Fogo de Chão Brazilian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Coral Gables

My 70-something year old mother brought my teenage son and middle-aged me to have brunch/lunch at this wonderful churrascaaria.

Fogo de Chao is awesome! It is very spacious both on the ground/street level and on the upper level. It is classy with dark wooden modern furniture. The heavy heirloom silver cutlery they provide customers with to cut and eat their food is exquisite and rare.

It has the best salad bar I have ever seen with offerings such as assorted cheese and cold cuts, tabbouleh, hummus, green salads, smoke salmon with capers, potato salad, grilled asparagus, carrot and ginger soup, tomato basil soup, grilled eggplant, marinated mushrooms, grilled peppers and onions, dragon fruit, kiwi, watermelon, papaya, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, yogurt, bread and cornbread.

Then there is the piece de resistance! There is a large grilling area where the gaucho chefs season and grill absolutely delicious cuts on beef, lamb and pork and sausages on the spit. My mom had red wine and my son and I had the very refreshing mint lemonade.

Humberto, one of the more experienced gaucho chefs was the best! He saw I was interested in learning more about his Brazilian Gaucho culture and history and especially how he prepared scrumptious meats. Humberto was very kind and friendly! He showed me how he seasoned and grilled large slabs of meat of very tasty Brazilian beef steak. Humberto also took me to see the section of the restaurant where they store speciality knives with handles made out of the horns of the very special Brazilian cattle. I saw his ornate wide leather belt which was made out of the skin of those Brazilian cattle. Humberto explained that the cattle are everything to gauchos and define the gaucho way of living. He also showed me a large copper image on the restaurant wall of a Brazilian gaucho in full traditional uniform and bearing the cow-horned knives. Humberto told me that all churrascarias must have that copper image of a Brazilian gaucho proudly mounted on the wall. Thanks, Humberto for the interesting and informative tour and thanks to Fogo de Chao for giving customers like me the opportunity to taste such delicious food while also learning about the fascinating history, culture and way of living the Brazilian Gaucho! I had a great time here as did my mother and my son!

Recently, my mother, son and I returned to Fogo de Chao for brunch/lunch to celebrate my milestone birthday. Valentina from Venezuela and Argentina, Jimmy from Venezuela, Juan Carlos from Spain, and, of course, Humberto from Brazil were all very friendly, kind and helpful and made my birthday celebration special. Jimmy even treated us to a delicious chocolate lava cake dessert on the house for us to round out our scrumptious meal. Thank you very much, Fogo de Chao restaurant and staff for making my 57th birthday celebration with my...

Complaint about experience at Fogo de Chão – Miami - Coral Gables

My name is Márcio, and this time I will give it zero stars. I was with my family (5 people) on September 9th for lunch at the Miami location of Fogo de Chão, a chain we have always appreciated. However, this time we had a very poor experience. I want to make it clear that I do not believe the problem lies with the chain itself or the staff, but I think it is important to register what happened so the service can be improved.

We arrived around 4:00 p.m. and, as usual, we ordered the full churrasco experience. We served ourselves at the buffet, but for approximately 20 to 25 minutes we did not receive any meat. My children practically finished their meal with only rice and beans, due to the long wait for the meat service to begin and then the further delays in returning to our table. When the server came by, she asked if we wanted anything specific. We complained about the delay and requested two particular cuts of meat, but they never arrived.

Another situation that surprised us was the fact that the check was placed on our table while we were still eating, and before the meats had been served properly. Although the server mentioned she could add anything else we might want, this approach does not match the experience one expects from a Brazilian chain like Fogo de Chão. Even if this might be common practice in some American restaurants, in none of the locations we have visited before has anything similar happened.

Later, a manager came by our table and asked how the service had been. My wife replied, “can I be honest?” and then sincerely explained the issues: the 25-minute wait without meat, the limited variety of cuts, and the fact that the specific requests we made were never fulfilled. The manager said he would check into it, but by that point we were already finishing our meal.

Honestly, we are not asking for a refund or anything of that sort, but we believe something should have been done to avoid losing a customer once we raised the problems, such as offering a courtesy, a discount, or a dessert as a gesture of goodwill to soften the negative impression left. Once again, we do not need compensation, but the question remains: why ask me how the experience was if it was obvious that our table did not receive meat and that my children practically had their meal without eating any meat at all?

We still chose to leave a 20% tip, even though we were not satisfied with the main aspect of the meal. I must admit I found it quite disappointing. We thought perhaps it was a shift change or some other circumstance, but if for any reason it is not possible to provide excellent service, then perhaps it would be better not to serve until everything is ready. I do not know exactly what happened, but today, in particular, my rating...

Long waits, terrible management, and overcooked meats just about sums up our trip to Fogo De Chao. After a long day of graduation celebrations we chose Fogo De Chao to cap the night off and had a reservation for 9PM for a party of 11 set. When you arrive be ready to fork some cash over to the valet because the parking situation there is terrible, although it is Coral Gables so you can’t be too upset. We checked in at 8:45 and already overheard multiple people complaining about the wait time and saying they were not seated for their reservations despite a long wait. They notified us we could wait in the upstairs lounge until our table was ready. Unfortunately, we would be a part of the reservation fiasco. At 9PM we went up to the front with our party of 11 ready to go and were told they didn’t have a table ready. We noticed that they had a long table capable of seating around 20 and asked if we could sit there and were told no as that sits too many people for us to use it. We waited a bit longer and received no word of when we would be seated. Other parties around us faced the same thing and there was a true frustration from all the patrons up front. 5, 10, 20 minutes went by as we fought tooth and nail to get confirmation on when we would be seated for a graduation dinner with elderly people in our party and we got nothing back from the manager outside of us being able to sit when the next group table was done paying (they had just ordered more food so the wait would be even longer). At one point we were told they “maybe” would open up a private room for us, but that was said to shoo us away and nothing came of it. It wasn’t until 40 minutes of waiting beyond our res and us chasing the manager THROUGH the restaurant when they relented and sat us at the long table, the one we had requested 40 MINUTES BEFORE.

Once we finally sat we ordered the Full Churrasco Experience which includes an assortment of meats and we also ordered a bottle of white and red wine. The wines were good and the meat was decent, although many of the cuts were overcooked such as the lamb. The Picanha was a standout as was the filet. The bacon wrapped steak is an honorable mention and we did enjoy the fried cheese with honey as well. For the price point it didn’t seem worth it as we’ve had far better cuts of meat at other steakhouses and better service as well. The cherry on top was our card getting lost after we handed it over to pay the bill and it taking them 5 minutes to find it and when they did they realized they had dropped it on the floor. Overall just an absolute circus and for what, a bunch of overcooked meat? Maybe we’ll give Fogo De Chao another chance one day but it will certainly not be at this location and definitely won’t be without taking blood pressure...