! Who am I to tell you what to experience? If you want to get a superficial experience then that’s fine but just do not expect a fine dining experience like the Fogo de Chao in the US or in Brazil and get ready for a bumpy experience...

I recently visited this restaurant after craving steak for a few days and was excited to try it for the first time. Unfortunately, the overall experience didn’t meet my expectations. Upon arrival, I was left waiting at the entrance for a noticeable amount of time before being seated, despite the restaurant only having two other guests at the time. Once seated, the waitress who approached me was not particularly warm or welcoming. As I looked through the menu, I found the concept a bit confusing — which I acknowledge is partly on me — but when I asked the waitress for clarification, she was unhelpful and offered little guidance. Even after placing my order, I still didn’t fully understand how the dining process worked. I’m particular about how my steak is cooked — I prefer it rare — but no one asked for my preference during the ordering process. I was told the chef would check, but only a couple of minutes later, someone brought out a well-done sirloin, without any sides or even a plate. He returned again shortly after with another steak that was extremely overcooked and burnt. Still, my sides hadn’t arrived. At that point, I flagged down the waitress to express my concerns, particularly about not being able to request how my steak was cooked, and the missing sides. The manager then came over, and to his credit, he was very polite and helpful. He ensured that a properly cooked steak was brought out and also provided my sides, topping up my water as well. Unfortunately, the mashed potato was quite poor — full of hard lumps and lacking in quality. It also wasn’t made clear to me that the restaurant operates on a system using coasters to indicate whether you want more steak or not. This was never explained by the waitress, which added to my confusion. Throughout the meal, the chef brought out approximately seven different cuts of steak — only two of which I genuinely enjoyed. I’ve dined at a number of steakhouses before, and in my opinion, the overall quality of the meat served here was underwhelming. Finally, when I finished eating, it took quite a while for the table to be cleared, which only added to the disappointment. Overall, this restaurant and its dining concept weren’t for me. While the manager was the one bright spot in terms of service, I feel the customer experience — particularly communication, attentiveness, and food quality — needs significant...

I was so excited to go to this place after being recommended by a friend and having tried an incredible Brazilian bbq a few years ago. However, I can honestly say that this is one of the most disappointing culinary experiences I have ever had.

Every single cut of meat we had except the chicken was unbelievably tough and chewy, all the meat was clearly very low quality cuts and not cooked with much effort or care. There seemed to be hardly any seasoning except occasional a kind of garlic butter, and the quality of the meat was so low that there was no good flavour coming from the meat itself (also everything overcooked). The only cut that was even half decent from the standard grill option was the sirloin, so at the end I decided to at least have one more portion of that before leaving. However, that final portion was so unbelievably chewy and tough that after 2 minutes of solid chewing I was forced to spit it out into a tissue.

If you have the cheek to charge people £100 for two people to have a meal (where we didn’t even order a drink only tap water!) then it is an absolute disgrace that I am forced to spit my food out into a napkin absolutely shocking.

On top of that it was some pretty terrible customer service, the guys coming around and serving the meat were miserable and just seemed angry, absolutely nothing like the previous bbq I had been to where the servers were fantastic and really added to the experience.

I would never recommend this place to anyone and would highly discourage people from going, absolute rip off and complete scam they should be ashamed of themselves charging those kind of prices for meat quality that’s worse than I could find in Lidl.

The only thing I can say that I actually enjoyed was the olives from the salad bar, and even those aren’t as good as olives I could get in Sainsbury’s. Hang your...